09:58 AM EDT on Monday, July 18, 2005

BY JOHN HILL
Journal Staff Writer

PAWTUCKET -- Three years ago, the managers of Slater Mill had to decide if their three-building complex was going to be a museum or a museum piece.

Journal photo / Steve Szydlowski

Slater Mill in Pawtucket has evolved from a hands-off museum to a more interactive attraction where staffers in period costumes re-create the past. Above, guide Allan McGillivray explains the mill's machinery to Gordon Shriver of Washington.

They were the preservers of Samuel Slater's 1790s mill, the first mechanized, mass-production factory in the nation, enshrined as "The Birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution."

The only trouble with that noble title, says the site's executive director, Jeanne Zavada, is that it was, well, "boring."

Since reaching that philosophical crossroad, the staff and board of the historic site say they have found a new meaning for the mill -- "The Time and Place Where Modern America Began" -- and a new way to tell its story.

What was once primarily the realm of preservationists and academics has become a hand-on series of exhibits, where walk-in visitors can see, touch and (with live interpreters) even talk about two centuries of technology and the changes they have wrought in the way people work and live.

The three-building site along the Blackstone River includes the Slater Mill, originally built in 1790; the Wilkinson Mill, a stone mill built in 1810; and the Sylvanus Brown House, a red gambrel-roofed cottage, built in 1758, that was moved to the site in 1973.

Before 2002, the managers of Slater Mill did not seek off-the-street visitors.

Those who did come to the site -- usually, elementary school field-trippers or groups of senior citizens -- were there by appointment. They walked though a series of look-don't-touch exhibits, where machines and artifacts of 1800s and 1900s manufacturing were arrayed safely behind metal railings.

"It was a very academic environment," Zavada said.

"We still hold on to those academic principles, but the way people, the way they learn, is hands-on."

She says a new exhibit in the Wilkinson Mill typifies the new show-rather-than-tell approach:

To demonstrate how water powered a mill's equipment, the Slater staff has set up a work table on the mill's main floor. It has a metal wheel about the size of a dinner plate, with a leather loop from its rim to a smaller gear, in a drill press. The arrangement mimics the wide leather straps that run from the Wilkinson Mill's main drive shaft to the life-size equipment that stretches the length of the mill.

As one child turns the large wheel, the strap transfers the motion to the drill, making it rotate and drill a hole in a wooden spool. The children can feel the power that the gears transmit, Zavada said, and see how their motion is converted into power to cut and shape wood.

"We're very careful about the safety issues," she said. "But with some adjustments, people can get involved."

Home life is on stage as well. The Brown house is stocked with 18th-century cooking and spinning technology, to show how people fed and clothed themselves before the factory society that Slater was pioneering changed America.

Children enjoy playing with the tools, said Slater Mill's marketing director, Francine Murphy-Brillon, and their parents are often intrigued by the machines and how they worked.

"When people come in here, they may not know what they are doing," Murphy-Brillon said, "but when they leave, they're sold."

The new approach is paying off -- literally.

Journal photo / Steve Szydlowski

Slater Mill in Pawtucket has evolved from a hands-off museum to a more interactive attraction where staffers in period costumes re-create the past.

Attendance has jumped 10 percent since 2001, as the site's customer base has broadened, and Zavada says that some of those visitors have become donors. Though corporate contributions aren't what they were in the 1980s, the mill raised $45,000 at a fundraiser this month, nearly triple 2002's corporate donations.

In the two mills, and at the Brown house, staffers explain their particular buildings and the lives of the people who once lived and worked there.

At Wilkinson Mill, which once manufactured machine parts for Slater Mill's equipment, visitors can watch the water wheel drive the main shaft of the mill. At Slater Mill, they can see an assortment of weaving machines, through the decades, showing how the technology evolved.

Andrian Paquette showed off a 1899 loom that was producing straps with the mill's name woven into them. The loom was controlled by a series of rectangular wooden cards that had lines of pegs on them. As each peg-card passed into the loom, it tells it which threads to push up, and which to press down, to spell out "Slater Mill" in the cloth.

"These pegs are binary code," Paquette said. "They're either in or out." The loom's cards act as a computer program of sorts, he said. The pegs are an 1800s version of the same 1-or-0 operating principle that drives most of today's computers.

At the Brown house, Kara Evans, an 18-year-old high school graduate from Seekonk, explained the routine of daily life in the late 1700s.

