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Up This Winding Road Lies the Village of Oella
... in the Patapsco Heritage Area
A world apart, Oella is a time capsule of vanishing Americana. Here rose the first manufacturing company ever chartered by the State of Maryland. The year was 1808. For a brief period the Union Manufacturing Company was the largest cotton mill in America, capitalizing on the immense power of the Patapsco River with the longest millrace serving a single mill. Workers lived, worked, played, worshipped, shopped and socialized with one another, within the confines of the village entirely owned by the mill company.
In 1887, the company was sold at auction to William J. Dickey. Production for the Great War -- WWI -- was in full swing when a devastating fire destroyed the mill complex. The Dickeys promptly rebuilt an enlarged mill of brick that went on to become America's foremost producer of fancy menswear woollens. A decline in the demand of such fabric forced W.J. Dickey and Sons to close the mill in 1972, just before tropical storm Agnes wreaked its havoc upon the area. The mill then passed through a succession of owners, while the great grandson of W.J. Dickey, Charles L. Wagandt II, bought the surrounding village. In the 1980s, public water and sewer service came to Oella and restoration of the historic houses could commence. Today Oella, the master-planned village envisioned by Wagandt, is a mixture of revitalized historic houses and new homes designed to blend with the historic structures.
The mill village's 100-plus historic homes, tucked into steep slopes offer a visual timeline of architecture from log cabins and stone homes of the early 1800s, to brick semi-detached and row houses that appeared up to about 1850. Frame houses with bracketed cornices appeared later in the 19th century. Around World War I, cottage style kit homes manufactured by the Aladdin Company added to the diversity, which continues today as new homes are added to this charming village. |