Industrial Heritage

In 1790, Rhode Island entrepreneurs started America's Industrial Revolution. America's first factory, Slater Mill, was built in 1790 on the banks of the Blackstone River, just upstream from Providence. This revolutionary way of harnessing waterpower and industrial production spread quickly throughout the Blackstone Valley, down to Providence, up to Lowell, Massachusetts, and throughout the country.

 

 

By the 1830s, the use of steam power

further drove the development of

industry, particularly in cities (including Providence) that lacked sufficient water for power. Providence was driven by an industry-based economy. Providence's four major areas of manufacturing — base metals and machinery, cotton textiles, woolen textiles, jewelry and silverware — had been established; they dominated the city's economy for the next century.

 

Providence was the center of the country’s most industrialized state; as a result, Rhode Island had the greatest wealth. Mills no longer needed to be on waterways for power — or transportation, as a railroad network was developing by the 1840s.

 

By 1900, Providence was a diverse industrial, financial and transportation center. Its board of trade boasted that the Providence had the world's largest tool factory, file factory, engine factory, screw factory, and silverware factory. The city ranked first in the country's in manufacturing jewelry and production of woolen and worsted goods.

 

After 1900, there was a substantial decline in manufacturing. Following union strikes and the Great Depression in the late 1920s, the textile mills "moved south" to southern states, and the metals industries headed to the Midwest, in the 1930s through the 1950s, leaving underused or vacant buildings. Since 1960, factory employment in Providence declined by 55 percent; over half of this loss has occurred since 1980.

 

As early as the 1960s, just as Providence was closing the door on its mills, preservationists and communities in America were recognizing the historic and future potential of industrial mills. Rhode Island was also fostering a similar appreciation for its industrial heritage.

 

In 1979 the Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission, in cooperation with the Mayor’s office, surveyed the industrial sites in Providence. The goal was to increase the awareness of the significance and potential of these sites and to provide a planning tool to encourage preservation and economic development adaptive use. The Commission published Providence Industrial Sites in 1981.

 

Many of these large complexes are located along the Woonasquatucket and Moshassuck Rivers, and south of Downtown along banks of the Providence River. Other industrial sites are scattered in Providence neighborhoods. By 1981, Providence had established the Promenade Industrial Center Association Revitalization Area, an early effort at recognizing that preserving single buildings — or even entire company sites — was not enough, but that a broad, inclusive approach was needed.

 

In 1999 it was concluded that city had 170 reusable, yet deteriorating and at-risk, mill complexes. Recently, Providence has lost some of its greatest mills, such as Gorham Manufacturing Company factory, Silver Spring Bleaching & Dyeing and others. But several, such as Rising Sun Mills, are being preserved through adaptive use for offices, retail space, housing, artists studios, and mixed use.

 

Some information obtained credited to Philip C Marshall