Neighborhood of the Week: Village of Hopkins Mills carries on despite losing landmarks (original) (raw)
FOSTER, R.I. — It can be easy to miss the compact, historic village of Hopkins Mills while driving west on Route 6, even though a sign marks the entrance to the rural hamlet on Old Danielson Pike.
This hilltop neighborhood, first settled in the early 1700s, is Foster's oldest village. It was the location of 18th Century saw- and grist-mills and an iron works, and it is on the National Register of Historic Places. A nomination report on the historic district notes that Hopkins Mills is "a small village of about 30 buildings which grew up in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries along the turnpike passing south of the site."
At the crest of the hill leading up Old Danielson Pike stands the Hopkins Mills Union Church, which was built in 1869. Also known as South Foster Union Chapel, it a one-story Greek Revival building that includes stairs made from granite mined in local quarries. The chapel is closed because it is in dire need of repairs, according to neighborhood resident Hope Tucker. She said an application has been made for grant money to renovate the chapel.
The nondenominational chapel "was built to be used by the whole village for whatever they needed it for," Tucker said. But now, it needs "quite a bit of repairing," she said.
The chapel, which is owned by the South Foster Union Chapel Society, is on the Foster Preservation Society's Most Endangered Properties list.
According to the Foster Preservation Society's web site, "the non-denominational past, which was at one time the Chapel’s greatest strength, has in recent years become its bane. The lack of a single large religious group possessing exclusive ownership has left the Chapel without significant support. Coupling this with a Chapel Society whose membership is decreasing in numbers and advancing in years, has left the Chapel with diminishing resources and an uncertain future."
"Sadly," another village landmark, the Hopkins Mills Bridge, was "demolished by the Rhode Island Department of Transportation in January/February of 2014," the society's report added. "While the Foster Preservation Society vehemently opposed the demolition of this bridge because of its historic past we were unable to save it."
There are barriers near the former bridge that spanned the Ponagansett River on Old Danielson Pike. "Hopkins Mills Village is the original point of settlement in the Town of Foster," according to the society's web site. "First inhabited in approximately 1720, Hopkins Mills is an historic mill village which has retained its uniqueness through all of the intervening years. Demolition of the bridge has permanently bisected the village and destroyed the integrity of this important National Register site."
Hope Tucker owns another neighborhood landmark, the former Hopkins store, which was also once also a post office and meeting hall, at 39 Old Danielson Pike. Today it is a two-family house, she said. Also, "I was born in this house that I live in," at 38 Old Danielson Pike, said Tucker, who will turn 85 on May 11. "I think I'm the only left who was actually born here."
"After my brother and I was born, then they started going to the hospital," she added.
Tucker also has a family connection to The Providence Journal. She said that her mother, Emma Tucker, used to be the Foster correspondent for the newspaper in the late 1930s and '40s.
Tucker's house is on the corner of Old Danielson Pike and a small side street, Ram Tail Road, leads down the hill and connects with Route 6 (Danielson Pike). A sign on one building there reads "Markey & Asplund Book Binders, est. 1924." In the early 1970s, Daniel Gibson Knowlton acquired Markey & Asplund Bookbinders from the Asplund family in Providence. According to Tucker, the neighborhood was also once home to a shoelace factory.
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