The Silk Mill at Marietta

The Silk Mill at Marietta. 50 North Pine Street. In the 1890's, Marietta was a mature community, looking back on its past as a brawling canal port, lumber center and iron smelter. Its basic industries looked about as dormant as the old Susquehanna Canal. There was, in fact, no money to tear down or modernize the Victorian Federalist and Gothic homes, that formed the center of the Borough - homes that have hung suspended in time, until today, when they have earned Historic Marietta, an Historical Landmark status., Instead of destroying its past, Marietta pooled its resources and in 1897, a great brick building arose on the high land above the Susquehanna River. It was leased to the New Jersey firm of Ashley and Bailey, a worldwide leader in the silk industry. Lancaster County became a world silk center and for generations there was prosperity for the community that built the Silk Mill and for the company that leased it., Silk, in its time, also declined, leaving the great mill to stand in a totally anomalous community. Scenic, secluded, it was still readily accessible by highway to Harrisburg, York, Lancaster, and even the old canal company of Baltimore and Washington. Convenient to the International Airport south of Harrisburg, Marietta was still a living museum of the type of architecture that generations of Americans had labored to destroy., A silk mill similar to Marietta's, in Lancaster City, was torn down several years ago. But ours has been designated as a Historic Landmark, restored without and rebuilt within to accommodate twenty-two contemporary apartments and four townhouses., Today, we invite you to follow in the footsteps of the Ashley and Bailey Company. Come to historic Marietta. Buy a home and a future, The Silk Mill., Historic Marietta, Pa , In 1803, David Cooke laid out and sold lots in the eastern end of present-day Marietta that he called New Haven. The following year, 1804, James Anderson IV, who operated Anderson's Ferry, laid out and sold lots adjacent to Cooke's in the western end that he called Waterford. These two developments were incorporated in 1812 to form Marietta Borough