The view across Georgiaville Pond shows one of the newer buildings on the water. Many older houses, from the 1800s, were built for textile workers at the Georgia Cotton Manufacturing Co. mill.

The Providence Journal / Kathy Borchers

Kate Kahler owns Kate’s Place at 205 Farnum Pike, on the outskirts of Georgiaville. Under discussion is whether to bring stores to the village center.

/ Kathy Borchers

A house in the 100 block of Farnum Pike.

The Providence Journal / Kathy Borchers

A section of the Homestead Mill Condominiums in Georgiaville was one of the first of the mills to become housing.

The Providence Journal / Kathy Borchers

The historic mill village dates back to the 1800s and is a mix of apartments, condos and houses.

A mill building still dominates the landscape of Georgiaville, a section of Smithfield near the Woonasquatucket River and one of the Blackstone Valley’s historic mill villages.

But the former textile mill owned and operated by the Georgia Cotton Manufacturing Co. became a condominium complex in the late 1980s, and the rubble stone cottages and other boarding houses and tenements built in the 1800s for mill workers are now apartments, condos and single-family houses.

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And the Georgiaville Pond is now a beach recreation area for residents, not a source of power for their employer.

Curt Stump, an artist and writer, and his wife, Caroline Brown, a writer, live in a rubble stone house on Stillwater Road that they bought more than three years ago. They had moved to Rhode Island from California and were charmed by the unique stone house, which is a short walk from the Georgiaville beach.

The house needed a lot of work, and at first they decided against buying it for that reason. “I wasn’t very handy — at that time,” Stump said. But a short time later, they visited the property again, drawn back to the house “that reminded us of Europe.”

“The simplicity of the design and the character of the house immediately made it clear that this was the place,” he said. Stump and Brown have hosted art shows and poetry readings at their house.

Since Stump and Brown bought the house, other properties on the street that were in disrepair have been renovated. “We’ve been shocked. In the 3½ years we’ve been here, it’s changed for the better,” Stump said. They are friendly with their neighbors, some of whom have roots in Georgiaville that go back for multiple generations.

“I’ve lived around the country,” said Stump, who was born in North Carolina. “It’s amazing to me, the bond that’s right here.”

Diane Metz isn’t one of Stump’s neighbors, but she also lives in a historic rubble stone mill house, on Whipple Road.

Metz is a Georgiaville native; she and her husband bought the house five years ago from her grandmother. Metz said her grandfather’s mother was the original family member who owned the building, which she says used to be a boarding house for mill workers. The Metzes bought the four-unit apartment house as an investment, and they have updated three of the apartments and installed new windows and gutters.

“I’ve lived there my whole life,” Metz said. She said Georgiaville is “really a nice place to live. It’s quiet. No one really bothers you. You can walk to the beach.” There are no shops or restaurants in Georgiaville, she said, but it’s a five-minute drive to the commercial strips on Route 44.

Stump said there has been some discussion about allowing a limited number of small-scale retail or service businesses in Georgiaville that would be in keeping with its village character. He thinks the neighborhood might support a small coffee shop or grocery store, for example, and it would help make the neighborhood more walker-friendly.

“This could be a walking neighborhood,” he said. “It might become more lively that way.”

Smithfield’s median house price last year was $309,950. In Georgiaville, single-family houses listed for sale through the state’s Multiple Listing Service last week ranged from $259,900 for a three-bedroom, two-bath ranch to $429,900 for a four-bedroom, two-bath Victorian.

Condominiums for sale in Georgiaville through the MLS ranged in price from $178,900 to $319,000.