The InterRoyal Corporation

 

It was one of those quintessential New England summer days, sun-warmed, humming with the low thrum of cicadas, when we found ourselves once again at the edges of the InterRoyal site in Plainfield, Connecticut. The old factory loomed like a fossil of America’s industrial past: gutted, crumbling, but somehow still proud.

We ducked beneath a tangle of undergrowth, clothes catching on brambles, and slid our sweaty frames through a yawning tear in the chain-link fence. This wasn’t our first time. A previous visit had led us down a forgotten spur of railroad track, the kind that once ferried goods and ambition in and out of this small mill town. We had wandered to the far edge of the property, then, into what remained of the site’s crown jewel, an enormous building gutted by fire, its charred skeleton exposed to the sky.

Inside, two hulking Lake Erie Engineering Corporation punch presses still stood like monuments. Imposing, unmoved, rooted deep in the floorboards that had outlasted generations. Around them, red bricks lay scattered like fallen leaves. The roof, or what was left of it, had long since succumbed to New England’s unforgiving cycle of deep winter freezes and blistering summer heat.

On this visit, curiosity drew us toward a smaller, unexplored structure, one tucked behind a line of barbed wire fencing. We climbed, crawled, and contorted to get close. My hands bore the sting of rusted wire against flesh; J managed to wedge himself under the lowest strand. But progress stalled at the precipice of a steep drop through a roof-level opening, an inviting path down to the interior floor, but without ropes or ladders, an assured injury for any misstep.

Despite the danger, the ruin told a story. You could feel the echoes of what once were steel-toed boots echoing across factory floors, the pulse of machinery, the rhythm of production. InterRoyal Mill was once a hive of economic life in Plainfield, employing hundreds in its heyday. But by 2005, all that remained were broken windows and, eventually, flames, the handiwork of teenagers, and the final punctuation mark on its industrial obituary.

Even in its decay, InterRoyal draws people in. And on that summer day, it wasn’t just us. As we circled the remnants, searching for a safe descent into a shallow basement area, we heard voices rolling up behind us. Two kids, barely middle schoolers, emerged from the side rail over a dirt mound like they owned the place.

One of them, a boy no older than 11, offered casual advice on how to climb down. He’d been here before. Knew every foothold and hidden drop like the back of his hand. His nonchalance was jarring. This was no playground; this was a derelict structure riddled with chemicals, rusted beams, and collapse-ready floors. And yet, these local kids treated it like a secret clubhouse, indifferent to the very real dangers it posed.

Lower level/Basement of InterRoyal Mill Complex

It was a moment that lingered. The juxtaposition between childhood innocence and a contaminated ruin was haunting. Something is unsettling about watching youth grow up in the shadows of industrial failure, making games of danger in places where livelihoods once flourished.

We didn’t linger long. Once it became clear there was little left beneath the rotting floorboards, we made a quiet exit. The presence of children in a site like this, trespassing, as we were, added a layer of discomfort we couldn’t shake. We weren’t supposed to be there. No one was.

But soon, perhaps, no one ever will be.

The InterRoyal site is now the subject of a long-overdue reckoning. After decades of decline and environmental concern, the Town of Plainfield is moving toward a full-scale brownfield remediation and demolition. The wrecking ball is drawing closer. What once stood as a titan of manufacturing will soon be reduced to a vacant lot, clearing the way for revitalization and, with hope, a new community hub. 

In Plainfield, Connecticut, two industrial legacies lie in stark contrast, one a tale of early 20th-century optimism and community, the other a chilling reminder of what happens when industry outpaces accountability. Together, the stories of Lawton Mills and InterRoyal Mill frame a century of ambition, collapse, and reckoning in this once-thriving mill town.

The story begins in Yorkshire, England, where Harold Lawton was born in 1852 into the shadows of cotton mills that powered the British Industrial Revolution. At 20, he crossed the Atlantic, settling in Rhode Island and working his way up through the bustling textile factories of New England.

By 1901, Lawton was superintendent of the Baltic Mill in nearby Sprague, Connecticut. But he had larger plans. In 1905, he purchased the site of the old Robinson and Fowler Foundry in Plainfield, a plot alongside the Norwich and Worcester Railroad, and set out to build something entirely his own: a steam-powered mill for producing fine-combed cotton goods.

He hired the prestigious Boston firm Lockwood, Greene & Co. to design the new facility. And when demand soared, he brought them back in 1911 to more than double their size. By then, Lawton Mills had become a regional powerhouse: 130,000 spindles, 2,442 looms, and a workforce of 1,200.

Lawton didn’t stop at the mill itself. Between 1906 and 1911, the company constructed 125 two-family homes for workers and 15 homes for supervisors, laying the foundation for a true mill village. Many of these homes still stand, simple, sturdy reminders of a time when factory work promised not just wages, but a sense of place.

But that promise was tested in 1936, as economic pressures from the Great Depression brought wage cuts to the table. The workers went on strike. Even the intervention of Connecticut Governor Wilbur Cross, who offered financial aid from the state, couldn’t stem the tide. The shareholders liquidated the company for a mere 28 cents on the dollar. The heart of Plainfield was broken.

