While a symbol of Warwick’s industrial past, Elizabeth Mill on Jefferson Boulevard is nothing more than a yard of crushed bricks and concrete, the beams that once supported the flooring for 20,000 textile spindles are already finding new life.

Joseph Poirier of Longleaf Lumber Inc. estimated tens of thousands of board feet have been salvaged from the mill. The Cambridge, Massachusetts company specializes in reclaimed flooring, paneling, beams and custom molding. Once cleaned of nails and spikes, the wood is milled into flooring at Longleaf’s mill and warehouse in Berwick, Maine. Depending on the wood’s grade, it sells for $6 to $12 a board foot. What makes the wood in demand and priced above commonly available wood flooring is that it is from longleaf pine.

At one time, Poirier said, the trees made up the country’s largest ecosystem, stretching south from Virginia to as far west as Texas. The trees grew to heights of 150 feet and produced timber of tight-straight grain. Poirier said the wood is prized for its incredibly slow growth, density and rot resistance. Longleaf pine has been logged out of commercial existence, today surviving only in preserved areas of the south.

With the blossoming of the industrial revolution in the wake of the Civil War, the demand for longleaf pine soared and the trees were cleared. Poirier said that wood salvaged from Elizabeth Mill came from trees that were standing in the 1700s and maybe in the 1600s.

Built in 1875 by Thomas Jefferson Hill and named for his wife Elizabeth C. Kenyon, the mill was originally steam-powered. In its heyday it employed almost 300, giving birth to Hillsgrove. The mill’s location next to Stonington Railroad enabled the delivery of coal and cotton and the export of fine yard thread.

Most recently, the mill was the home of Leviton Manufacturing, where switches, outlets and other electrical components were assembled until those operations were moved to Mexico. Portions of the complex were converted into warehousing, but the original mill building with its classic red brick bell tower went vacant. It was the city’s hope to save the mill as a symbol of its past and icon of its future as part of the development of City Centre Warwick.

Warwick developer Michael Integlia bought the Leviton property and subdivided its more than 80 acres into five parcels. The warehouse was bought by Dean Warehouse, and one of the parcels is now being cleared on Metro Center Boulevard at the intersection of Kilvert Street, where Integlia will build an office building similar in design to that he built on the other side of the Airport Connector. But Integlia couldn’t find a reuse for the mill, although he has plans for the redevelopment of the site with a mixed use of residential, office and retail. The last of the mill, the tower and the chimney, came down last month. According to Integlia, architectural elements and materials from the original mill structure will be incorporated into the new construction, including bricks, the cast iron stairs and some of the doors.

“The building was in relatively good shape when it came down,” says Longleaf owner Marc Poirier, “which means the beams were pretty dry and well preserved. A lot of the timbers are showing two-tone heartwood, which is when the wood from the center of the tree is both yellow and red. It’s beautiful.”

Joseph Poirier, who visited the mill before it fell to the wrecking ball, said, “It’s always a shame to see these big, beautiful buildings come down.”

But he takes some consolation in the knowledge that the wood that served the mill so well for so many years will live on to beautify homes and offices today, even though some people will surely never know the role it played in Warwick’s history.