Shannock Historic District - Richmond RI
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nomadwillie
N 41° 26.868 W 071° 38.203
19T E 279745 N 4591825
Shannock is notable in Rhode Island as a well preserved, small, nineteenth and early twentieth century mill village. Shannock's first factory was a cotton and woolen mill established on the Richmond side of the lower falls in 1834.
Waymark Code: WM161XP
Location: Rhode Island, United States
Date Posted: 04/16/2022
Views: 0
Shannock is notable in Rhode Island as a well preserved, small, nineteenth and early twentieth century mill village which retains in large measure the structures and other manmade features such as mills, housing, stores, public buildings, dams, and walls and fences of its period of ascendency. It is locally significant for its more than two century long history of milling and manufacturing activity. A whole greater than the sum of its parts, Shannock's architecture possesses local importance in that it typifies mid- and late nineteenth-century country building in Rhode Island.
In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, several saw, grist, and woolen mills were set up; these were small operations, serving only the local area. Shannock's first mills appear to have been saw- and grist mills at the upper falls on the Richmond side. Both existed before 1759, when they were willed by Jeffrey Wilcox to his son Abraham, and may have been in use in the 1730s. Joshua Clarke bought the two mills in 1771 and soon added a woolen mill nearby. A son, Perry Clarke (1780-1835), continued to operate the mills following Joshua's death in 1796.
Shannock's first factory was a cotton and woolen mill established on the Richmond side of the lower falls in 1834 by John T. Knowles. Knowles' mills, subsequently enlarged by George Weeden and sold in 1875 to A, Carmichael § Co., burned in 1884. This cotton and woolen goods manufacturing firm, renamed in 1881 the Carmichael Manufacturing Co., built the present frame factory on the same site in 1885.
Since 1969 the Clark Cotton Mill/Columbia Narrow Fabrics Company plant has suffered severe deterioration. In the mid-1970s the monitor trimmed gable roof and Greek Revival cupola of the original stone structure were lost in a fire and replaced by a nearly flat roof. The remainder of the complex has suffered extensively from vandalism.
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