Unless you lived in Willimantic prior to the 1970s, you’d find it hard to believe that this was a street in Willimantic. Yet, this week’s circa 1910 photograph is actually the south side of Valley Street looking west from just beyond Church Street to Bank Street. The changes to and growth of Valley Street from Jackson Street to Walnut Street, especially in the twenty-year period beginning in 1890 are a remarkable reflection of Willimantic’s growth. We’ll take a look at that growth this week and for two more weeks. Historian Lloyd Baldwin said that prior to 1850, this area was, “a swampy valley with a brook running through it, (the brook actually still runs but now into storm sewers) and stretched away (to the North) up the hillside into chestnut forests and wild fields. Prospect and Summit Streets did not yet exist. The original Valley Street layout was from North Street to about where Bank Street is today. By 1869, it had stretched east and west from Jackson to High Street. Allen B. Lincoln reminisced, “Up to the late '60s almost the entire Valley Street region from High Street east to Jackson was meadow land, and along the north side of Valley from what is now Walnut was an open running brook where we boys used often to play.” But Valley Street changed quickly. If we were to begin an 1880 walk west on Valley Street, we’d first notice that on the north side of Valley from Jackson Street to Saint Mary’s Court, there were no brick buildings. Saint Joseph’s School was a frame building right at the corner of Jackson and Valley and the wood frame convent near it on Jackson Street. Just to the west (in the area between the old (brick) Saint Joseph School and present day Saint Mary-Saint Joseph School stood another wood frame building that was the original Saint Joseph’s Church (which had been the old Baptist Church which Fr. DeBruycker bought and moved from Main to Valley Streets) and was now being used as part of the school. West of that were three dwellings and a tenement house in back of them. By 1910, the convent had become a nurses’ home, part of Saint Joseph Hospital. The school building on the corner was gone, having been replaced by the brick school in 1907. With a few additions and alterations the original Saint Joseph’s Church had become part of the school and then a parish hall and after 1903 was shared for a while with the new Saint Mary’s Parish as a church, a parish hall and a school. Two of the dwellings were removed and the third became Saint Mary’s Rectory. Saint Mary’s Church was built in 1903 and the school rebuilt after the 1955 fire. The left side of Valley Street comprised of dwellings up to Temple Street. By 1910, that side of the street took on pretty much the look it carried through the days of redevelopment, the only change being that the first floors of some dwellings were converted to businesses. From Temple to Church Street was the Kingsley Lumber and Coal Yard. Back on the north side of Valley Street, just west of what was to be Saint Mary’s Church were several small shops and businesses that remained until about 1908. Then, as we get to Church Street, the Holland Silk Mills took up both of the north corners. Goodrich and James Holland of Mansfield built their silk mills in Willimantic to take advantage of the city's available workforce.  They were the first silk manufacturer in the area to take advantage of the increasing sophistication of steam engine technology. The eastern mill was the first one followed a year later by the western one. On January 1, 1866 the Hollands put John Ashbel Conant, the overseer in their Conantville mill, in charge of their new Willimantic venture.  Allen B. Lincoln mentioned that after the Holland silk mills were built, the Valley Street brook was filled with dye wastes. “We still continued to jump across it, until one day a lad fell in all over, only to realize that dye wastes do not taste good; and our play days on that brook were over. The same stream still runs underneath the ground along Valley Street.” The mills operated until 1934 and were torn down in 1940. Circa 1996, construction workers unearthed a tunnel under Church Street used by the company either as a culvert to divert the brook or as access between the company's two buildings.  We’ll continue our look at Valley Street next week.