Diamond Silk Mill

Diamond Silk Mill, also known as York Silk Manufacturing Company, is a historic silk mill located at Springettsbury Township, York County, Pennsylvania. It was designed by architect John A. Dempwolf and built about 1900. The mill is a 3 1/2-story, brick building with heavy timber frame trussing on a stone foundation, and measures 50 feet by 300 feet. It has a hipped roof, and features an octagonal 100-foot high smokestack and decorative corbelled brick cornice in the Romanesque Revival style. In 1910, the mill's business had increased such that it was noted by an industry periodical as becoming a full-time operation and hiring additional workers. Silk manufacturing would become one of York's most important industries, feeding Lancaster's manufacture of umbrellas. A decline began with the Great Depression and continued with the introduction of synthetic fibers in the late 1930s, for which most York mills did not have equipment. The mill was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1992.