Rhode Island History Pubhshed by The Rhude b land Hrst orrcal Volume 46, Number 4 November 1988 SClC lcly, 110 Benevolent St reet, Providence, Rhude Island, 0 1 <;1 0 6, ami prmted by a grant hom th e Stale of Rhode Contents bLand and Providence ptamauons. Edward D. Drt'rere, Covemor, Kathl een S, Conn ell. Secretarv oi Su re. Alden M. Anderson. pr..suJ..m Kennet h washburn. VICt' prendau Zachariah Allen and the Architecture Nancy Fisher Cbudacott. secretary of Industrial Paternalism I 17 Michael D. Lmcoln, treasurer Thoma s Reill y. IH~J)funl treasurer RI CHARIJ E. GREENWOOD Nancy K , Cas Sidy. uHnfam sectetarv Alben T Klvbe rg, dlrectm Twentieth -Century Rhode Island 'ELLOW ~ O f THE "IIU f T Y Carl Brrdenbaugh Town Government History: Sydncy V, lames Anroincue F. ()llWnm...: A Survey of Areas for Research Richard K. Showman WILLIAM M . F E RR ARO G lenn W. LaFantaslC rUIU..ICATlO N~ CO:"."I IT TH Leonard I Levm. chairman Index to Volume .t6 15 5 Henry LP. Beckwuh, Ir loel A Co hen Norman Fu:nng Roben Allen G reene Pamela A , Kennedy Alan Simpson Wilham M c KenZie W' K>dw ard \TAH Albert T Klyberl:, "d,lo! Dcmse Bastren, paphIC,\ ednor Hrlhard Beller, copy eduor Th e Rhode Isla nd Hrsroncal S<lClely assumes no rcspcn etlnhtv for the opuuons uf co nm burors Note to Subscri be rs Because (If difficulties caused by changes in our staff. Rhode Island History will not be published for November 1987 or February, May, or August 1988. This issue com­ pletes volume ~6 , which consists of February, May. and August lyH7 and November 1988 . All subscnpnons will be honored. Those already paid will be carried forward one additional year. IU10 DE ISLAN D HISTORY IS published In February, May. Au~ust . and November by the Rhode Island Hrsumcal Soc.ew Second-class postage IS pard ar Providence, Rhode Island. Souety members receive eac h Issue as a membersh ip benefit, lnsertuuonal eubscnpnons III RHODE ISLAN D HISTORY and the Socie rv's quarterly newalcrtcr I"Il ll by The Rhode Island Hrsroncal e are $1 ~ annually lndrvrdual copies of current and back Issues are avai lable irom th e Society Sociery lor $-l.oo. Manuscnpts and ot her correspondence should be scm to Alben T lHOOE ISlA."'O HhTUl Y (I~S N OOH--l6191 K1yberg" ednor, at the S<1oClet y Zachariah Allen and the Architecture of Industrial Paternalism Richard E. Greenwood The mill villages of Rhode Island are a signifi­ ce n tury America . To interpret these artifacts cam legacy of the early Industrial Revoluti on in effec tively, however , it is nece ssary fir st to per­ the Un ited Sta les. Built along the st at e's rivers in form some industrial archaeol ogy, to str ip away the first half of the nineteenth ce n tury, these the successive layers of deposits and try to recon ­ small communities aTC famili ar clements of the struct the o riginal con text around the surviving landscape today. Sometimes shabby, sometimes features . well maintained or even resto red, in almost all One of the characteristics of the ea rly mill vil ­ cases they are recycled and serving a ncw genera­ lage s that must he under stood for an y att empt at tion of occupants as workplaces and homes. For contextual reconstru ct ion was their newness­ many Rhode Islanders whose memories reach in the majority of cases, these communitie s had back over the past half century, th e image of no existence prior to the cons truc tion of the first the com pany -owned factory village is still a factory and workers' housing. ' Cons tructed out strong one , but the villages they remember were of whole cloth, the villages were the intennonal in a final decline that ended for most during the creanons of the capitalis ts and their agents who Great Depression. By that time the New England built and administered them. They wer e ph ysi cal mill village wa s over 100 years old and had be­ expres sions of a vision that emerged from at­ com e something of an anachronism in an urban, tempts to satisfy the entrepreneu r's economic Industrialized societ y. When It first appeared in ambition within the constramts imposed by tech­ Rhode Islan d, though, the factory village rcp re­ nology, public opinion, and social conditions. scn te d the nation's in troducti on to a new culture T he natur e of the new machine technology in­ forged by machi ne technology and industrial