Weird Island

62. MILLS: Ann & Hope

Episode Summary

Ann & Hope… were two women. Then the words became the name of a ship, followed by a mill, and later a store. This week, I’ll bring you along as I learn the story of the Ann & Hope Mill and the discount department store that shared its name. And along the way, we’ll even uncover a bit of a mystery.

Episode Notes

Episode Source Material

Episode Transcription

I used to work out in a gym in an old mill building that smelled like a combination of old wood and rubber horse stall mats. I loved it, because it was different from a lot of Crossfit gyms I’ve been to. Most are very open and new feeling, with big garage doors to let in air. But this one was dark and small, with columns breaking up the space. Under the mats were hardwood floors. It was funny. It had character. And it wasn’t on the ground floor of the mill, like it probably should have been. So, if someone dropped a heavy weight you’d kind of feel the floor bounce and wiggle in an unsettling way that we all found pretty amusing. And then one day, the gym closed down. Probably because we shouldn’t have been dropping weights in an old building like that, though I’m not totally sure.
Sometimes I drive by the old mill and feel a pang of sadness, because I loved the time I spent there. And I know others have that feeling, too, but for different reasons. That gym was in the Ann & Hope building, in Cumberland, and in all of my days spent there, for some reason I never once went to the Ann & Hope outlet and I never looked into the history of the building I had spent so much time in. I actually didn’t consider researching it until someone suggested the topic. But, it turns that I was missing out. Because that mill had so many different lives, and meant different things to people along the way. And it makes you realize how easy it is to take for granted things that are right in front of you.
I’m Sara, and you’re listening to Weird Island. Each week, I’ll be telling you about the strangest stories I can dig up from my tiny, little state of RI. And this week, I’ll bring you along as I learn the story of the Ann & Hope Mill and the discount department store that shared its name. And along the way, we’ll even uncover a bit of a mystery.
The Blackstone Valley is full of big, old industrial mills that many find beautiful today. A number have been repurposed into trendy, high-ceilinged loft apartments and people live in the spaces where men and women and even children spent their days working over 100 years before. Which is interesting to me, because when these mills were active, employees would often live in mill villages adjacent to the places where they worked. So these mills could have been someone’s entire world. Some of the lofts today look out over the powerful Blackstone River, which was so incredibly important to the industrial history that shaped the area. If it weren’t for the river, the towns of Cumberland and Lincoln and Smithfield would be very different places today.
Prior to the Industrial Revolution, these areas were very rural, with just small, disconnected farms focused on cultivating only enough food to sustain a family. And in Cumberland, right where the huge Ann & Hope Mill is today, there was one of the earliest English homesteads. It was the home of a man who’s name we all recognize today, though few know much about him. That man was William Blackstone. Bear with me, because I’m going to tell you a little bit about who he was before we jump into this story, and I promise that later, you’ll be glad to have the context.
Now, if you don’t know very much about Blackstone, that’s okay. I didn’t either. I knew, vaguely, that he had something to do with apples, because I read it on a sign once, but I knew almost nothing else. It turns out that the primary reason he’s remembered today has little to do with apples, and has more to do with the fact that he is known as the first European to settle both Boston and later Rhode Island.
Blackstone seems very much to have been cut from the same cloth as Roger Williams. He was an Anglican clergyman and scholar who came to America and first settled in Boston in the years before the Puritans arrived. Historians often depict him as a bookish, eccentric loner. He planted English roses, raised animals and cultivated apples. And when the Puritans settled in Boston, Blackstone found himself at odds with the new arrivals. So he picked up and left.
He built a home in what is today the Lonsdale area of Cumberland one year before Roger Williams settled Providence. The area became known as Study Hill because it was home to Blackstone’s large library of books. He called his house study hall. And many years later, the river he settled on would be named after him. In this place, he pursued a secluded and contemplative life with his books, his animals, his roses and his apples. And that apple fact I vaguely remembered is that he’s responsible for cultivating the first American variety of apple. He wasn’t a complete loner, though. He was said to ride a saddle-broken bull into Providence where he would preach and give out apples to children.
Blackstone died in 1675, just as King Philip’s war broke out, and his home with its library was burned down during the conflict. Just like Roger Williams, Blackstone was buried on his property and there was no headstone or memorial marking his grave, just a large rock. And people largely forgot about Blackstone as the years went on until there was a revival of interest in his story in the 1800s. But, that place–Study Hill–that is where Ann & Hope was built over 200 years later. And though Blackstone’s name is everywhere today, the mills likely shaped the area more than Blackstone did.
