Saylesville Historic District | |
![]() Saylesville Mills | |
Location | Lincoln, Rhode Island |
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Coordinates | 41°53′55″N71°24′47″W / 41.89861°N 71.41306°W Coordinates: 41°53′55″N71°24′47″W / 41.89861°N 71.41306°W |
Built | 1854 |
Architectural style | Italianate |
MPS | Lincoln MRA |
NRHP reference No. | 84002049 [1] |
Added to NRHP | August 30, 1984 |
Saylesville is a village and historic district in Lincoln, Rhode Island.
The area was settled as a farming community in the 17th century. The historic Eleazer Arnold House (built 1693) is located near the village. The Saylesville Meeting House (built 1704) is one of the oldest surviving Quaker (Society of Friends) meeting houses in New England and one of the oldest church buildings in Rhode Island.
In the nineteenth century William F. Sayles started the Sayles Bleacheries across from Bleachery Pond at the base of the hill below the neighborhood today known as Saylesville. Saylesville was a mill town, largely built by William Sayles's son Frank Sayles as housing for workers and managers from the textile mill then known as Sayles Finishing Plants. Many of the original single and two family homes survive to this day, though more recent additions to them blur the similarity of the original housing stock. By the 1920s Frank Sayles had grown the business, largely based in Saylesville/Pawtucket, into one of the largest textile finishing enterprises in the world. When Frank Sayles died in 1920, the decline of the textile industry in the North East was in its infancy. Textile factories began migrating to the south where labor was cheaper and they were closer to their raw materials.[ citation needed ] Frank Sayles opened his fourth finishing plant in Asheville, North Carolina in 1927. [2]
The mill towns of Rhode Island were already in decline at the time of the union organizing general strike of textile workers of 1934. The violence did not leave Saylesville unscathed. Several thousand workers picketed the mill, though it is thought that few were from the mill itself. "Saylesville has been the center of much of the strike violence during the week, due, authorities say, in the determination of the strikers to close the finishing plant, whose operatives have refused to join the strike." [3] The Moshassuck Cemetery on the hill behind the Sayles Complex was the scene of a bloody confrontation between strikers and the National Guard resulting in many injuries and one fatality when the strikers charged the guardsmen who then opened fire.
The mills finally closed in the 1960s.
William F. Sayles, the businessman and philanthropist who owned the original bleachery mills in Saylesville donated the funds to build Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island in Pawtucket.
In the 1920s the village was home to a professional soccer team known as the Sayles Finishing Plant F.C.
The village is home to the Saylesville Fire District, a combination fire department staffed by career, call and volunteer firefighters. It consists of Ladder 5, Engine 5, Engine 6, Utility 5, and Boat 5. The district covers the Saylesville, Fairlawn and Lonsdale villages and the western half of Lincoln Woods State Park.
The Saylesville Historic District encompasses significant residential elements of the central mill village, primarily along Chapel and Walker Streets along Saylesville Pond, and extending west on Smithfield Avenue and northwest on Woodland Court. The public buildings of the village are located primarily on Walker Street, which runs east-west south of the pond. The mill worker housing on Chapel and Smithfield are about 1/2 single-family structures and 1/2 multi-unit buildings, either 1-1/2 or 2-1/2 stories in height, built out of either wood or brick. The company made an effort to relieve the uniformity of other mill villages, where identical buildings are in rows, by varying the locations of similar buildings so they were not adjacent. [4] The Saylesville Meetinghouse, an active Friends worship group built in 1703, is on Great Road beyond the end of Chapel Street, and is not part of the historic district. The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. [1]
Lincoln is a town in Providence County, Rhode Island, United States. The population was 22,529 at the 2020 census. Lincoln is located in northeastern Rhode Island, north of Providence. Lincoln is part of the Providence metropolitan statistical area and the Greater Boston combined statistical area.
The Moshassuck River is a river in the U.S. state of Rhode Island. It flows 8.9 miles (14.3 km) from the town of Lincoln to the city of Providence. There are six dams along the river's length.
The Slater Mill is a historic water-powered textile mill complex on the banks of the Blackstone River in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, modeled after cotton spinning mills first established in England. It is the first water-powered cotton spinning mill in North America to utilize the Arkwright system of cotton spinning as developed by Richard Arkwright.
Slatersville is a village on the Branch River in the town of North Smithfield, Rhode Island, United States. It includes the Slatersville Historic District, a historic district listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The historic district has been included as part of the Blackstone River Valley National Historical Park. The North Smithfield Public Library is located in Slatersville.