sured that the vi llages shared a basic substruc­ capitalism, the " industrial o rde r," as hi storian ture and that the factory operatives worked at Jonathan Prude ha s termed it, that transformed the same range of tasks, but it wa s within the the Western world in the nineteenth cen tury.I pow er of the owners and agents to det ermine As industrial archaeologists and historians the character of their villages to a large degree . have demonstrated, the early mill villages ar e in ­ The result was a cons iderable disparity between valuable artifacts that can illuminate the eco­ individual villages, with the so-c alled model vil ­ nomic, social. and technological dimensions of lages of reform-minded manufacturers at one end the process of industrialization In nineteenth- of the scale and, at the other end, notorious com- Richard Crccnwood . presently employed at the Rhode Is­ 1 Fnr a fuller account of th e OTlll.m ~ 01 American indus ­ land His toncalPrescrvarrcn Com rmssron. IS a doc toral candr­ trial archit ectur e. SCl' William H Pierson, lr.. American dar e ,n Brown Ur uvervrty. Research for this article was Buildmg.\ and The il ArehileC/\, vol . 1. TechnoJogy and the supported m pan by a grane from th e Rhod e Island Com mu­ Pictu resque The Corpvwle and Early Goth/(: Styles [New Ice for the Huma mucs York, l \lIt01. n -llO. and Richard Ca ndee , " New Towns of the I See Jonatha n Prude, The ComlnKof Ihe tn dasmal E.arl y New E.n ~hnJ Texnle Indus try," In Camille wells, ed., Order. Town and Factory Lite In Rural Ma «<ichusetts. Ptrspt(;tn'e s on Vtrn <lCUlaT ArchlltClUlt IAnnapolis. 1981), /R/o -/860 [New Yor k, 19 1t 11, j l -50 , 117 Z ACHARIAH A LL EN AN I") TH E ARC tl lTl CTURl Of IN\}U~TRIAL rA T ElI.NA lIS:\1 • The Bll1d: ~rone RJn~r tmlis of Rhode Island and Mas sachusens tvpitied the mdussnot web that meshed worker, iactorv. an.i tactotv vsttage rnro an almost seamless tabnc of life for the better part of II century. Wood enX!Il\'lng. Vlo ' 11 GIbson. del. RIHS Cattecuon ttcin XlIiI). muruucs characterized by abusive labor prac­ One of th e torcrnost proponents of the mod el nces. over crovvdcd and unsan u arv living condi­ village concept in Rhode Island was Zachariah nons. and ;\ population that was overworked and Allen, a member of a prominent Providence fam­ underedu cated even by th e sta ndards of a society ily and the owner of scveral texnle factories, that condoned ch ild labor and the thirteen -hour most notabl y th e Allendale mill in North Provi­ workday. dence and th e Ccorgiavrlle mill in Sm ithfield. In Th e model factory villages arc of particular in­ his wr it ings and III the architecture and design of terest bec ause th ey embodied a distinctly Ameri­ th e Allendale and Ceorgiaville villages, Allen left can response to oppone nt'> oi the industn al order a val uable record of h is attempts to es tablish fac­ who contended that the factory system would to ry villa ges where th e worke rs wou ld be indoc­ endanger the Amencan republic by creating a de­ trinated 1010 th e new world of the industrial moralized pro letariat unde r the dominatio n oi an orde r, wn b Its emp hasis on the regimentation of anstocracv oi wealt h. The model vill ages we re ti me and labor, wit hout los ing their republican designed to provide blucpnnrs ior rnanutactunng bmhnght. m the New World by creating an environme nt Zachariah Allen ( 179 'i -I KK 21was born du n ng where Am er ican s wor king In factories could bol­ the golden age of mannmc comme rce III Provi­ ste r then country's eco nomic stre ngth las well as dence, but he Ii\'CJ must of his life in a city pre­ th e pnvatc fortunes of the nullowners] wit hout occupied with indust ry. He was a descendant on sac rificing theIT own economic. poli tical. or both sides of hi'> family from the first generation moral mtcrevrs. of Euro-Amcncan-, who settled on the shore'> of 118 LAl Il A MI A H A LL l r.; A r.; U Till AMC IIIT l( TURl Of I:" Ll U ~ TR I A l l' A T l R S A l I S .'.1 Narraga nsc u Ray. HIs lather, Ca ptai n Zachanah Embargo and the war of l ISI 2 disrupted man trme All en, hold bee n a successful merchant, and the commerce . HIS you nge r brothe r Craw ford wa s til capita l he amassed pro vided a solid foundation for foll ow, ente ring in to a manufactunng partnership Ills three sons.