The American Industrial Revolution was born in Pawtucket in the late 1700s. Prior to that, the state’s economy was highly dependent on trade–with a dark history of involvement in slavery and the Triangle Trade. By the early 1800s, things began to change. The Napoleonic Wars, the US Embargo Act of 1807, and the War of 1812 made it difficult and dangerous for American ships to continue trading around the world. And many who had made their fortunes in the maritime trade began to invest in the growing domestic textile industry.
One of the most prominent examples of that happening was with the Brown family, who established a well-known shipping empire based out of Providence. The first Brown to get into textiles was Moses Brown, when he partnered with Samuel Slater on that first successful textile mill in Pawtucket. And the next generation of his family would follow him into manufacturing. His nephew Nicholas Brown Jr. and his partner Thomas Poynton Ives were the founders of a shipping company called Brown & Ives, and they were valuable players in the China Trade, bringing back shipments of silks, spices and tea with their fleet of ships. They named one of their ships Ann & Hope, after their wives Ann Brown and Hope Brown Ives. Later, they’d give a second ship the same name. But as trade became more challenging, they dipped their toes tentatively into manufacturing, investing in a mill known as the Blackstone Manufacturing Company.
And it was so successful, it encouraged them to leave the merchant trade entirely. They brought money with them into this new industry, money that enabled them to invest on a larger scale than many of their competitors. They purchased land and water rights along the Blackstone River in Lincoln, Smithfield and Cumberland and started their textile empire. Within a three year period, they built three large mills with mill villages surrounding them, where workers would live, and shop, and worship, and their children would attend school. Like I said before, these mills could be someone’s whole world.
And the factories produced cotton on a grand scale. Others around that time had hundreds of spindles capable of spinning cotton. But after just a few years, the company had about 11K spindles on 230 looms. They incorporated as the new Lonsdale Company - and today, the area where these mills were built and where the workers lived continues to bear that name.
Nicholas Brown Jr. and Thomas Ives both passed away shortly after the new company’s incorporation, but the next generation continued on, and in the post-Civil War years their mills got even bigger. They built the Ashton Mill in 1867, which is one of my favorite mills–you can visit it where it sits along the Blackstone Bike path. Then in 1872 they built the Berkeley Mill. And they began to expand Lonsdale, their earliest mill village. At this point, those original Lonsale mills were older and the machinery was outdated. So the company began building a “new” Lonsdale that would include the new, modern Ann & Hope Mill across the Blackstone River in Cumberland, in that place called Study Hill.
And now you’ll understand why I told you about Blackstone. Because as the Lonsdale Company began building their massive, new, modern mill, they found out about a body buried on the property that people were pretty interested in protecting. As it turns out, Blackstone’s grave was located right where the Lonsdale Company was planning to build Ann & Hope–and before they could build their new mill, people insisted they do something to give Blackstone a more suitable memorial.
In the 1850s, local historians began taking an interest in preserving the memory of some of the earliest European settlers in the state. Roger Williams’ remains were located and unearthed so they could be placed beneath a large monument, and a group known as the Blackstone Monument Association wanted to do that same thing for William Blackstone. In 1856, they gathered at his grave to stress the need for a proper monument. There were speeches, there was music, and people were asked to donate money. But no monument was built, and no one knows what happened to the money that was collected.
But by the 1880s, when the Lonsdale Company came along with plans to level Study Hill to build Ann & Hope, there was a new urgency to follow through on the plans to create a monument.
As luck would have it, a director at the Lonsdale Company named William Gammell also happened to be president of the RI Historical society. And he led the charge. The company brought in some well-known Providence Undertakers who located and removed Blackstone’s remains, which included a few small pieces of bone and some ancient nails that might have been used in a coffin. And the remains were placed in a box that would be reburied once the mill and a monument were constructed.
