255 Chesapeake Ave

From the National Register nomination

Three-story roller mill of 1:6 American-bond brick construction with recessed façade bays, industrial metal-frame windows, and freight doors with 10-light upper halves and Z-braced lower halves with vertical beaded tongue-and-groove. In the parapets and on the north elevation (the latter now partially obscured) is painted signage in black and white dating to the 1920s or early 1930s (presumably repainted over time). A two-story warehouse added in 1923 and enlarged in the 1920s extends on the south end. It features a wood loading platform with a suspended metal-sheathed awning, brick piers, and lattice underpinning. A bay window projects onto the platform and two entries with single sidelights open onto it. The warehouse is extended by a late 20th century prefab metal wing with a shed roof and a concrete foundation. This wing spans Black's Run. A metal-clad catwalk connects the top of the mill to a cluster of four cylindrical, glazed tile block grain bins dating to the 1920s on the west side of the rail line. Adjoining the bins are a prefab corrugated metal bin of squat proportions, and a one-story brick power house with industrial metal-frame windows and a double-leaf wood and glass panel freight door with transom. On the north end of the mill is a one-story brick wing (possibly original in part) from which rises a 1960 steel tower with a Moderne channeled fascia on the north side. Founded in 1919, the RMC began the production of flour and feed in January 1921. In June of that year the mill building and machinery were valued at $112,000. At the request of the Rockingham Co-operative Farm Bureau a warehouse wing was added in 1923 and enlarged several years later. Early flour brands included Rockingham's Best Flour and Sunbeam Self-Rising Flour. Poultry and dairy feed proved especially profitable in the 1920s. At first the mill ran on electric power, but in 1931 a Fairbanks-Morse diesel engine was installed-apparently in the one-story power plant that adjoins the grain bins. In 1929 a two-story building was erected across Chesapeake Ave. for use by the Farm Bureau, but by the mid-1930s it had been converted to a hardware store associated with the mill (it burned in 1966). By the mid-1940s the company had opened branches in Bridgewater, Elkton, and Timberville. Flour production ceased in 1961, and the north addition was made in the early 1960s. (Logan, History of RMC, 1, 4-5, 7, 11, 17, 27, 30, 31)