Georgiaville is a village in Smithfield, Providence County, Rhode Island, United States. The village was named after the Georgia Cotton Manufacturing Company mill located in the area. The Georgiaville Pond Beach is located in the village and is a popular recreation spot. In the 1920s the Ku Klux Klan was active in the area, and Klan rallies were held in Georgiaville. The village, which has retained many features of its origin as a mid-19th century mill village including the mill complex and several blocks of mill worker housing, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985. Georgiaville is also where Smithfield's town hall is located.
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This is a list of the National Register of Historic Places listings in Providence County, Rhode Island.
Lonsdale is a village and historic district in Lincoln and Cumberland, Providence County, Rhode Island, United States, near Rhode Island Route 146 and Route 95. The village was originally part of the town of Smithfield until Lincoln was created in the 1870s, and was originally centered on the Lincoln side of the Blackstone River. William Blaxton settled in the area in 1635. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Lonsdale was home to several manufacturers including the Lonsdale Company's Bleachery, and the Ann & Hope mill was also located in the village in Cumberland.
Waterford is a village located on and around St. Paul Street in North Smithfield, Rhode Island and Blackstone, Massachusetts. The Blackstone River and Branch River converge just south of the village.
The South Central Falls Historic District is a historic district in Central Falls, Rhode Island. It is a predominantly residential area, densely populated, which was developed most heavily in the late 19th century. It is bounded roughly by Broad Street to the east, the Pawtucket city line to the south, Dexter Street to the west, and Rand Street and Jenks Park to the north. It has 377 contributing buildings, most of which were built before 1920. The district was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1991.
Baltic is the town center village of the town of Sprague, Connecticut, and a census-designated place (CDP). The population of the CDP was 1,250 as of the 2010 census. The Sprague town hall is in Baltic. The Baltic Historic District is a historic district that was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987, encompassing virtually the entire extent of the village.
For much of its history, the city of Fall River, Massachusetts has been defined by the rise and fall of its cotton textile industry. From its beginnings as a rural outpost of the Plymouth Colony, the city grew to become the largest textile producing center in the United States during the 19th century, with over one hundred mills in operation by 1920. Even with the demise of local textile productions during the 20th century, there remains a lasting legacy of its impact on the city.
Fall River Bleachery is an historic textile bleachery on Jefferson Street in Fall River, Massachusetts.
Hallville Mill Historic District is a historic district in the town of Preston, Connecticut, that was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1996. Contributing properties in the district are 23 buildings, two other contributing structures, and one other contributing site over a 50-acre (20 ha) area. The district includes the dam that forms Hallville Pond, historic manufacturing buildings and worker housing, and the Hallville Mill Bridge, a lenticular pony truss bridge built circa 1890 by the Berlin Iron Bridge Company.
The Stillwater Mill was a former textile factory located in Smithfield, Rhode Island.
Blackstone River Valley National Historical Park is a National Park Service unit in the states of Rhode Island and Massachusetts. The park was created for the purpose of preserving, protecting, and interpreting the industrial heritage of the Blackstone River Valley and the urban, rural, and agricultural landscape of that region. The Blackstone River Valley was the site of some of the earliest successful textile mills in the United States, and these mills contributed significantly to the earliest American Industrial Revolution. The subsequent construction of the Blackstone Canal, a few years after the successful completion of the Erie Canal, helped to sustain the region's industrial strength.
The Manchaug Village Historic District is a historic district encompassing the 19th century industrial village center of Manchaug in Sutton, Massachusetts. Developed in the 1820s around textile mills on the Mumford River, it was the largest industrial area in Sutton, with at least three mill complexes in operation. The district is centered on the junction of Main Street with Manchaug, Putnam Hill, and Whitins Roads.
The Andrews Mill Company Plant is a historic industrial complex at 761 Great Road in North Smithfield, Rhode Island. Built beginning in 1918, it was home to a maker of French worsted wool textiles, part of a major industrial development push in northern Rhode Island at the time. The complex was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2018.
Frederick Clark Sayles was an American entrepreneur and the first mayor of Pawtucket, Rhode Island in 1885.
The Moshassuck Valley Railroad, founded in 1874, was a shortline railroad in Rhode Island, United States. Built from 1876 to 1877, it operated on a 2-mile (3.2 km) long line between Lincoln and a connection to the Providence and Worcester and Boston and Providence railroads, both of which were subsequently purchased by the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, in the Woodlawn neighborhood of Pawtucket. The company was formed by the Sayles brothers, owners of a significant mill in Saylesville near the line's terminus. Freight was the primary traffic of the railroad, but frequent passenger service was also provided by a self-propelled steam passenger car until 1921.