Wool Cloth, and Later Rubber Shoes, were Made in This CT Factory
Home Woolen Company, Beacon Falls Connecticut
- Categories:
- Connecticut
- Industrial
- Textile Mill
The Home Woollen Co. - Beacon Falls Rubber Shoe Factory and its subsequent complex contributed to the settlement in the 1850s of the area that is now the center of Beacon Falls, Connecticut, and the development of that community through the 1930s The extensive complex, which physically dominates the center of this small, valley town, is a monumental, visual reminder of the social and economic history of Beacon Falls. Each of the various rubber and woolen industries that operated out of this plant sustained, almost single handedly, the economy of Beacon Falls and contributed substantially to the civic life of the town. The plant's major occupant businesses, including the American Hard Rubber Company, the Home Woollen Company, and the Beacon Falls Rubber Shoe Company, owned during their residencies large amounts of land and workers' housing as well, making this community a company town for much of its history.
By 1849, five years before the establishment of the American Hard Rubber Company, Waterbury in the upper Naugatuck River Valley had become a center for the manufacture of hardware and, particularly, brass products. These were small but growing industries supported by central Connecticut's clock, button, and carpenters' hardware manufacturers. Other valley towns, blessed with good water power, were undergoing the conversion from agriculture to manufacturing, made possible by the presence of machine shops and foundries and developing suppliers and markets in Derby, Shelton, Naugatuck, and in Waterbury's young brass and rubber industries. Such industrial activity was greatly boosted by the 1849 opening of the Naugatuck Railroad, which connected Waterbury and Naugatuck to Bridgeport, New Haven and New York. Beacon Falls, which was part of Humphreysville (Seymour), Oxford, Bethany and Naugatuck, was not incorporated as a town until 1871.
At the same time, cotton and woolen mills in Humphreysville and clusters of mills powered by secondary streams on the valley's walls further north were operating their businesses gaining from improved access to the larger commercial centers. Milo and Samuel Lewis, for example, were proprietors of at least two successful cotton warp and woolen mills on Beacon Hill Brook (a few miles north of the present center of Beacon Falls), were sufficiently prosperous in 1845 to join entrepreneur Charles Goodyear in capitalizing the Goodyear Metallic Rubber Shoe Company in Naugatuck. Goodyear had recently discovered and patented the process of vulcanizing gum elastic, the treatment of gum with sulfur at high temperatures to render an elastic material which could be soft or hard and able to withstand extremes of temperatures. This first venture in the manufacture of hard rubber would determine the course of industry in Naugatuck and the vicinity for the next century.
The presence of the textile and rubber industries, in which the Lewis family continued to invest and expand, and the promise of plentiful water power and the railroad brought the American Hard Rubber Company to the future site of Beacon Falls in 1853. Armed with a license to use the Goodyear process, and rights to Naugatuck River water power, the company built a shallow, double-stepped dam (not extant) across the river below Tobys Rock Mountain and dug a 3/4-mile long diversion canal from the dam to the present factory site. The company erected a three-and-one-half-story, 160-foot-long brick mill astride the flume; this gabled-roof structure now forms the south half of the main block of the plant.
Among the products of American Hard Rubber were powder flasks, whip sockets and buttons. It is likely that the mill also manufactured vulcanized elastic gum for rubber shoes and waterproof garments and elastic webbing, products on which the Connecticut rubber industry was "almost entirely … dependent … during its formative years". Rubber belting, such as that used to connect overhead line shafts with early, non-motorized machines may also have been produced at the plant. The possibility that this product was manufactured by American Hard Rubber is suggested by Glenn D. Babcock in The History of the U.S. Rubber Company (Indiana Univ., 1966), who writes that rubber conveyors and elevator belting "were in common use … from the early days of the rubber industry."
The effect of the American Rubber's early presence on the settlement of the area is unknown, although it stands to reason that with the existence of the Seymour Turnpike, a tannery, and plentiful sources of water power, there were probably scattered grist and sawmills throughout this primarily agricultural area by 1853. Although the Naugatuck Railroad did not build a passenger station at Beacon Falls until 1868, it is probable that trains stopped periodically to take on or deliver materials for American Hard Rubber. The rail line lay on the opposite bank of the river. In 1856, according to local history, a covered bridge was constructed "by plans put through by the American Hard Rubber Company."
After seven years of operation, American Hard Rubber moved to College Point, Long Island, New York, presumably to be closer to a major commercial center. The company's departure left the mill idle until September 1863 when the building and its water privileges were purchased by the Home Woollen Company, a corporation based in Hartford. Home Woollen reportedly purchased "30 houses and considerable land" as well, suggesting the extent of residential development probably built by American Hard Rubber for its employees. These house lots did not adjoin the factory site.
