Mill Village Design

Mill Village Design. . , William B. Smith Whaley designed the Olympia Mill Village along with the mill in 1899. He had churches and the mill store placed close to the mill, creating the feel of a small town. Large shade trees were planted along the roads. For the houses, he broke away from the pattern he used in Granby's village, which repeated the same house over and over. Instead, he designed five house types. These had three, four or six rooms, with the larger houses capable of being duplexes., He also made sure no two houses of the same paint color or the same style were next to each other. Two of the colors used originally were green and yellow. This building, the Olympia Mill School, originally had a deep yellow color on the wood siding., Houses that were closest to the mill, along Whaley Street, served as homes for managers. After the first wave of construction of about 300 mill houses in 1900-1901, the Pacific Mills Company added to the management housing along Whaley Street and in the blocks south in the late 1910s. These Craftsman style homes are very different from the older Olympia Mill houses, and located in a section that is separate from the worker housing. This area was known as "Silk Stocking Row" or "Society Block" by workers. The area of regular worker housing was known as "Olympia Mill Hill," since it is on a slight hill., The "saltbox" shape of the roof of this mill house is the same shape that Whaley used in the Granby Mill Village. He saw this type of roof when he lived in New England. Whaley may have used this unusual design to put his mark on the villages he designed in Columbia.