Wamsutta Mills

Wamsutta Mills is a nineteen-acre textile complex in New Bedford's Logan-Hicks area, developed from 1847 over about 75 years as the business grew. A fire in 1924 destroyed the earliest four-story Mills Nos. 1, 2 and 3, but a group of two- to four-story brick and stone mills survives, along with picker houses, a weave shed, a cloth and harness room and a mill pond. The buildings are utilitarian, with large regularly spaced windows for daylight, brick corbelling, granite sills and wrought-iron fire escapes with scrolled brackets. Mills Nos. 4, 5 and 6 form a nearly 1,000-foot facade along Acushnet Avenue. The company was among the city's largest employers, with 2,200 operatives by 1891. After 1918 its president spent $2,500,000 on modernization, shifted from steam to electric power, ran market surveys and advertised directly to consumers. Several mill buildings are being converted to apartments.