Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1972. A historic map-sheet match is not published yet. The record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
From the record
“Essex Company Machine Shop, also known as Stone Mill or the Lawrence Machine Shop, is a historic machine shop on Union Street in Lawrence, Massachusetts. It was built in 1846 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.”
Wikipedia article Essex Company Machine Shop, CC BY-SA 4.0.
one of 350 National Register listings in Essex County · listed in 1972 · category: Building · one of 2 National Historic Landmarks in Essex County.
National Register reference number.72000138- the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
In the preparation of this work, I have endeavored to produce a liistorical reference book, giving a compact story of the founding of Lawrence and its development up to the present day. The table of contents has been laid out in a manner that should make it easy for the reader or student of local history to find information relative to any particular phase or period of the life of the community. I have been painstaking in my search for facts, and I am confident that what is printed will prove reliable.
In the research pertaining to the early history of Lawrence, valuable assistance was obtained by reference to Hayes' and Wads worth's histories, and also to the historical sketches by the late Hon. Robert H. Tewksbury. I am deeply indebted to Mrs. R. H. Tewksbury for her co-operation in permitting recourse to Mr. Tewksbury's last manuscript on Lawrence. Thereby, I have been enabled to clear up a number of inconsistencies that have appeared, besides securing some interesting facts in regard to the early days, which have not hitherto been printed.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 81 fires within 5 miles of Essex Company Machine Shop between
2003 and 2020, burning about 25 acres in total. 1 started naturally. 5 were recorded as arson.
Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted
here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
Reported cause
Fires
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
19
Smoking
18
Debris and open burning
10
Recreation and ceremony
7
Misuse of fire by a minor
7
Equipment and vehicle use
6
Arson/incendiarism
5
Railroad operations and maintenance
4
Power generation/transmission/distribution
4
Natural
1
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. Museums hold 1,235 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Essex Company Machine Shop between 1816 and
1975: 693 Plantae, 408 Animalia, 121 Fungi, 5 Protozoa, 4 Unrecorded, 4 Chromista. 12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by A Brown, A S Gaunt, A. C. Mathieson and others. Each is a
physical object with a catalogue
number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was
collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be
concluded from a species being absent.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
6 workings within 5 miles of Essex Company Machine Shop: 3 past producers, 1 unknown, 1 producer, 1 plant.
2 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Perlite. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Lawrence, the town this property stands in, in 26 storm reports between 1998 and 2025: 7 flash flood, 7 thunderstorm wind, 7 flood, 3 hail.
No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
In Lawrence, trees were downed on Winthrop Avenue, Essex Street, Everett Street, and Methuen Street. A tree fell onto a house on Furber Street and another on Melvin Street. In North Andover, a large tree was downed on Boston Road near Route 114 and on Main Street. Damage was a little more extensive in Andover, where many trees were downed on the south side of town including on Vine Street. Trees and wires were downed on Bridle Path Road.
Trees and wires on South Union, Kent, Baily, and Dorchester Streets were downed by thunderstorm winds. A tree on Dorchester Street was downed onto a car.
At 455 PM EST, an amateur radio operator reported Chickering Road at State Route 114 in South Lawrence was flooded. A car nearby on Halsey Street was trapped in flood waters. At 524 PM EST a car was disabled in street flooding at Cutler Avenue and Chickering Road. Grafton Street was flooded and impassable.
Several streets were closed due to flooding. A car was stuck in floodwaters at the intersection of Andover Street and South Broadway near the Walgreens.
In Methuen, Lowell Street was impassable due to flash flooding. Two cars were trapped there. Broadway near Granite Street was flooded and impassable. Also, Route 110 near Bates Street was flooded and impassable. Jackson Street was also flooded and impassable.
In Lawrence, police reported street flooding on Andover Street between Clifron and Amherst Streets. The road was flooded and impassable. Report relayed by amateur radio.
In Lawrence, Berkeley Street was flooded and impassable from Sheridan Street to Jackson Street to East Haverhill Street. In addition, Parker Street was closed at the Merrimack River bridge due to flooding.
At 1124 AM EST, an amateur radio operator reported a car trapped in flood waters behind Partham Elementary School in Lawrence. The Automated Surface Observation System platform at Lawrence Airport recorded a storm total rainfall of 2.62 inches.
At 1045 AM EST, Parker Street in Lawrence was reported flooded and impassable between Merrimack and Market Streets. At 11 AM EST, the intersection of Salem Street and South Union Street was reported flooded and impassable. The Community Cooperative Rain Hail and Snow observer in Andover reported a storm total rainfall of 2.18 inches.
No historic map-sheet match is published
for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs
a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
Browse the county's mapped places while that work is
pending.
From the nomination file
2,388 words on record
When this property was proposed for the
National Register, someone wrote the case for it: what the building is,
and why it matters. That document is a federal record in the public domain.
It is quoted below word for word, never summarised. The text was read off the scanned case file by machine, so the
occasional stray character is the recogniser's and the 1970s
typewriter's.
Statement of significance
The Essex Company Machine Shop is as fine a work of pre-Civil War indus- trial architecture as can be found in the New England region, with an equally notable historic background. It is one of the two oldest mills in the city and one of the few stone mill buildings extant in the Merrimack Valley. This building was one of the first to be inventoried by the New England Textile Mill survey team. VLawrence in 1845 had a population of less than 200 and was a wild and desolate region. Because of the foresight of a few Massachusetts capitalists who appreciated the water power available from harnessing the Merrimack River, the Essex Company was formed to develop that power and a new city was born.
The machine shop had its origins in 1846-48 when the Essex Land and Water Company, a Lawrence land and power owner and distributor, decided to erect a facility to build and repair textile mills of the city. It was in the loft of this structure that a full set of worsted machinery was put together and operated successfully, the first attempt to develop what was later to become a gigantic industry in Lawrence and the basis of the city's economy. After a four year period of service to the Essex Company, the building with its associated foundry and forges passed into the hands of a newly organized and separate corporation, the Lawrence Machine Shop Company.
It continued to pertorm its original function but also diversified its product line by adding the manufacture of steam railroad locomotives. Several of these were used in the Lawrence-Boston and Lowell-Boston runs, while others were employed as far away as the Erie Railroad.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 72000138, 11 pages, held by the National Archives in Record
Group 79. See the
catalogue record.
Listed places nearby
6 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
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