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Hope Webbing Company

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1889 et seq. 1005 Maine St. (between Warren Ave. and Dudley St.)

This factory has an unusual layout. Three-story elements run around three sides of the perimeter of the site, in a U-shaped configuration, revealing the depth of the U on the front elevation, before terminating in chunky four-story towers. A long two-story connector, containing a centered vehicular entrance signaled by a false-front elevated cornice, stretches between the two towers. This opens to a large interior loading court (now cluttered by later additions). Note especially the articulation of the handsome brick cornice of the terminal three-story blocks. A corbeled plane roughly bisects the topmost row of windows; then, at the springing of the segmental arching of the window tops, more corbeling projects to receive the eaves. The low loggia arching which tops the towers is also nicely handled, within its own inset panel, which is corbeled at the top, the whole of the tower accented with spare elegance by granite trim. The bracketing of the entrance hoods is done with gusto. As the American Textile Mill was allegedly the largest lace manufacturer in the country early in the twentieth century, so this was then supposedly the largest manufacturer of narrow braided goods for such uses as upholstery webbing. Both indicate that, as mills elsewhere tended to take over the staples of textile manufacture, the smaller Rhode Island mills, with a skilled work force, frequently found niches for themselves in specialty textile goods.

Writing Credits

Author: 
William H. Jordy et al.
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Citation

William H. Jordy et al., "Hope Webbing Company", [Pawtucket, Rhode Island], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/RI-01-PA6.

Print Source

Buildings of Rhode Island, William H. Jordy, with Ronald J. Onorato and William McKenzie Woodward. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004, 140-140.

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