Cheney Brothers Silk Mills
Near Hartford, Connecticut
The Cheney Brothers silk complex in Manchester, Connecticut was for decades one of the leading silk manufacturing operations in the United States. The family began producing silk thread in eighteen thirty-eight, and by the late nineteenth century their mills employed thousands of workers and covered a vast stretch of the South Manchester hillside. Cheney Brothers supplied silk for flags, military insignia, ribbons, and the fine dress fabrics that outfitted prosperous Victorian America.
The company also built a complete industrial village around the mills: worker housing, a library, a clubhouse, churches, and parks, all on land the Cheneys owned and managed. The complex is now a National Historic Landmark and the mill buildings have been converted to apartments and studios, a common post-industrial transformation in New England. What makes Cheney unusual is the exceptional completeness of the surviving landscape, mills, housing, and all.
