National Register of Historic Places

Pontiac Mills

Warwick, Kent County, Rhode Island
Listed
June 4, 1972
Type
Building
Period
Industrial
Ref No.
72000019

About this property

Pontiac Mills is a historic textile mill complex on Knight Street in the village of Pontiac, Rhode Island within the city of Warwick. The mills produced the original Fruit of the Loom brand of cloth. The current mills were built beginning in 1863 by Robert Knight and Benjamin Knight (B.B. & R. Knight Company) to replace a smaller textile mill they had acquired from US Senator John Hopkins Clarke. Robert Knight, formerly a clerk at the mill's company store, had begun leasing the mill upon Clarke's election to the US senate in 1846, before purchasing it outright in 1850. The Knights later demolished it to erect the current mill in 1863. The mills produced uniforms for Union soldiers during the American Civil War. In 1920 Webster Knight sold Fruit of the Loom and the Pontiac Mills to the Consolidated Textile Corporation of New York for approximately $20 million, one of the largest deals ever made in the textile industry at that time.

Location

Warwick, Kent County, Rhode Island
41.72677, -71.46936

Categories

INDUSTRYARCHITECTURE
National Register nomination ›
Sources

Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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Nearby Historic Sites

Knight Estate
Industrial
0.8 mi
Gorton, Caleb, House
Industrial
1.3 mi
Potter-Remington House
Industrial
1.6 mi
Oak Lawn Village Historic District
Listed
1.7 mi
Westcote
Early Republic
2 mi

Questions about this property

When was Pontiac Mills listed on the National Register?

Pontiac Mills was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 4, 1972.

What type of historic resource is Pontiac Mills?

Pontiac Mills is classified as a building in the National Register of Historic Places.

What is the period of significance for Pontiac Mills?

The period of significance for Pontiac Mills is recorded as the industrial era.

Can I research the history near Pontiac Mills?

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