Cleanup of the Draper site began almost as soon as the demolition project started, but this page will mainly show what was done after demolition was completed.
The drawing of the Draper plant in 1904 above shows Freedom Street and the lower end of Hopedale Pond at the top. After the water went over the dam and under the road, it is shown in two channels until they join just below the carpenter shop. The picture below isn’t where the water goes now after it goes over the dam. That’s a little to the west of this. This might be the remains of an earlier channel.
Photos of the Draper stack demolition from Kelly Griffin’s video
After the water goes over the dam, (on left in photo above) it goes under the area shown here from mid to right foreground. Then it turns to the right. You can get just a glimpse of it on the left side of the picture below. It then goes under the brick and concrete structures in the middle and right of that picture before tuning again and heading south. I’d say it’s very likely that those are the same turns that are shown in the 1904 drawing further up on this page.
What’s left of the tunnel that once was used in going back and forth between the shop and the main office. You can’t get there from here anymore. Not by the tunnel anyway.
Nothing much could be seen happening on the Draper site during most of January 2022, and the first half of February. Then, as you can see in these photos, work began grinding up the piles of brick.
