National Park Service - Rhode Island Historical Preservation ...

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