It sits on a hill, looming over the town of Rollinsford, as if to announce to the world that it’s back. The grass has yet to grow in around the new foundation, and behind the earth-toned clapboards, the interior is dark and dusty, restoration not yet complete. The historic Colonel Paul Wentworth house left Rollinsford in 1936, when new owners moved it to Dover, Mass. With its return journey in 2002, under the auspices of the Association for Rollinsford Culture and History, the building restores a piece of history to a town that’s been slowly recreating itself from an industrial community to an emerging artist enclave.

Wedged between Dover, N.H., and South Berwick, Maine, the seven square miles of Rollinsford are populated by 2,648 people, according to the 2000 census. Some live on farms, some in subdivisions. Most are near the speck of a downtown. Originally named Salmon Falls Village, it was once a great industrial community, with railroad and shipping vessels regularly passing through. A brief fling with a reputation as a racy destination followed, though now the town is best known around the region for the conversion of the four-story Salmon Falls Mill into studios for dozens of artists and artisans.

Though it’s still the kind of place where a dog can walk uninterrupted down the four blocks of Front Street, a spark has been ignited here that’s putting this sleepy town on the map.

“You’re breaking up my morning routine!” jokes a customer as he inquires about the lack of hazelnut coffee at the Black Bean Café on Front Street. “I usually just reach right through here and get my coffee!” he says, demonstrating by sticking his hand between two pots. Other customers enter the café, walking down the slight slope in the floor. A bookshelf against the wall leading to the dining area is filled with paperbacks, including “Hard Times” by Charles Dickens, and local art adorns the brightly colored walls. The café isn’t new or modern, nor is it self-consciously retro or antique. It just somehow manages to look like it’s always been here, even though it only opened in December of 2002.

While waiting for their coffee, customers stand in front of a glass display full of freshly made pastries, joking with owner Phil Hughes about how they never visit one another any more. Perhaps this is because business is picking up at the café, keeping Hughes, who also owns SoBo Books across the river in South Berwick with his wife Elizabeth Williams, busy baking, making lunch specials and doling out coffee. Hughes previously worked at the now-defunct Flynn’s restaurant in South Berwick before taking over the Black Bean in December 2003. “I love being in on the grassroots of a forming community,” Hughes says about his decision to locate here.

Across the street, more than a hundred artists have made set up shop in The Mills at Salmon Falls. The upper building, a large brick building used in the 1800s as a cotton mill, has been converted into five floors of studios. Working here are painters, sculptors, printmakers, gilders, furniture makers, bookmakers, writers and woodcutters. A spiral staircase turns upwards through the building, letting people off at each floor. The wooden boards creak underfoot, and the long hallways resonate with the feeling of years of long days and grueling, monotonous work. However, the artists have tried to brighten the halls, some giving the doors to their studios a personal touch with Christmas lights or bright artwork, some adding color to each floor’s bathrooms with pieces of art standing in the corners or hanging on the walls. History mixes with the new energetic vibe of the town.

“This is what happens when you allow something like this,” says Stan Moeller, of York, Maine. Moeller rents a studio on the third floor, where his paintings of children playing and beach scenes line the walls and every available surface. He says the studios, along with being a great space for artists, have allowed a sense of community within the mill. A sculptor has rented the studio directly above him and knocks on the floor when he needs something. “It’s great, you can see people, or you don’t.”

Moeller and Mary Lou Bagley pass each other in the halls, sometimes stopping to chat, but otherwise in their own creative world. Bagley, currently of South Berwick, is grateful for the studio. “I have this space and I’m going to use it!” she says with a laugh. Her studio is lined with various pieces of cloth, masks from plays, paintings and more. “There are artists who couldn’t do this otherwise, if there wasn’t a space here,” Bagley says. She was one of the first to rent a studio in the building four years ago, after her art cluttered almost her entire house. Bagley had a platform built so she could see out the back window onto the Salmon Falls River as she looked for inspiration. As she talks, she shows photographs from before the studios were built, when the mill was wide open.

Cutter Family Properties bought both the upper and lower mills and transformed the upper mills into the studios. The the lower mill is currently used mainly businesses as office and manufacturing space, though artists are making way here, too, with a dance studio and art gallery. They are now at nearly 100 percent occupancy and have a waiting list of over 50 people. With the increase in demand, the price of rent has also increased. The artists who were first in line were grandfathered in and offered the starting rate $3 to $5 dollars per square foot. However, since then their costs have changed and the demand is much larger. They now rent out the studios, which are generally 24 by 26 feet, at $5 dollars per square foot. “We are now renting space at roughly double what they were five years ago,” notes Brian Pellerin, who has been with the company for about five years, off and on. The mills will become even busier in the next few years, he says, as they would like to encourage more plays and events. “We want to get the word out that there’s something worth seeing in Rollinsford.”

