National Park Service - Rhode Island Historical Preservation ...
National Park Service - Rhode Island Historical Preservation ...
National Park Service - Rhode Island Historical Preservation ...
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NPS Form 10-900-i - En,- 10-31-U<br />
3-82<br />
United States Department of the Interior<br />
<strong>National</strong> <strong>Park</strong> <strong>Service</strong> - -<br />
<strong>National</strong> Register of Historic Places -<br />
Inventory-Nomination Form -<br />
Continuation sheet 51 -<br />
- Item number 8<br />
Page 7<br />
to not look like a company town. It was part of the Hazards’<br />
social scheme to improve the lot of their workers by creating an -<br />
environment in which social hierarchy and corporate domination<br />
could not be read in the very pattern of the streets and dull<br />
uniformity of its housing.<br />
In the field of engineering, Peace Dale’s bridges and water<br />
power system are significant artifacts. The group of five extant<br />
- stone-arch bridges in the village #35, 78, 92, 93, and 162<br />
dating -to the 1880s, all designed by Rowland Hazard II and built<br />
by local masons, is unparalleled in the state in terms of number,<br />
range of size, variety of form, and quality of construction. The<br />
pond, dam, penstock house, and mill race make up a typical -<br />
moderate-size nineteenth-century hydropower system #16,<br />
noteworthy as a well preserved and very beautiful example of this<br />
once-common class of engineering work. -<br />
Peace Dale holds a place of distinction in the annals of<br />
American industry. Here was a very early and possibly the<br />
first integrated textile manufacturing enterprise in the United<br />
States. Moreover, the Peace Dale Manufacturing Company was<br />
widely known as a producer of high-quality woolen goods and is<br />
credited as an early worsted mill. Equal if not greater import<br />
derives from the Hazards’ progressive labor policies -- provision<br />
of a safe and attractive workplace, "deinstitutionalized" housing<br />
and community setting, opportunities for home ownership,<br />
education, recreational facilities, and profit sharing. At an<br />
entirely different level, one also values, in the context of<br />
industrial history, the Hazards’ decision to preserve, as a<br />
monument to the company’s heritages the stair tower, belfry and<br />
end gable of the 1847 stone factory #37B when the mill complex<br />
- - was greatly altered and enlarged.<br />
Two examples of the work of landscape architect Charles -<br />
Eliot merit attention in this account of Peace Dale’s -<br />
significance: the "Water Way" he created along mill race and<br />
pond #16, and his design of the grounds of the Hazard Memorial<br />
#38. -<br />
Lastly, in the area of "social/humanitarian" significance,<br />
the history of social engineering, utopianism, and benevolent<br />
paternalism which so directly shaped Peace Dale’s institutions,<br />
layout, and buildings, has great importance. The Hazard family<br />
made a very serious and sustained effort to create an ideal<br />
environment for their workers. They did this through provision<br />
of benefits like pensions and profit-sharing which were decades