Elms Boarding House
The Elms Boarding House was built in 1863 by Windham Linen Company in order to house single, mostly young mill workers from poor families. It was likely first meant to house only female borders, but in censuses from 1870 onward, it was shown to house both men and women. The building was originally three stories and 96x45ft, though in 1917 American Thread Co. added a three story 20ft extension. It was located at 287 Main Street across the street from Mill no. 2 and the barn. Some renovations were done in 1909, notably the addition of a fire escape, central steam heating, and indoor plumbing. The building held 36 double bedrooms for boarders, each with a double bed, dresser, and window and housing two boarders. The Elms Apartments now stand at the same address.
The Elms served a very important function in Willimantic’s industrializing economy at the time. Boarding houses like the Elms were meant to create comfort in the minds of parents whose teenagers and young adults resided in them by creating a home-like and moralistic environment where fraternizing amongst young men and women was likely highly discouraged. The responsibility of creating this environment was a shared one. On one hand, the sophisticated furnishings and elegant interior design, especially on the more public ground floor, served to attract new laborers from poor families in the countryside and Willimantic’s fast-growing urban center. The other prong of this strategy was the hard work of housekeepers like Mr. and Mrs. Bartlett, the first housekeepers Windham Linen Co. employed there. Their quarters would have been on the first floor along with a kitchen and living space. These folks worked to ensure that the boarding house remained tidy and presentable, while also ensuring the same for the mill girls’ perceived virtues and morals, by monitoring them for what they or the mill owners would have considered inappropriate or ‘unladylike’ behavior. In 1900, A Mr. Roger Ryan from Ireland is listed as the head of household and shown as being employed as a superintendent of a weaving department. His wife Ellen, a Rhode Island woman of Irish parentage, doesn’t have an occupation listed, possibly implying she oversaw the boardinghouse. Their only surviving daughter Veronica is listed as a bookkeeper, possibly for the boardinghouse, along with an unrelated housekeeper. Of the nearly 40 people living there, only Mr. Ryan is listed as paying rent. While it is likely that when it was first opened the housekeepers were paid by the company, many boardinghouses around the turn of the center turned to a model where the boarders paid rent to the company or the heads of household who would have paid that money to company. This could explain the rent situation on the 1900 census, as well as the daughter working as a bookkeeper. It is unclear what became of the Ryan family, as in 1899 city directories show the family in the same position as in 1900, however in 1902 they show that Veronica and Ryan had moved to Baltic, and Ellen to Jewett City. In the 1910s, the responsibilities of the boardinghouse ended up in the hands of Mrs. and Mr. Snow.
This system of attracting young, mostly single female laborers using the boarding houses and the paternalism of policing their personal lives was an example of the Lowell-Waltham system. Curiously, the Elms differed from boarding houses in other company towns like Lowell, Mass. in a few key ways. Unlike the boarding houses there where each building usually housed only one gender, the Elms was co-ed. It seems to have housed men on one floor, and women on another. However, this also contributed to an interesting ethnic and gender dynamic where while most of the girls at least in 1870 and 1880 who lived there were of poorer, rural Yankee backgrounds, the majority of men residing there at the same time were foreign born single men of Irish, Scottish, German, or Swiss descent. There was also a large discrepancy in age between genders. In 1870, 40% of the female boarders were under 20 years old, whereas for the men that number stood around 11%. These demographics continued to shift dramatically into the next century. Another difference from other New England company towns was that at the Elms, two boarders shared a room and a bed, whereas in towns like Lowell, four boarders often shared a bedroom.
American Thread Co. began selling off all of its residential properties in the 1930s due to the Great Depression. The Elms was no exception, and worsening its prospects was a general decline of boarding houses starting in the 1890s due to the influx of European immigrants who often came with family or friends or had family or friends waiting for them. This created a rather sharp decline in the demand for housing for single, young mill workers. This is clearly visible in the 1900 census, which shows most residents of both sexes tending to be between 25-50 years old, many of whom had lived there for a decade or even two. The Elms was sold to a private owner who renamed it the Elms Hotel and continued to run it as a boarding house until a fire allegedly destroyed the top floor causing it to be remodeled and eventually repurposed as apartments. Jamie and Katherine Eves’ work on this topic suggests this fire took place in the 1950s, however the Hartford Courant doesn’t seem to have any articles mentioning it, even though it mentions smaller, less damaging fires at the same address in that decade. Another Elms apartment building was constructed on the same address in 1947 and still stands today, unlike the original boarding house. A kitchen fire set off the sprinklers on January 20th, 2020, and water damage to the electrical system rendered the property unlivable. It currently at the time of writing remains vacant.