Hotchkiss Brothers Factory Complex

Photo courtesy of Loop.net

The One That Got Away: A Lumber Mill, Some Idiots, and a Call I Don't Regret

Some stories don't have a satisfying ending. This is one of them. And I've been carrying it around long enough that I just need to put it down somewhere.

J and I drove out to Torrington on what should have been a straightforward documentation run in 2023. The target was the former Hotchkiss Brothers Lumber Mill on Water Street, sitting on the east bank of the Naugatuck River. We scoped it on the way in, circled the block, found our parking spot, and liked what we saw. Entry looked manageable. The building looked intact enough to be worth the effort. We were ready.

We crossed through the Stop & Shop parking lot in the full summer heat, shoppers drifting past us with their carts, completely indifferent. We clambered over a wall, pushed through branches that swatted us in the face, and followed the sound of the Naugatuck moving over rocks somewhere below. The grass was thick. The brickwork was something. Old, layered, the kind of construction that doesn't happen anymore. The windows on the rear face had already taken some hits over the years, but the front section was largely intact. We were close. Maybe five feet from a ground-floor window when we heard them.

Two voices, male, somewhere on the upper floors. Young. Teenagers, maybe college age. We stopped and listened. In our years of exploring Connecticut, we've crossed paths with other people inside these places plenty of times. Usually it's a non-event: a quick hello, a few words about why you're there, and everyone goes back to doing their own thing. We weren't worried. We were just recalibrating.

Then a window exploded.

Not broke. Exploded. The kind of sound that carries. We froze. Then another one. Then laughter, loud and self-congratulatory, the specific joy of people destroying something just because they can. J and I looked at each other and didn't need to say much. A passerby would hear this. Someone would call it in. Or we'd still be inside when the cruiser pulled up, and then we'd be the ones answering questions about shattered glass.

We went back out the window. I hadn't taken a single photograph.

I want to be clear about how much that stung. I don't shoot on my Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra. I don't do the quick snapshot with the aggressive HDR processing that flattens everything into something that looks like a video game still. I came with real gear, for real documentation, of a building that deserved to have its picture taken properly before it was gone. And I left with nothing.

We sat in the car and talked about waiting them out. We decided against it. And then I did something I have essentially never done before: I called the police.

An unforgivable act. Judge me. Go ahead. I've already done it myself, more than once. But I was hot, I was furious, and those two were actively destroying a piece of Torrington history so they could laugh about it. They weren't there to document anything. They weren't there to appreciate anything. They were there to break things. And in doing so, they burned the whole visit for us and guaranteed that every sound inside that building would now be associated with vandalism. So yes. I called it in. And as we turned onto Water Street, we watched a police unit pull up fast and quiet, no siren, door slamming hard. The officer did not look happy.

We kept driving.

1896 & 1924 Sanborn map surveys.

Here's what those two probably never knew they were smashing up.

The Hotchkiss Brothers mill has roots going back to at least the mid-1800s, and the site itself may be even older, possibly sitting on the footprint of an eighteenth-century grist mill once operated by a family named Wilson. Charles Hotchkiss, born in Prospect in 1811, came to Torrington in 1841 and started with a saw mill up in what's now the Drakeville section of town. He was building something, literally and figuratively, at exactly the right moment. New machinery was making elaborate woodwork ornament affordable and fashionable, and Hotchkiss had both the equipment and the business sense to meet that demand.

In 1857, he and his son Edward bought the Water Street property and its water rights from the Connecticut Soapstone Company, establishing C. Hotchkiss and Son. A decade later, second son Henry joined, and the name was changed to C. Hotchkiss and Sons. When Charles retired in 1880, his sons took over, and the firm became Hotchkiss Brothers Company, the name it would carry for the rest of its working life.

By the late 1890s, this was a serious industrial operation. The facility ran scroll saws, jig saws, band saws, planers, and lathes. They made cabinet work, doors, windows, and finish details. They sold lumber, shingles, lath, paint, glass, masonry, and hardware. They had lumber storage on the opposite riverbank, a parcel up on Pearl Street with a rail siding, and direct access to the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad. The mill ran on water power first, then steam, then electricity. A fan system pulled sawdust and wood shavings from the shop floor straight to the boiler room, where they were burned for fuel. Nothing wasted.

The Hotchkiss family ran the company under Edward H. Hotchkiss, a grandson of the founder, until 1922. The business itself stayed on Water Street until it closed in 1990. More than 130 years on the same ground.

1924 Migeon Avenue Hotchkiss Brothers Lumber Yard

We never went back. Life moves, other locations called, and Torrington stayed on the list of places we'd get to eventually.