With that taken care of, they got to work building the mill. It would be called Ann & Hope. Like the ships, the building was named for Ann Brown and Hope Brown Ives. And it was designed by Frank P. Sheldon, a noted industrial architect and engineer at the time. The factory represented progress with its large scale and modern design. It was originally just shy of 500 feet long with a large tower that had the words Ann & Hope 1886 written across it. In 1901 an addition with a matching tower extended the building even farther, making it one of the nation’s largest textile factories at the time. The mill itself was at the forefront of technological innovation, and was one of the earliest and largest users of a new Draper loom that had an automatic bobbin changer. So, this was a pretty impressive operation. And while today, the mill is surrounded by parking lots, the grounds would likely have been well-landscaped and the mill village beside it was praised for its attention to aesthetics and planning. Lonsdale was said to be one of the most prosperous and thriving manufacturing communities in RI, and was respected as a place where mill workers could enjoy better-than-average conditions.
In 1889, a monument to William Blackstone was finally built within the enclosed grounds of the mill, surrounded by a manicured green lawn. And the box containing Blackstone’s remains was supposedly buried alongside it. Not everyone was happy with the monument’s location, though. It was challenging to get to, and a descendant of Blackstone’s worried the loud whirring of industrial looms would have been unsettling to the spirit of his ancestor.
The Ann & Hope mill continued to produce cotton textiles into the 1930s, when the manufacturing and textile industry in Rhode Island started to decline. The use of steam power meant mills didn’t need to be located along a powerful river any more, and many manufacturers closed or moved their operations to the south where labor and production were cheaper. By the 1940s, the mill had shut down. And the spirit of William Blackstone could once again enjoy his solitude.
But it wouldn’t last for long. In 1941, the US entered WWII, and the empty Ann & Hope building became a repair depot for the Navy. Suddenly, the area was bustling again, and a spur from the railroad ran to the building. The monument stood ignored, but local residents worried it was in danger of being damaged. So a member of the nearby First Presbyterian Church recommended that the granite obelisk be moved from the mill’s property onto the church’s property, where it could be better cared for. And after some negotiations with the owners of the mill and representatives of the Navy, the monument was moved in 1944. But, afterwards, no one seemed to know whether or not Blackstone’s remains were moved with the monument. So, it became somewhat of a mystery–where were Blackstone’s remains?
Two years later, the Navy had vacated the building–and the massive mill was sold to a man who would change the way we think of Ann & Hope today. His name was Martin Chase, founder of the Ann & Hope retailer. Now, when Chase purchased the Ann & Hope mill, he wasn’t planning to set up a retail store. He actually moved a manufacturing business into the mill. He had recently purchased a ribbon factory in Norwich, CT and he wanted to move the operation closer to his home in Providence. So, he set up the factory in the Ann & Hope mill and rented out the remaining space to other small businesses. By 1950, a new, cheaper ribbon appeared on the market and Chase’s manufacturing business went under.
But surprisingly it might have been the single best thing that could have happened. When the factory closed, there was still a large supply of ribbon that hadn’t been sold, so Martin Chase and his son Irwin sold the ribbon at a deep discount to other tenants in the building. And not only did it sell out, but people brought their friends to shop and the news spread. Martin and Irwin quickly realized that there was an appetite for discounted products people could afford. So, they began adding other goods to their impromptu business. And they named their store Ann & Hope–I mean, the words were already right there on the building.
Martin had previous experience in retail to draw from. Up until WWII, he had worked in and managed clothing stores and had even owned a store of his own. But when the war broke out, the clothing industry declined, so he dabbled in manufacturing. But, the post-war economic boom established the perfect conditions for Chase’s new retail business to thrive. And he wasn’t just lucky. He was really clever and innovative, introducing new ideas that would shape the retail industry as we know it today.
I thought Ann & Hope was just a local chain that Rhode Islanders felt nostalgia for, so I was surprised to learn that the retailer was the first true discount department store chain in the United States, preceding players like Wal-mart and Kmart by almost a decade. It was one of the first chains to pioneer the concept of offering low priced goods by cutting back on overhead costs. Chase outfitted the store with pipe racks and little else in the way of fixtures. And then he stocked the store with big basket shopping carts, which were fairly common in supermarkets, but not retail. Today, many fondly remember the store’s unique shopping cart conveyor, which would move carts from one floor to another.
And the thing is, you needed that shopping cart, because Chase was one of the earliest to offer self-service retail, which sounds kind of strange today. But at the time, you wouldn’t typically be shopping alone if you went to a department store. You would dress up nice, head to the store, and a sales clerk or personal shopper would escort you around as you shopped. Registers would have been located around the store, rather than in one central location. And the sales clerk might either help you to your car after you made your purchase, or even arrange to have something shipped to your home.
