215 North Main Street (House), Millbury, Worcester County, MA

Significance: 215 North Main Street, originally a boarding house, is significant as one of the few vestiges of a hamlet serving the Burling Mills on the Blackstone River, a highly industrialized waterway running from Worcester, Massachusetts, to Providence, Rhode Island. The Burling Mills Company, formed in 1869 on a 1850 mill site, produced French Beavercloth. It closed in 1883 after a fire destroyed the complex. The company name derived from the textile finishing operation, burling, in which burls (small knots or lumps), loose threads, and burrs were removed from the cloth. This house for mill workers was one of five the company built along the west side of the new Worcester-Millbury road. Of these, only 215 and 207 North Main Street survive.
Survey number: HABS MA-1297