She demonstrated how families bought tea in tightly packed bricks, then scraped off just enough for each serving; how the fireplace wasn't just for warmth, it was the house's stove and light source.

She showed how flax was harvested, and how the plant's fibers looked like long strands of blond -- flaxen -- hair. The fibers were made into thread on a spinning wheel in the house, and measured out on another wheel-like device, called a weasel.

Evans showed how the weasel would make a "pop" sound when the spool of thread was full -- a process described by 19th-century children when they recited the nursery rhyme Pop Goes the Weasel.

Her stint at the site began as a school project, she said; she enjoyed it so much, she stayed on through the summer. It has even got her thinking about a teaching career.

Journal photo / Steve Szydlowski

At the Sylvanus Brown House, a red gambrel-roofed cottage built in 1758, now on the grounds of the Slater Mill in Pawtucket, Kara Evans, of Seekonk, explains the routine of daily life in the late 1700s.

Working at Slater Mill involves more than just knowing things, Evans said. You have to do them, too.

"I had to learn how to spin, and bake bread [in a fireplace]," she said, with a touch of pride. "I've made bread."

How to get to Slater Mill

The three-building complex is located along the Blackstone River at 67 Roosevelt Ave., next to Pawtucket City Hall, and near the intersection with Main Street.

Through Sept. 30, the complex is open Tuesday through Sunday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. It is closed on holidays.

To get there, take Route 95 north to Exit 28 (School Street), in Pawtucket, and go left at the bottom of the exit ramp. Follow that road across the river, then turn right at the light at the end of the bridge, onto Roosevelt Avenue. The mill will be on the right.

From the north, take Route 95 south to Exit 29 (Downtown Pawtucket), exiting onto Broadway. Broadway will merge with Main Street; stay on it. Once the road -- now Main Street -- crosses the river, turn right at the traffic light, onto Roosevelt Avenue. The mill will be on the right.

Admission is free for children ages 5 and younger; $7 each for children 6 to 12; $9 for people 13 to 64; and $8 for those 65 and older.

A one-dollar discount coupon is available at the mill's Web site -- www.slatermill.org -- by clicking on "Your Visit" and then on "Hours and Fees."

The week along the Blackstone

WEDNESDAY

10 a.m. Summer organ concert. Jack Cook plays the mighty Wurlitzer organ on stage at the Stadium Theatre Performing Arts Center at Monument Square, Woonsocket. Coffee and pastry. $5 per person admission.

Contact: Stadium Theatre at 401-762-4545

6:30 to 7:45 p.m. Twilight cruise on the Blackstone. The 49-passenger Blackstone Valley Explorer boat offers a river-based view of a stretch of the Blackstone River along the Valley Falls Marsh. Look for watchable wildlife in twilight. Bring binoculars and insect repellent. Tickets are $10 for adults, $8 for children age 12 and under.

Trips start from the Central Falls Landing, corner of Broad Street and Madeira Avenue.

Contact: Blackstone Valley Tourism Council at 401-724-2200.

THURSDAY

5 to 8 p.m. A chowder reception and riverboat tour on the Blackstone Valley Explorer Riverboat as part of the year-long effort marking the Blackstone Valley Tourism Council's 20th Anniversary. At the Central Falls Landing, corner of Broad Street and Madeira Avenue. Tickets are $20 per person.

Contact: Blackstone Valley Tourism Council 401-724-2200

6:30 p.m. Blackstone Valley Walk-About Tour. An interpretative tour of the early farms, homesteads and an early small factory in the Great Road Historic District in Lincoln. Starts at the Hearthside House on Great Road in Lincoln.

For information, contact the Friends of Hearthside 401-726-0597.

SATURDAY

7:30 to 9:30 p.m. Open-air screening of the 1943 movie Casablanca starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. At the Smith-Appleby House Museum, 220 Stillwater Rd., Smithfield. Admission is $5 for adults, $3 for children under age 12.

Contact: Historical Society of Smithfield 401-231-7363

SUNDAY

5 to 7 p.m. Pendragon in concert at the Slatersville Common in North Smithfield. Music from the folk traditions of Ireland, Scotland, French Canada and other lands whose peoples moved to the Blackstone Valley.

Contact: Russell Gusetti 401-725-9272

SOURCE: Blackstone Valley Tourism Council web site: www.tourblackstone.com

****

Keep up with the Summer on the Blackstone series, at:

http://projo.com/blackstonesummer