At Ann & Hope, customers could shop on their own. They would then carry their items to a centrally located bank of registers, pay in cash, and carry their goods out with them. So, basically, they would do exactly what we do in pretty much all stores today–except for the pay in cash part. Who does that anymore?
All of these innovations meant Chase could cut down on costs and offer cheaper prices to consumers. And that was so appealing, Ann & Hope quickly grew to be RI’s largest volume department store. By 1969, the store had expanded to include a Warwick location, and the combined sales grossed more than $40M.
The innovative chain caught the attention of other aspiring discounters. In 1961, two now-famous men visited the store. Harry Cunningham and Sam Walton. The following year, they founded Kmart and Wal-Mart respectively. Two stores that need no introduction. Sam Walton would recognize Martin Chase as the “father of discounting,” in his autobiography. And would admit that he copied a number of ideas from Ann & Hope. In fact, Walton admitted that nearly everything about Walmart was copied from someone else.
Today, discount merchandising, following the patterns set by Chase, has overtaken department and specialty stores as the leading form of retail. As early as 1968, the Mass Merchandising Research Foundation honored Chase for having “set in motion a tide of low margin retailing which revolutionized the distribution system of the US and greatly extended the purchasing power of the American Consumer.” The ideas Chase pioneered are so commonplace it’s actually difficult to imagine things any other way. But while Ann & Hope may have been the first, it turns out the store didn’t have the same success or the same longevity as some of its competitors.
Love it or hate it, Walmart is the biggest retailer in the world. There are over 4,700 stores in the United States, and according to the company itself, ⅔ of Americans live 5 miles or less from one of their stores. They squashed the competition, including Ann & Hope. Though, I came across an intriguing rumor in a YouTube comment. The commenter claimed Chase and Walton had a gentleman’s agreement that Wal-Mart wouldn’t step on the toes of Ann & Hope. I assumed that was untrue, but fun fact: Rhode Island didn’t get its first Walmart until 1993, one year after Sam Walton’s death. This made Rhode Island one of the very last states to get a Walmart–along with Alaska, Hawaii, Washington state, and VT (for some reason). Could be a coincidence. Who knows?
Regardless, Ann & Hope never really took off outside of New England. In 2001 they closed their department stores, turning their remaining locations into off-price outlets. In the following years, some new locations were opened, but in June of 2020, months into the global pandemic, the company announced it would be closing all remaining outlet stores.
As 2021 drew to a close, the Ann & Hope Mill was sold to a residential real estate developer that plans to convert the massive building into a mix of 200 or so residences with additional commercial spaces.
I drove by recently and found that the building is now surrounded by temporary fencing. You used to be able to drive down into the lower parking lot, and I had hoped to park and walk around the outside, but I couldn’t. I don’t know when the developer plans to begin work on the renovations, but I do wonder what they’ll find when they start. Could it be that they’ll uncover a small wooden box with the remains of William Blackstone – left behind back when the statue was moved onto the church property?
The truth is, the box with Blackstone’s remains might not be there anymore. In the 1980s, writer Louise Lind investigated the whereabouts of the box–attempting to determine if it had moved with the monument or not. And she spoke with a man named Robert E. Furey, who shared an interesting story. He said that his father worked at Ann & Hope as an engineer from the WWII days until the discount store days. And he claimed that after the war, a small cottage was being constructed on the property to function as an office for one of the tenants. While utilities were being extended to the cottage, workers unearthed a wooden box sealed in lead near the building’s north tower–where the monument used to stand. Furey claimed the box was placed in a storeroom behind his father’s office, in the mill, where it sat, untouched, for many years. He urged his father to send the box to the Historical Society, but as far as he knows, that never happened. And he guesses that when Ann & Hope expanded retail operations, the box may have been lost.
But, who knows? Maybe as work begins, the box will resurface. Uncovered from some storage room or closet to experience the next chapter of the building’s history.
Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode! And thank you to Domenic for suggesting the topic! If you plan to go check out Ann & Hope and the Blackstone Monument, heads up–the monument now stands at the corner of Broad and Blackstone Streets, with signage explaining the story of its many moves. It was moved a few blocks down the street from the Presbyterian church property in 1996, but online maps will often mistakenly still point you to that address! As always, all episodes are written and researched by me, Sara Corben. If you liked this episode, I would love it if you could share it with your family or friends, or you can send me a note at Weird Rhode Island at Gmail.com or on IG at Weird Island Podcast. And if there’s a topic you’d really like to hear about, let me know! See you next time as we dig up more stories about all things weird and wonderful in the little state of Rhode Island.