The building is minimally decorated, with corbelling at the cornice below the gable roof, and a four-story tower at the southwestern end whose top level has paired round-arch Italianate windows and a shallow-pitch hip roof with a broad eave.

The complex was originally larger, with four-story additions to the south and west, but these have been demolished.

[2] The mill was built in 1872 by Nathaniel Farwell, a businessman with textile-related interests all over New England.

It was built using the water privilege of one of Maine's earliest woolen mills, established in 1808, and expanded using a second water privilege just downstream that originally had a grist mill.

Farwell's mill was reported to have a capacity of 12,000 spindles, and was an economic mainstay of the otherwise rural region for many years.