The Textile Industry in Connecticut:

Housing for Factory Workers

The standard mill town consisted of factory buildings, worker housing, and stores that provided the necessities the workers needed. A mill town functioned as a fairly close-knit and self-sufficient village. One Connecticut mill town that embodies this is South Manchester, which was created and developed by the paternalistic Cheneys. Worker housing added to the sense of community created by living in close contact with other mill workers.

< The Cheney brothers, like other textile manufacturers, provided housing for many of their workers. This is one of the Cheney boarding houses. Single men or women were most likely to live in this type of boarding house, but it is possible that a small family might also live there.

South B Street, Taftville
Norwich, ca. 1900s
Photo CD: 0538
File: Img0044.pcd

< The multiple family houses on this street are representative of the average worker housing near factories. In Taftville, where the majority of the population was French Canadian, this provided a tightly knit enclave where neighbors worked together and shared a common culture.

View from the Roof
of the American Thread Company
Willimantic, ca. 1900
Photo CD: 0539
File: Img0093.pcd

< In Willimantic, mill owners organized worker housing into single family and multiple family units. Because of the diverse groups of immigrants working in the mills, neighborhoods tended to form according to ethnicity. People often classified Willimantic into four sections based on the cultural and socioeconomic status of its inhabitants.

Link to other essays in this Journey:

>> Introduction: The Textile Industry in Connecticut
>> Early History of Textiles in Connecticut
>> Diversity of Textiles
>> Child Labor
>> Immigrant Workers
>> Stages of Textile Processing

>> Guideposts
>> Suggestions for further reading