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The Standard Plant and a Century of Making Things It was a hot May week in 2023, and J and I were already sweating through our shirts before we even made it to the entrance. We turned into the driveway off North Elm Street and passed a large Caterpillar backhoe holding up the red, white, and blue at the top of the arm. Patriotic machinery. Only in Connecticut. We moved toward the back of the complex with our eyes open, scanning for any sign of people or activity. We found cameras instead. A few of them, well-positioned across one of the buildings and up on an electrical pole, covering angles that made our original entry plan useless. We backed off, found a Plan B, and stepped into a dark room washed in tinted green light, then took the stairs down to ground level. The former Standard Plant sits along North Elm Street at a sunken grade, one story, with another building rising over the roadway to the far right when you're standing in front of it from North Street. It's the kind o...
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Hotchkiss Brothers Factory Complex
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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, a second son 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 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.
🪚 Did You Work at the Hotchkiss Brothers Factory?
Were you or a family member employed at this legendary Torrington lumber mill — whether under C. Hotchkiss and Son, Hotchkiss Brothers Co., or any of its iterations? Do you have photographs of the millwork operations, the lumber sheds along the Naugatuck River, or memories of the Water Street complex before its demolition in 2025? Share your stories and help preserve the legacy of this Connecticut industrial landmark.
📩 Share Your Memory
or drop a comment below — full credit given to every contributor
⬇ Keep Reading Below For More Connecticut Industrial History
🏭 CT Mills & Factories
From lumber mills and foundries to organ factories and textile plants — explore the lost industrial giants that once powered Connecticut.
2. (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/
3. (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/
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