Before discount department stores became popular, New Bedford had Mars Bargainland. In the 1960s and 70s, the enormous high-ceilinged space contained a treasure trove of cut-price clothes, toys, and household items. A bit further inside the massive building shoppers found Food Mart, where workers boxed their groceries and slid them down rollers to be collected outside at street level. For many New Bedford residents, the memory of Mars Bargainland is still vivid, but few people remember this building’s original purpose. Designed by architects Charles Makepeace of Providence and Benjamin Smith of New Bedford and built between 1896 and 1917, Whitman Mills contained the highest density of looms in the region. The endless floors were relieved by tall windows, and spire-like chimney stacks exhausted plumes of smoke from the coal-fired boilers that powered the mills’ steam engines. The complex included an engine house, pipe house, pump house, machine shed, and office building, visually unified by Romanesque Revival details. Behind the mills loading docks extended into the Acushnet River, and across Riverside Avenue stood a large weave shed. The 1917 issue of the Official American Textile Directory gave a sense of the output of the Whitman Mills at their peak. $2 million of cloth were produced per year. Adjusted for inflation, this would equal more than $48 million in 2016. Whitman’s primary products included “Plain and Fancy Cotton and Silk Goods and Cotton Yarns,” produced on 138,128 ring spindles, 36,960 mule spindles, and 4,932 looms powered by steam and electric power. William Whitman, who built the mill, was a leader in New England’s textile industry for more than four decades. Whitman headed one of the world’s largest cotton textile manufacturing organizations and served as president of the Association of Wool Manufacturers. He also developed tariff policy related to the textile industry and advised Congress on trade matters. Despite Whitman’s business expertise, the mills he developed were not immune to economic pressures, and this one was no exception. Although the mill closed in 1932, the complex housed a variety of businesses including a cannery, in addition to Mars Bargainland, but they filled a small fraction of the space and employed a total of only about 500 people, less than a third of the Whitman Mills’ peak of 1,750 employees. Today, where once thousands of machines created continuous deafening noise, more than one-hundred elderly residents live in cozy studios and apartments. Named Whaler Place with unintentional irony, the development references the city’s more illustrious past rather than the textile industry that sustained the city long after the end of whaling. The floors once covered with a layer of cotton fiber now gleam with refinished wood and plush carpeting. The 18-foot ceilings are perhaps the only reminder of the buildings’ former use.
]]>Despite the rain, a troupe of bicyclists and mustached men costumed as knights, clowns, pages, and a prince paraded through the streets of Pawtucket. Thousands of people from Rhode Island and the adjoining states thronged the streets. For a week, all of Pawtucket celebrated one hundred years of cotton production with lavish decorations, elaborate parades, and both horseback and bicycle races. One might wonder why bicycles featured so prominently at a festival of cotton, but in Pawtucket, the two have had a long and interconnected history.
Slater Mill, which gained early fame as the first cotton spinning mill in the United States, changed hands many times over the course of the nineteenth century. By 1865, it was owned by the Spencer family of Pawtucket.
Around this time, velocipedes, commonly called “boneshakers” for their rough effect on riders’ bodies, were gaining popularity. These early bicycles, made entirely of wood, were eventually enhanced by the introduction of lightweight metal frames and air-filled tires. These improvements in safety and comfort brought about the American bicycling craze of the 1890s.
Anticipating this fad, Henry L. Spencer opened a bicycle shop on his father’s property in downtown Pawtucket – in a structure adjoining the old Slater Mill building. Spencer did a booming trade, becoming the second proprietor of bicycles within the state. As profits expanded and interest in bicycling increased, he transformed the third floor of Slater Mill into a riding rink and bicycling school where customers could practice the art of riding bicycles in a supervised setting.
Residents of Pawtucket were proud of their unique and varied industrial heritage. Henry L. Spencer, alongside cotton magnates and textile industrialists, was numbered one of Pawtucket’s prominent citizens worthy of mention in an illustrated history of the city published in the 1890s. The varieties of industry undertaken at the old Slater Mill building in less than a century – from cotton spinning to bicycling – were described as the “epitome of the progress of the century.”
When Pawtucket hosted its weeklong celebration to mark its “Cotton Centenary” in 1890, it was no surprise that bicycles featured prominently in the festivities. The centenary featured many contests, including horseracing and a regatta, but the bicycle races, held on the final day of the celebration, were the most popular. Three races took place: an intensive three-mile race that drew participants from around New England, a one-mile race limited to local riders, and a half-mile boys’ race. It is likely that William F. Almy, the triumphant winner of the boys’ race that day, as well as many of the other local contestants, had learned to ride at H.L. Spencer’s Bicycle Rink, a prominent sponsor of the day’s festivities.
Outside of Pawtucket, the bicycling craze had far-reaching effects. By 1896, noted suffragist Susan B. Anthony believed that “the bicycle has done more for the emancipation of women than anything else in the world” and a group of cyclists called the League of American Wheelmen quite literally paved the road for the automobile by lobbying for safer streets.
]]>