We didn't get there in time. In December 2024, three of the mill's buildings came down. By 2025, the rest of the complex followed, along with the former Minetto building at 229 Church Street at the far end of the block. What's left is the southernmost brick structure, the one that housed the office and showroom. Developers William Deickler and Paul Janerico, of Water’s Way and Paydirt LLC, who have owned the property since 2017, plan to convert it into somewhere between six and nine apartments, with possible retail or restaurant space on the ground floor as Phase 1. Further down the line, brownfield remediation work could open the rest of the site to around 155 apartments and 14,000 square feet of commercial space, backed in part by a $1.5 million Brownfield Remediation Grant from the State Department of Economic and Community Development.

Something will rise on that riverbank. It won't be the lumber mill.

I think about those two voices on the upper floor sometimes. I wonder if they even knew what the building was. I wonder if it mattered to them at all. Probably not. That's the part that gets me. Not the broken windows themselves, but the indifference behind them. The complete absence of curiosity about where they were standing and what it had meant.

All I wanted was to document it. To put it on record before it was gone. That's the whole point of what we do.

Only one person I know has published interiors. We didn't get the chance. And now nobody will.

If you're ever in Torrington, at least stop by the Hotchkiss Fyler House. That one's still standing.

📋 Reader Records

🪵 Did your family work at Hotchkiss Brothers on Water Street?

The mill ran on the same ground from 1857 to 1990, and somebody out there still has the paperwork. Order books, millwork catalogues, payroll stubs, shop photographs, or just the memory of what the sawing and planing floor sounded like on a weekday morning. The research could not establish what happened to the scroll saws, band saws and lathes when the business closed in 1990, who occupied the buildings between that closing and the 2017 sale, or whether the office woodwork that served as the company's own showroom survived to the end. If you have a photograph of the interior, it may be one of the last. Full credit given to all contributors.

⬇️ Keep Reading

🏭 Connecticut Mills, Factories and the Ones That Came Down

Another Torrington works first, then the Bridgeport and Rockville plants, the organ factory, a woolen mill reduced to its tail race, and a foundry that burned twice.

⚙️ From Excelsior Needle Co. to Timken: Torrington's Standard Plant The other end of the same city. Excelsior Needle began making sewing machine needles in 1866, the Standard Plant went up in 1906, and Timken bought The Torrington Company in 2003. › 🔧 Hurwood Manufacturing Company (United Pattern Co.) A demolished Bridgeport sore thumb along Railroad Avenue that was basically a shell of its former glory. › 🏗️ The Human Stories of the Rockville Mill Complex A historic textile mill currently in redevelopment with an extraordinary mill race. › 🎵 Bridgeport Organ Company: From Music to Urban Development Currently half developed as a school space and residential units, the developer is battling with the city for bringing down the rest of the Casco factory building. › 🧵 Stillmanville Woolen Mill (Connecticut Castings Mill) A Pawcatuck, CT mill demolished in April 2019 — now only the foundation and underground tail race remain. › 🔥 Rocky Hill Connecticut Foundry Company Three silos with the stairs cut off so nobody could climb. All that is left of a foundry that burned twice and came back. ›

🪵 Charles Hotchkiss came to Torrington in 1841 and bought the Water Street property and its water rights in 1857. The firm became Hotchkiss Brothers Company in 1880 and worked the same ground until 1990. Three of the mill's buildings came down in December 2024 and the rest of the complex followed in 2025, leaving the southernmost brick structure that housed the office and showroom.

Source(s):

1. (1896) Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Torrington, Litchfield County, Connecticut. Sanborn Map Company, Sep. [Map] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/sanborn01188_003/
2. (1924) Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Torrington, Litchfield County, Connecticut. Sanborn Map Company, Aug. [Map] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/sanborn01188_007/
3. Serra, J. L. (2015, April 14). Hotchkiss Fyler House open for the season. Patch.com. https://patch.com/connecticut/woodbury-middlebury/hotchkiss-fyler-house-open-season-0
4. Keane, K. (2024, November 15). Torrington to demolish former Hotchkiss mill property by end of year to make way for redevelopment. CT Insider. https://www.ctinsider.com/news/article/torrington-hotchkiss-mill-property-demolition-19900414.php
5. NBC Connecticut. (2024, November 21). Crews start demolition on massive factory in Torrington. https://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/local/crews-start-demolition-massive-factory-torrington/3438219/
6. Infraredrobert. (n.d.). Hotchkiss Brothers. WordPress. Retrieved July 27, 2026, from https://infraredrobert.wordpress.com/tag/hotchkiss-brothers/
7. Living Places. (n.d.). Water Street Historic District, Torrington City, Litchfield County, CT. Retrieved July 27, 2026, from https://www.livingplaces.com/CT/Litchfield_County/Torrington_City/Water_Street_Historic_District.html