The reason for Home Woollen's locating here was likely the direct rail access to Bridgeport and New York, and the availability of local mill workers skilled in textile production. Under the local management of company agent John Wolfe, Home Woollen would take the village through its formative years as a community.
Within three or four months of Home Woollen's purchase of the mill, Wolfe had supervised its repair and the construction of a gas works. The company installed eight sets of machinery and began producing cassimeres, a lightweight woolen cloth. Home Woollen's initial output was allegedly 40,000 yards of cloth per month. Later in 1864 the company began the manufacture of woolen shawls, which remained its principal product for the next decade. The works, boosted by the demand for military cloth during the Civil War, had outgrown the original mill structure. In 1866 the company built an identical addition that extended the existing block to the north, doubling the size of the plant. New machinery was installed in this section, more workers hired, and production increased. At about the same time the company built a wool house, a dye house, a boiler house and a two-story picker house. In 1870 Home Woollen's workforce was comprised of 155 men, 67 women, and 44 children. Their labor, assisted by 17 sets of cards, 3,700 spindles and 70 broadlooms, produced 13,000 shawls per month.
By the time Home Woollen suspended operations in 1876, Beacon Falls had blossomed as a community. It is probably safe to assume that given Home Woollen's position as the sole major employer in the village, the thriving company's presence catalyzed the economic and physical development of Beacon Falls. Within the decade 1864-1874 the place grew from a cluster-of houses surrounding a mill to a small but self contained community possessing most of the attributes of a small town and a population numbering roughly 300. Directly following the establishment of the woolen mill in 1864, residents petitioned the surrounding towns for a new school district, indicating a substantial increase in the number of resident families. Another sign of growth occurred in 1868, when the Naugatuck Railroad constructed a passenger depot in the village, an event which presaged the town's final incorporation as a community independent of its mother towns in 1871.
Although Home Woollen remained an out-of-town employer, it appears that local agent John Wolfe's direct management was informed by a strong sense of civic responsibility. For example, under Wolfe's direction, Home Woollen agreed to share with the Town of Bethany the burden of back payment for the construction of the covered bridge completed nine years earlier. Wolfe, a trustee of the United Church (Methodist), was probably instrumental in Home Woollen's decision to donate the site for the new church and almost all the funds for its erection. However, Home Woollen's extensive land holdings in the village, amount to roughly 350 acres, and 75 "tenements" were certainly factors in positively influencing company-town public relations. In 1880, the reorganized Home Woollen Company resumed the production of woolen cloth, this time with a workforce of 300 and 18 sets of machinery. Given Beacon Fall's population of 379 in 1880, it appears that many workers would have come from out of town. The 1890 population of 505 suggests the relocation of some of these workers to Beacon Falls.
Home Woollen terminated its Beacon Falls operations in 1887, a victim, like many Connecticut textile mills, to stiff competition offered by Southern mills.
The Beacon Falls plant lay practically idle for two years, probably driving workers elsewhere in pursuit of employment and quieting life in the community. From 1889-1898, two different firms occupied the mill simultaneously. The Hartford-based Beacon Falls Mill and Power Company purchased the works and leased part of it to the Standard Woolen Company. The latter firm was the joint venture of three men, one of whom, Clarence J. Bodfish, had succeeded John Wolfe at Home Woollen. Bodfish and his partners organized Standard Woollen in 1889 with capital of $18,000. This company, which employed 80 to 125, manufactured cheviots, a rough woolen cloth, kerseys, a smooth lightweight ribbed cloth, and worsteds. Standard probably terminated its lease in 1898, when the works was purchased by the newly-organized Beacon Falls Rubber Shoe Company.
The Beacon Falls Rubber Shoe Company, which returned economic stability to the community, would become a thriving, dominant, and apparently positive force in town for the next 25 years. The business was incorporated by George A. Lewis of Naugatuck and others. Lewis probably a descendant and beneficiary of the successful Lewis family who had advanced the local textile and rubber industries earlier in the century. Since the introduction of the rubber shoe in the late 1840s, and the evolution of the product as a cloth-top sneaker, the market for rubber footwear had steadily expanded. The application of rubber to a range of products, gloves, mittens, waterproof blankets, medical supplies, and mechanical parts had created new markets, further stimulating the Naugatuck industry. Although the demand for rubber footwear was already considerable by 1899, the rubber industry was merely on the threshold of its ultimate importance as a broadly applicable basic manufacturing material. The automobile tire was yet to beget the giant rubber corporations that exist today. Historian Harold J. Bingham writes that "the value of rubber goods produced in Connecticut increased almost 400 percent, from $1,710,761 in 1880 to $8,246,240 in 1900." Given this impressive increase and the ever-broadening applications of rubber, it is not surprising that Beacon Falls Rubber Shoe and the town of Beacon Falls both thrived on the output of 5.5 million pairs of sneakers per year by 1920.