Emily Leach of Salmon Falls Village Gallery, located across from the mill at 72 Front St., has noticed a difference in the public’s awareness of Rollinsford. When the gallery was first opened almost two years ago, she says, 90 percent of the people she told about the gallery didn’t know where the town was. “Now 90 percent say ‘Oh! Are you in the artist mill?’” she says. Indeed, at one point last summer, every gallery in Portsmouth, the Seacoast’s traditional arts hub, was showing something from the mill. “It’s a huge statement as to what’s happening to our town. It’s becoming a huge artist community.”

Cheryl Carroll, owner of Salmon Falls Grocery and Deli at 683 Main St., which sits on the peak of a hill overlooking Front Street and the mill, has also witnessed the perks of the changing town.

“Lots of people from the studio come over here,” Carroll says. The convenience store serves sandwiches, pizzas, subs, wraps and more, just beyond the town hall and post office. It has a unique but eye-catching exterior, with aqua blue paint and window boxes filled with blooming flowers. In recent years, as the town has been changing, so has Carroll’s business. “Business has doubled over the past few years,” Carroll notes.

Mayo’s, a restaurant next to the Salmon Falls Village Gallery on Front Street, has been in Rollinsford for 10 years. It’s the kind of place that’s filled with loud chatter at 8 a.m. on a Thursday morning. Families gather at the array of tables scattered around the comfortable room. Friends chat with each other, eating and drinking to jumpstart their day, while the older customers sit at the counter, slowly sipping their coffee as if they had been there for years. And perhaps they have. Owner Eileen Mayo says while she doesn’t feel like there’s been a change in clientele, yet somehow the volume of business has grown. “Definitely more customers,” she says.

While the town is evolving, its history is still apparent everywhere you turn. Stepping into the Colonel Paul Wentworth house, in particular, is like stepping back into the 18th century. Ceilings loom close to your head as you walk through the rooms of the first floor. Several fireplaces look out from the walls, one of which will be functional when the reconstruction is completed. Through dark and dusty at the moment, its spare beauty is striking.

The house was built around 1701. It stayed in the hands of the wealthy Wentworth family until 2002 when it was sold to Kennith Rendel. The simple but handsome dwelling is a landmark of the early New Hampshire frontier, one of the oldest surviving structures in New Hampshire. Thanks to Rendel, the house was moved from Dover, Mass., back to Rollinsford, just a few hundred yards from when it originally sat.

The construction phase has offered windows into its past. A piece of wood paneling was found with the initials A.W., for Andrew Wentworth, carved into it. Markings from when the house was broken down and reconstructed in 1936 can be seen scrawled across several boards. The various owners did not waste any materials—some wood panels were found with faded wallpaper covering one side, which residents enjoyed before the panel was flipped and used again, this time the bare wood showing on its other side. A lean-to kitchen was added onto the side of the house in 1725. Its construction blocked several windows, one of which the owners then converted into a shelf to decorate their living room, so as not to waste the material.

The upstairs rooms similarly have oddly shaped rooms and random nooks that are typical of old houses. Up in the attic, John Wastrom works to rebuild the brick chimney, restoring it to its original appearance. The attic contains antique chests, which came with the house when it was moved. The spacious room was most likely once used for storage or living quarters for servants or slaves.

Reconstruction on the historic building should be complete in the fall, after which it will open as a museum and used for educational and cultural purposes. Displays will be set up in the various rooms and rotated often to keep the public’s interest. Gardens will be planted, each from a different era through which the house stood. Historic New England offers a walking tour of the old Salmon Falls Village on Tuesday, Aug. 8 at 6:30 p.m., which will include the Colonel Paul Wentworth House.

On July 28, the merchants and artisans of Front Street will host the second event in their summer series, Front Street Fridays. The monthly events have the feel of a block party, with people mingling through displays outside the mills and music wafting through the air from the live band playing near the river. The sounds of celebration follow adults and children up the spiral staircase as they visit with artists in their studios during an informal open house.

It’s fun to imagine looking back on this scene 100 years hence, perhaps as a snapshot or a postcard, and to picture what kind of community is being created here for future generations.

see for yourself

The Mills at Salmon Falls
www.millartists.com

Front Street Friday
free block party, open studios, food and live music with performers TBA
Friday, July 28 and Friday, Aug. 25
For more information, call 603-740-0330

A Walking Tour of Salmon Falls Village
Tuesday, Aug. 8 at 6:30 p.m.

Conducted by Peter Michaud of Historic New England. Admission is $10 for Historic New England members, $15 non-members. Advanced registration is recommended; call  603-436-3205.