Construction began at the Naval Air Station In South Weymouth in 1941, and was commissioned in March of 1942. During World War II, the base’s primary mission was to provide support for the war’s anti-submarine blimp operations. The main facilities consisted of 2 large blimp hangars. Weymouth Naval Air Station was home base for airship patrol squadron ZP-11, which operated up to twelve K-class blimps employed on ASW patrols and convoy escort missions in and around Massachusetts Bay and the Gulf of Maine. Some historians and former Navy personnel allege that a ZP-11 blimp, the K-14, which crashed with loss of life off the coast of Bar Harbor, Maine on 2 July 1944 was actually shot down by a German submarine.
After years of use by the Navy, and home to research projects by MIT & Lockheed Martin, the Naval Base was closed, and is currently being to converted into a mixed-use development, including condos and commercial space.
We salveaged heart pine and fir from the historic American Tourister building in Warren, Rhode Island.
This building, built in the first decade of the 1900’s, helped the manufacturing industry flourish in the Rhode Island area, and we are working to help save a part of this important piece of New England history.
Looking at the amazing photograph Lewis Hine took one June morning in 1909 in Warren, RI (seen above) makes us realize that the mills where we source much of our lumber are an important part of our recent history.
Hine’s photographs are an amazing document.
They are a record of an era that is gone.
The lumber we save is a precious piece of those times.