Built in 1822, the Allendale Mill on Woonasquatucket Avenue currently serves as apartment housing for the North Providence community. Although the building’s existing structure provides hints of its historic past, most simply ignore it as just another defunct mill, unaware that both its design and operation served as a model for later textile mills.
The man behind its construction was Providence luminary and civic leader, Zachariah Allen, born 1795. He was a founder of the Providence Athenaeum and the Rhode Island Historical Society, as well as a trustee of Butler Hospital. A successful legal professional and respected author, Allen constructed Allendale Mill out of a desire to return to his family’s roots in manufacturing woolen textiles.
Allen was as much innovator and inventor as academic and businessman. Learning from the failures and deficiencies of past and present textile mills, Allen’s design for Allendale was way ahead of its time.
The entire structure was designed from the ground up around a single key element: fire safety. Allendale’s double-thick floors, complex staggered-framing, general floorplan and original slate shingles all contributed to the plan for the “slow-burning mill,” a term attributed to Allendale and later applied to other mills that used such a design.
In addition to its safer construction, Allendale was at the forefront in terms of practical and accessible fire protection for workers. Among Allendale’s signature hallmarks was its own hydrant and sprinkler system, which complemented industrial-grade pumps and water-hoses situated at ‘hot-spot’ locations throughout the mill.
Allen believed that his commitment to providing a safer work environment would constitute lower insurance premiums for his mills, but his insurers disagreed. Thus, Allen decided he would need to form his own insurance company. Together with other like-minded business owners, Allen collaborated with the Boston Mutual Insurance Company to form the Allendale Insurance Company. This new firm would deal only with manufacturers that held their facilities to the highest standards in construction, maintenance, and quality, and would use the Mill at Allendale as a benchmark for further industry standards that would help to shape the development of modern workplace fire codes and regulations that continue to safeguard workers today.
Allen’s insurance enterprise continues to operate as FM Global, headquartered in Johnston, RI.
]]>“Ever Since I Can Remember, I’ve Been Working”—Alfred Benoit
Alfred Benoit was one of many youths who spent their childhood laboring in the brutal, unforgiving mills of New Bedford. Born September 3, 1900, Alfred began working in 1912 as a floor sweeper but became skilled at repairing the looms that sustained the New Bedford textile industry.
We know of Alfred partly from photographs taken by social worker and labor activist Lewis Hine, who came to New Bedford to document the conditions in the mills for his work with the National Child Labor Committee. The work of Hines and other reformers like Jacob Riis helped to change harsh child labor policies, which had allowed children under sixteen years-old to work in dangerous and unhealthy conditions for more than ten hours a day. In January, 1912, Hine photographed part of the Benoit family in their rented tenement on North Front Street. He jotted this note:
Slovenly kitchen living-room of family of Alfred Beniot [sic], 191 N. Front St., a sweeper in Bennett Mill; has been there for two months. Mother works in the same mill; father is a canvasser (and shiftless). Said, “I’m de father of 11 children.” The baby in the girl’s arms is one they are keeping for another woman. The mother would not get in the photo. Alfred had bad eyes this morning (influenza apparently) and mopping them with a filthy rag. One of the little ones had the same trouble. Another had a boil on his face.
When Hine took this photograph in 1912, three of Alfred’s siblings had already died, and Hine observed the poor health of the Benoit children.
Alfred’s father, Archille, came to New Bedford from Canada around 1905. He worked as a weaver, moving between New Bedford, Fall River, and Waltham, and briefly returned to Canada, following rumors of economic opportunity. By 1912, Archille was employed as a canvasser, going door-to-door selling goods and services. Hine considered him to be lazy, but it is possible that Archille was worn down by years of hard labor.
The Benoit house at 191 North Front Street was likely a three-decker tenement. A 1911 map of New Bedford indicated that the property was owned by M. Rogers. Behind the house was the New Bedford Day Nursery, and a block away was the St. Rose School, but it is unlikely that the Benoit children were able to take advantage of these facilities.
Alfred married his wife, Nora, in 1923, and together they raised seven children. Alfred’s grandchildren remember him as “a man who truly enjoyed life.” His granddaughter Nancy, the first of the Benoit family to graduate college, recalls that Alfred “wasn’t an overachiever. He enjoyed what he had.” Alfred enjoyed lawn bowling and sometimes traveled to Canada to compete in checkers tournaments. He spent time at the Brown Jug, a neighborhood bar owned by Francis Lawler, who served a New Bedford’s mayor in the late 1950s. Alfred and Lawler became good friends.
The three-decker on North Front Street was demolished to make way for Interstate 195, but still standing is the house on Clark Street where Alfred lived with his own family and the Brown Jug, a North End institution. Alfred’s son in law, Romeo Pothier, recalls him as a man with many friends. Asked if Alfred ever spoke of his childhood, Pothier recalled, “He once told me, ‘Ever since I can remember, I’ve been working.’”
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