In the aftermath, General Cotton Supply Company of Fall River, Massachusetts, purchased the property and sold off the equipment. Desperate to keep the buildings alive, the town formed the Plainfield Corporation to lease space to new businesses. By 1940, the mill was active again, though its central role in the town’s identity had faded.

Just decades later, another industrial hope would rise and fall on the edge of downtown.

Constructed in the early 1900s and later occupied by the InterRoyal Corporation, the 16.6-acre InterRoyal Mill complex sat less than a mile from the former Lawton site. In the 1950s, the site became a hub for manufacturing office furniture, an enterprise that involved heavy metalworking, chemical plating, and degreasing. These were toxic trades, and they left behind toxic consequences.

By 1986, InterRoyal had gone bankrupt, shuttering its operations and laying off 230 employees, 130 of them from Plainfield. It was a devastating blow, and unlike Lawton’s story, no effort was made to revive the mill in any meaningful way.

The decay was immediate and relentless. Except for a short-lived plastics recycling operation in the early 1990s, the property has remained abandoned ever since. Over time, it became not just a derelict building, but a threat.

Electricity, water, heat, and fire protection are long gone. The site is a carcass: collapsed walls, exposed wires, vats of industrial waste leaching into the soil. Hazardous materials, from asbestos and lead paint to mercury and PCBs, riddle the buildings and their foundations. Over the years, various companies leased space in the shell of the mill, but no one stayed. No one could.

In 1991, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency began what would become a $1.3 million cleanup effort. They removed 680 drums and containers filled with acids, cyanides, and flammable solvents. Forty-five vats holding 100,000 gallons of plating waste were drained. Five massive transformers saturated with PCB-contaminated soil were hauled away. But even that wasn’t enough to stop the rot.

Then came the scandal.

In 2000 and 2001, portions of the mill were demolished under the direction of Michael Saad, Plainfield’s then-Development Director, who would later be convicted on separate criminal charges. Saad authorized demolition despite knowing that unremediated asbestos was present. When investigators discovered that asbestos-containing debris had been mixed with general demolition waste, the project was halted. What remained was not just an environmental hazard, but a criminally mishandled one.

Today, the InterRoyal site looms behind Plainfield’s Town Hall like a specter. Charred bricks and collapsing beams mark the end of an era, and the stubborn persistence of its aftermath. A place where bankruptcy, criminal misconduct, and federal probes converge in a singular cautionary tale. Town officials have long been vexed by its presence, balancing public safety concerns with the high cost of remediation.  Meanwhile, Lawton’s legacy, though long shuttered, still lingers in the form of modest homes and distant memories of a mill that tried to build more than just wealth.

One stood as a beacon of progress. The other, a warning.

And now, perhaps, a new chapter waits to be written. Now, after decades of inertia, the path forward may finally be clearing. With state and federal attention turning toward brownfield redevelopment, and local efforts to revitalize blighted properties gaining traction, Plainfield faces a critical moment: to choose whether its industrial past will define its future, or serve as the ground on which something better can be built.

But the defining moment of InterRoyal’s demise came on April 26, 2005.

A fire ignited in the northern, three-story section of the mill. It burned for two days, its smoke visible from Interstate 395 to Killingly. The flames spread not just heat but history, sending asbestos- and lead-contaminated debris drifting as far as neighboring Brooklyn, Connecticut.

The fire had been started by 19-year-old Felix Lebron, one of three teenagers drinking grain alcohol and smoking cigarettes inside the long-abandoned mill. Lebron set fire to alcohol-soaked cardboard. For his role in the blaze, he was sentenced to five years in prison for third-degree arson.

Though the southern section of the building survived, the site’s fate was sealed. Any lingering illusion that InterRoyal could be salvaged was incinerated in the smoke.

In February 2025, nearly two decades after the fire, the Town of Plainfield issued a call for bids to remove the remaining asbestos and PCB-contaminated debris, along with collapsed structures, old diesel tanks, and a derelict guard shack. The site remains the town’s only abandoned brownfield, a stark outlier in a region increasingly defined by post-industrial revival.

Zoning allows for potential uses ranging from agriculture and wholesale businesses to energy production and even food or pharmaceutical manufacturing, if approved under a special permit. It’s a sliver of possibility. But as residents know all too well, possibility here has a long history of slipping through the cracks.

Source(s):

1. Bouchard, K. (2015, April 12). InterRoyal Mill site remains eyesore, health risk 10 years after fire. Norwich Bulletin.

2. Penney, J. (2022, September 14). Plainfield wants to spend a $2 million state grant on the old InterRoyal Mill. Here's why. Norwich Bulletin.

3. Author Unknown. (2018, August 17). Plainfield officials discuss InterRoyal Mill with EPA, DEEP. Hartford Courant.

4. National Park Service. (1996). National Register of Historic Places registration form: Lawton Mills Historic District [NRHP Reference No. 79002664]. U.S. Department of the Interior. http://npgallery.nps.gov/nrhp/GetAsset?assetID=7d880a0b-ecf6-4f66-9486-5f2dd897088c

5. Preservation Connecticut. (n.d.). Lawton Mills. Making Places: Historic Mills of Connecticut. Retrieved April 11, 2025, from https://connecticutmills.org/find/details/lawton-mills​