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The Textile Factory in Pre-Civil War Rhode Island

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The Textile Factory in Pre-Civil War Rhode Island The Textile Factory in Pre-Civil War Rhode Island THEODORE ANTON SANDE Introduction Less than thirty-five years earlier the n the night of December 24, 1822, project would have been impossible on Zachariah Allen wrote in his di- this side of the Atlantic. And in England, 0 ary: where the modern factory was invented, Christmas eve - The church bell is its history can only be dated back as far as now ringing a merry peal. To me it is the first years of the 18th century.4 In rather melancholy - as it recalls days 1702, what is now considered to be the long since past, when I hailed the return first factory, a silk mill, was built on the of Christmas as one of the happiest days of my life . Now more anx- Derwent River at Derby by Thomas ious thoughts, & deeper laid schemes of Cotchett. It was a simple 3-story brick future aggrandizement engross my structure, measuring approximately 62 mind-- ’ feet in length by 28 feet in width. Portions What could have inspired such solemn survive today in what is now a technologi- reflection, this somber Dickensian cal museum on the site.5 But factories did passage? Allen was tried; he had just not appear in large numbers in England spend over eight months building a small until after the middle of the 18th century textile mill on the east bank of the when, as a result of a series of mechanical Woonasquatucket River in Allendale inventions, textile spinning and weaving (now called Centerdale), Rhode Island, were transformed from handicrafts to and it is clear that this was uppermost in fully mechanized operations. And it was his mind at the time. He had begun spin- not until the late 1760s that the new spin- ning woolen yarn during the first week of ning machines were brought together by December, and the entry continues: “I Richard Arkwright and others into a com- shall be compelled to go out to my mill pletely integrated system of production, tomorrow.“2 housed within a single structure.6 The building of a textile factory at this We call this structure a factory, which time was not in itself remarkable. Indeed, Andrew Ure defined in 1835 as the locus Allen had proceeded cautiously into of: “the combined operation of many or- manufacturing, spending several years ders of work-people, adult and young in thinking about it, and visiting factories tending with assiduous skill a system of throughout the region, carefully writing productive machines continuously im- down all the technical information he pelled by a central power.“’ What we are could acquire on water power, textile confronted with in the factory, then, is the machinery and business practices.3 What emergence of a totally new building type was remarkable was the very case with reflecting this technological development. which he could build and equip a textile It is the first important building type to mill once he had made up his mind to do appear in Western Europe since the so. Renaissance, and the one which repre- 13 14 Old-Time New England sents the momentous shift in Western ularly one outside the mainstream of con- European and American civilization from ventional architecture, an extraordinarily a pre-industrial to an industrial society. rare analytical opportunity is provided. For the United States, the story of the We are not dealing with the work of pro- textile factory’s origin and development fessional architects or gifted amateurs begins in the Rhode Island textile indus- preoccupied with, or guided by, funda- try in the early 1790s and ends with the mentally stylistic and formalistic con- Civil War. In 1793, the firm of Almy, cerns, but with pragmatically-motivated Brown and Slater constructed a spinning millwrights and business-minded entre- mill, on the west bank of the Blackstone preneurs, seeking practical answers River at Pawtucket Falls. It was located a to crucial technical and economic ques- short distance upstream from an old full- tions. This allows us to see more clearly ing mill where Samuel Slater’s improved than is usually the case with self-con- spinning machines, based on Richard sciously artistically-motivated architec- Arkwright’s patents, had been initially set ture, the technological, economic and up in 1790.8 This modest structure was social forces present in all architecture. the first successfultextile factory in North These forces exert sometimes direct, America.9 sometimes subtle influences. All too fre- During the next 67 years textile mill quently these important factors have been sites