Demolition

About 1960, during the summer after his freshman year in High school, Steve worked with a crew of young men who were hired to tear down the houses in Cliffside. Steve recalls that his wages were $1.10 per hour. He also recalls that Mike Fisher, who has already shared some of his own experiences in Cliffside house demolition on this website, was a member of his work crew.

After the decision to dismantle the Cliffside Mill Village was made, the employees were notified, and some of the employees were offered the opportunity to buy either the house in which they lived, or another if the occupant of it did not wish to do so. The selling prices of the houses were very reasonable, but the purchasers were required to have the houses moved off the mill property. Only a very few of the houses, those that were located on the outer fringes of the village, were sold intact with the lots on which they sat.

There was not a mass eviction of Cliffside residents, but a gradual removal of available houses over a number of months and years. Whenever someone found a place to go and moved out of a house no one offered to buy, the crew usually went to work tearing it down. In a few cases, however, if the vacant house was in good shape, another family might move into it. These were usually in cases where someone who had not yet found a place to move occupied a house in need of many repairs, or one remaining in an area where all the surrounding houses had been removed. Then the family would move into the good vacant house and their former residence became the next demolition job. Thus, unless the site was needed by the mill for some purpose, the crews did not proceed up or down a street destroying each house in their path, but usually moved to whichever unsold house next became vacant. Thus, house by house, the Cliffside Mill village ceased to be.