The company's trademark, "Top Notch", identified its popular lines of rubber shoes and boots. With the outbreak of World War I, the factory was forced to diversify manufacturing to fulfill rush orders for vast quantities of extremely durable and specially designed military garments and equipment.
Many women entered the workforce to cover for men in the military service, and at Beacon Falls produced survival suits and rafts, flotation devices, gas masks, and a wide variety of boots and shoes designed for action in hot and cold climates.
Other circumstances of an international scope had also begun to affect the community of Beacon Falls. By 1899, many Irish people had settled in the industrializing towns and cities to seek initial work in the factories. Their presence in Beacon Falls was symbolized in the erection of the first Catholic church in the village in 1899. The other major immigrant group were the Poles, whose arrivals during the first two decades of this century helped boost Beacon Fall's population by almost 1,000. This represented a far greater rate of increase over previous years. The Center School required two large additions at separate times during the six years between 1915 and 1920. Americanization classes taught here in the evenings helped prepare the European newcomers for life in the valley. Certainly, the increase in the available workforce enhanced the shoe company's ability to expand its operations, which it did extensively between 1899 and 1922. Among the structures that were added to the plant were, the office building, the boiler house, the engine room and varnishing plant, a vulcanizing building, the two, large stucco warehouses north of Burton Road, the four-story rear ells on the original blocks, and the overpass above Burton Road. As did other rubber manufacturers, the company in 1914 started subsidiary industries at the plant, evidenced in the reclaiming house for re-using rubber shown undergoing construction in the 1914 insurance may, and in the paper box shop also shown.
In 1922, Beacon Falls Rubber Shoe employed 942 people, an impressive figure in a town of 1600. Besides being a tremendous physical and economic presence in Beacon Falls, the shoe company plant served as the community's central meeting place for organizations and informal social gatherings and made major civic efforts to keep its resident workers in town. The company built a moving picture theater, complete with an assembly room and dance hall for public use.
The company supported athletic teams and a musical band. Summer concerts were a frequent, popular event performed on the river bank with the factory as a backdrop. Donations of land and buildings for organizations and institutions in town were not uncommon.
Despite the U.S. Rubber Company's absorption of the shoe factory during the recession of 1921, the complex for several years continued to manufacture canvas and rubber footwear under the "Top Notch" label. The plant employed 200 in 1939 and remained under local management while serving U.S. Rubber, which was based in Naugatuck. Finally, in 1980, cost-cutting by U.S. Rubber forced the closing of the plant, which for some years had served as a warehouse.
Site Description
The Home Woollen Company - Beacon Falls Rubber Shoe Factory (the Home Woollen Complex) and its subsequent additions is an extensive industrial plant of two, three and four-story brick blocks, which stands overlooking the broad open Main Street (old Route 8) of Beacon Falls, Connecticut. Low, but steep, wooded hills rise behind the factory to the east, and in the more distant surroundings. The complex is a generally linear string of connected and free-standing rectangular blocks, which extends on a roughly north-south axis parallel to Main Street. The front of the mill, which is distinguished by two, five-and-one-half-story square towers, faces Main Street and the river, or west. The buildings visually dominate the lower, river-plain commercial section of the small town. The mid-portion of the complex straddles the T-intersection of Main Street and Burton Road, which leads east behind the mill up to the residential section of the town.
The dozen structures that comprise the roughly 250,000-square-foot complex were built over a period of 63 years, or between 1853 and 1916. The two oldest blocks, built in 1853 and 1866, are identical, three-and-one-half-story, gabled roof structures, joined end-to-end to form a single, continuous block. The break between the buildings is visible at the low fire wall extending down the roof. The windows, which retain their original, 12-over-12 double-hung sash, are set into regularly spaced openings with stone sills and lintels. The front of each of the two blocks is visually bisected by a five-and-one-half-story stair tower. The two towers had frame tops and low, hipped roofs, which were replaced around 1900 with square caps to house elevator works. These caps have flat roofs, and Romanesque Revival cornices with brick, blind arch detailing. Originally constructed by the American Hard Rubber Company and the Home Woollen Company, respectively, the 1853 and 1866 blocks are of timber mill construction designed to support heavy vibrating machinery. The exterior walls are load-bearing. The interiors remain open, typical manufacturing spaces, their 12" x 16" beams spanning the width of the building and supported by a single line of yellow pine columns, The walls are exposed brick and the wood floors remain. The attic has truss-like structures which, with a line of tension rods, support the upper story.
