Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1979. 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
“The Essex Company Offices and Yard, at 6 Essex Street in Lawrence, Massachusetts, are the historic headquarters of the Essex Company, which was responsible for Lawrence's founding in 1847 and development in the 19th century. These facilities were built in 1883-84, and consist of a street-facing office building and four others: a carpenter's shop, foundry, garage, and storage building.”
Wikipedia article Essex Company Offices and Yard, CC BY-SA 4.0.
one of 350 National Register listings in Essex County · listed in 1979 · category: Building · one of 2 National Historic Landmarks in Essex County.
National Register reference number.79000330- 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 82 fires within 5 miles of Essex Company Offices and Yard between
2003 and 2020, burning about 24 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
Smoking
19
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
18
Debris and open burning
10
Recreation and ceremony
7
Misuse of fire by a minor
7
Equipment and vehicle use
6
Power generation/transmission/distribution
5
Arson/incendiarism
5
Railroad operations and maintenance
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 1,247 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Essex Company Offices and Yard between 1816 and
1975: 701 Plantae, 409 Animalia, 121 Fungi, 5 Protozoa, 4 Unrecorded, 4 Chromista, 3 Bacteria. 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 Offices and Yard: 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
3,146 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.
Description of the property
The Essex Company Offices and Yard are located in downtown Lawrence at the corner of Essex Street, the main commercial thoroughfare, and Union Street. The property is bounded to the north by Essex Street, to the east by Union Street, to the south by an alleyway, and to the west by a commercial structure. The site encompasses an office building (#1) fronting on Essex Street and four other structures located along the alleyway. These include a carpenter's shop (#2) and the following three structures which adjoin each other: a foundry (#3), gaxage (#4), and storage building (#5). All of the above buildings are of red brick and timber construction, and date from 1883-84. Together they form a cohesive group of uniform design, an adaptation of late nineteenth centúry industrial architecture.
The sturdy and somewhat austere ..; buildings were constructed according to the'plans of Hiram Mills, chief engineer for the Essex Company,'and widely known 'as an expert in mill and hydraulic engineering. His design has' r'emained virtuälly unaltered. 'Even the original uses of the individual buildings have not changed. In addition to the above structures, there is a one story wooden storage shed (#8) on the northeast corner of the property and two lean-to sheds (#6 and #7) along the Essex Street property line. These were all added later in the 1880's. Now used for covered parking, the lean-to sheds originally sheltered carriages and possibly horses. These sheds are divided into a series of bays by supporting cast-iron tuscan columns.
The yardsitself is partially paved with stone; another portion has been paved with concrete and the remainder is covered with lawn.
/ARCHITECT Hiram Mills STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE The Essex Company Offices and Yard retain integrity of location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling and association and are of outstanding significance to the City of Lawrence because of the role which the company played in the de-. velopment of that city. The Essex: Company was formed in 1845 by a group of well- known Boston manufacturers and financiers for the purpose of building a planned community around the textile industry as they had done in Lowell. These men included Abbott and Samuel Lawrence, John Amory Lowell, Charles Storrow, Nathan Appleton, William Sturgis and Patrick Jackson.
Surveys of the area around the Merrimack River below Lowell revealed that the Bodwell's falls site would be the most suitable for their plans. Control of these falls was acquired along with the surrounding farmland. Charles Storrow, trained as an engineer and acting as treasurer and agent for the Essex Company, designed the grid plan for the new manufacturing community which included a large common at its center:(potential NR). The Town of Lawrence was officially founded in 1847 and was named for the Lawrence brothers who were the principal stockholders of the Essex Company. With one million dollars in capital the company had by 1848 con-... structed the Great Stone Dam(NR), the locks and canals (NR), a machine shop (NR) and tenements for its mechanics.
They were also instrumental in the formation of numerous corporations for whom large mills were constructed along the canal. These mills which included the Atlantic Mills, the Pacific Mills, the Pemberton Mills, and the Duck Mills, while not owned by the Essex Company remained in close association as their boards of directors invariably interlocked. The Essex Company also constructed boarding houses for the employees of these mills.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 79000330, 15 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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