Last updated: October 5, 2026
Article
Case Study – Stone Mill, Lawrence, Mass.
NPS / Ed Wonsek
The Stone Mill once used waterpower to manufacture tools, mill machinery, water turbines, and millwork for the textile factories that put New England at the center of America’s Industrial Revolution in the early 1800s. Now, the mill has been converted into a mixed income housing development using the Federal and state historic tax credits and the Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC).
Abbott Lawrence built the massive 150,000-square-foot Stone Mill in 1848 next to the Merrimack River in Lawrence, Massachusetts, near Boston, in an area which was later named for him when it was incorporated as a city. The exposed stone walls, wood floors, and industrial character have all been retained throughout the building, which includes 86 new apartments, 69 affordable units (58 low-income and 11 very low-income units) and 17 market-rate units.
On-site amenities include a resident lounge and kitchen, a fitness center, a children’s playroom, indoor bicycle parking, resident storage lockers, work-from-home pods, an outdoor area and patio, and even an exhibit about the historic mill. The first floor had to be raised twelve inches to elevate the interior out of the flood plain and provide protection from riverine flooding.
The rehabilitation makes the building among the first all-electric multi-family properties in the state, using heat pumps and energy recovery systems to reduce energy costs. New high performing insulation, high-efficiency ventilation and filtering equipment, and triple-glazed replacement windows allow the 170-year-old industrial building to become a 21st-century housing-conversion model for the future.