Behind the 1853 block remain the canal and headrace, carrying diverted river water, and the dam. The tailrace runs beneath the 1853 block and the street and eventually empties into the river. The site of a one-story wheelhouse built in 1898, now gone, is visible behind the dam.
Being at the center of the complex, the 1853 and 1866 blocks have continuously housed the manufacturing operations of each of the plant's occupying companies. The American Hard Rubber Company probably carried out the entire production of their hard rubber powder flasks, whip sockets and buttons, from the vulcanization of the raw gum elastic to the completion of the finished product, in the 1853 block. With the purchase of the mill in 1863 by the Home Woollen Company, and their addition of the second block in 1866, the structures were equipped to house the mass production of finished woolen shawls as well as woolen cloth. Home Woollen also built a "Dynamo House," which stands south of the dam. This brick building, which housed the water power and, later, steam power to electricity systems, has two stories and windows like those of the rest of the complex.
The complex began to assume its present extended form with the purchase of the plant by the Beacon Falls Rubber Shoe Company in 1898. This owner erected over 16 additions or separate structures to serve their highly successful and ever-expanding operations. Several of the separate buildings were sheds constructed on the grounds behind the complex south of Burton Road. These, no longer standing, were in 1914 storage houses and a rubber reclaiming building. By 1916 the company had built a varnishing plant, lumber shed and garages in this area also.
The remaining structures added to this core mill between 1898 and 1916 are described below.
Engine Room, Varnishing Shop and Machine Shop (Buildings, 3, 4 and 5). Built in 1898, this single structure is a square, two-story brick building with a flat gabled roof and monitor.
Boiler House. Building 6. (1898) This two-story brick structure is an extension of the engine room and "Dynamo" House. The boiler house is a two-story, brick, gabled roof structure.
Building 9. (1900) This four-story brick block is oriented at a right angle to the main block to which it is attached, and stands at the corner of Burton Road and Main Street. In 1914 the addition was being used for milling crude rubber on the first floor, cutting the rubber on the second, packing on the third, and shoe making on the third and fourth.
Plant Office (1900) While brick, this Neo-Colonial building is distinguished from the manufacturing blocks by its domestic scale, rusticated brownstone basement, cross-gabled roof, symmetrical facade and elliptical attic fanlights. The window openings are segmental-arched and contain a one-over-one sash. The central window of the second story has a stone lintel and keystone detail. The Office building, which is connected to the mill behind, stands at the corner of Burton Road and Main Street. The interior has been extensively remodeled over the years.
Building 11 (1904) This four-and-one-half-story brick structure stands at the north corner of Burton Road and Main Street and was built to house the manufacture of shoe packing cases, the printing of the cases, sorting and buffing of the shoes, and the storage of finished goods.
Building 36 (1910) This sawtooth-roofed, one-story brick structure was constructed to house the process of vulcanizing the crude rubber. The building stands toward the south end of the complex and was accessible to the main plant by a set of tracks which run along the floor through a covered connector and through the machine shop.
Building 35 (1911) As with many of the shoe company's additions, this structure was built to store the increasing volumes of materials used as operations were expanded.
This building housed the storage of the canvas used in the uppers of sneakers and boots. The storage block is a two-story brick wing with a shed roof and segmental-arched windows.
Building 12 (1915) This large, two-story, frame stucco-faced storage building stands north of Burton Road and fronts on Main Street. The building has a monitor that extends nearly the length of the gable peak. Like the two other large additions built in 1915-1916, the wing was probably constructed to accommodate the high-volume of military products manufactured by Beacon Falls Rubber Shoe Company during World War I.
Building 13 (1916) This is a one-and-one-half-story frame building faced with stucco which stands on Main Street adjacent to Building 12.
No. 1 Ell (1916) This four-story brick structure, an ell built off the rear of the 1866 block, has a flat roof and segmental-arched windows. The ell housed drying, cutting, packing, and rubber sole-making operations.
Building 16 (1916) Overpass. This is a two-story pass which bridges the complex across Burton Road. The overpass contains offices as well as a corridor.
Little about the exterior of these blocks has changed since their original construction. As the buildings have most recently been used as warehouses, their interiors have changed little from their original appearance as open manufacturing and storage spaces.