proliferated throughout the state, ex- ignored in favor of the artistic aspect ploiting the better locations along avail- alone. able water resourcesby about 1840. Graph It has therefore seemed best for under- 1 depicts the number of new sites estab- standing its growth to treat the Rhode Is- lished each decadeduring this period.tO land textile factory under four discrete Defining the Rhode Island textile facto- categories. For each we will attempt to ry’s architectural development is some- find the principal causes underlying its what more complicated. In tracing the change during the preCivil War period. emergence of a new building type, partic- The categories, which in this instance I GRAPH 1. VOLUME OF SITE DEVELOPMENT BY DECADE. (Data from 286 sites) 68 57 44 41 9 r-r1790- 1800 1801 - 1810 1811 - 1820 1821 - 1830 I831 - 1840 1841 - 1850 I851 - 1860 The TextileFactory in Pre-Civil War Rhode Island consider to be the major architectural ratio of width to length also changes. variables, are: Volume, Structure, Thus, not only do textile factories become Configuration and Decorative Style.11 For wider and longer, they become pro- the latter, the topic lends itself to more gressively narrower, or more attenu- general examination and discussion will ated, in proportion as well. In general, broaden well beyond the borders of height tends to remain relatively uniform Rhode Island. throughout the period. Rhode Island mills Since some of the best surviving exam- were usually 3 or 4 stories.13 ples of the early Rhode Island type textile The Rhode Island textile factories of mills are in outlying parts of other New the 1790s were small buildings (Figure 1). England states, I have chosen to use them For example, the Almy, Brown and Slater where they better illustrate a point than Mill of 1793 was only 29 feet wide and 47 extant Rhode Island buildings. Indeed, feet long, 2 stories high, with a useable at- many of the statements made for the tic above.14What does this mean in com- Rhode Island textile mill’s structure and parison with other sections of the eastern configuration, as well as decorative style, United States, where textile manufactur- can be applied, with slight modification, to ing was also taking hold? the lower capitalized textile factories in We have an indication from records other areas of New England as well. kept by an English clothier named Henry Wansey, who travelled the eastern Volume seaboard from Nova Scotia to Philadel- Turning to the buildings themselves, let phia in the spring and summer of 1794.15 us begin by examining their dimensions Among his entries are brief descriptions and how these change over time. Not of at least two textile mills visited, and surprisingly, plan size tends to increase as mention of a third. One factory was IO- the industry develops. cated about three miles from New Haven, Table 1l2 reveals a general tendency for manufactured wool and cotton yarn, and plan dimensions to become larger. The measured 100 by 38 feet. It was 4 stories TABLE 1. Volume. (Data from 214 sites) Decade Length Width Ratio:W/L Height Range Mean Median Range Mean Median Mean Median Range Mean Median 1790- 1800 33-47 39 40 26-30 28 28 1:1.4 1:1.4 2-3 2.75 3 1801 - 1810 38-108 73 80 30-43 36 40 1:2 1:2 2-5 3.55 3 1811- 1820 36-125 64 56 18-50 33 32 1:1.9 1:1.8 l-5 3.25 3 1821- 1830 28-165 80 80 ‘S-80 39 40 1:2.1 1:2 1-6 3.80 4 1831- 1840 40-175 95 82 25-50 37 40 1:2.6 1:2.1 2-6 3.60 3 1841- 1850 36-300 130 102 20-58 42 44 1:3.1 1:2.4 2-7 4.05 4 . 1851- 1860 40-4 10 158 148 30-72 49 44 1:3.2 1:3.4 2-5 3.60 3 16 Old- Time New England FIG. 1. CONJECTURAL DRAWING OF THE ALMY, BROWN AND SLATER MILL OF 1793, PAWTUCKET, RHODE ISLAND. (Courtesyof the Slater Mill Historic Site, Pawtucket, Rhode Island.) in height.t6 The second site contained two Were the Rhode Islanders backward identical buildings, 80 feet long and 4 sto- compared to their neighbors? Not ries tall, and was located at “Hell Gates” necessarily. We know, for instance, that New York.” A third building referred to Samuel Slater was thoroughly familiar was a cotton mill at Paterson, New Jersey. with larger and more advanced structures From other sources we know it was 90 than the 1793 Almy, Brown and Slater feet by 40 feet, 4 stories, and built of mill from his years in England. Through stone.t* If Wansey’s notes are accurate, correspondence he kept abreast of the and we have no reason to doubt them, the latest developments at home, such as mills he saw far exceeded contemporary William Strutt’s Belper West Mill, begun Rhode Island textile factories in plan size in 1793 and the first multi-storied iron- and height.
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