Designed by Rhode Island architect Thomas Alexander Tefft and built of sandstone, the mill was once the largest industrial building in the United States west of the Allegheny Mountains.

The driving force behind the mill's construction was Hamilton Smith (1804–1875), a prominent attorney from Louisville, Kentucky.

Smith's vision was to create a western milling center to rival Lowell, Massachusetts, but using steam-powered machinery fired by locally produced coal instead of the hydropower that ran the Lowell mills.

The task proved too difficult for Smith and his associates, one of whom was Salmon P. Chase, later United States Secretary of the Treasury and Chief Justice of the United States, who became Smith's friend when both were students at Dartmouth College.

As built, the dormers were eliminated and the remaining windows, except for those in the towers, were all capped with square lintels.