Picture East Windsor - Then And Now

EAST WINDSOR, CT — Today's edition of this periodic informal history series, highlighting businesses from East Windsor's past and what those locations look like today, takes us high above the village of Broad Brook more than 70 years ago, focusing on the Broad Brook Company.

A manufacturer of textiles, the Broad Brook Company plant occupied just over 10 acres on Scott Road, parallel to Main Street. Built in the 1830s, the Broad Brook Company purchased the property in 1849, and continued manufacturing until 1951. Other companies operated at the site from the mid-1950s through 1982, including manufacturers of printed circuit boards and boron filament.

On May 2, 1985, the site was officially added to the National Register of Historic Places. The following May, a fire destroyed many of the former mill buildings. Two months after the fire, the owners, Connecticut Building Corporation, applied for a permit to develop 21 residential condominium units in the former mill building which survived the blaze.

The building was converted into the Millbrook Condominiums in the early 1990s, but by 1998, condo owners began filing lawsuits against the developers due to the presence of toxic contaminants in the soil, including coal tar, cyanide, lead and mercury. The condos were shut down in the early 2000s, and the area has been fenced off since.

Here is a more contemporary view of the area, courtesy of Google Maps.

Do you have a photo of an old East Windsor business which no longer exists, to which you own the copyright and which we could feature in this column? Email tim.jensen@patch.com.

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