Skip to main content

New England Butt Photographs

 Collection
Identifier: 6805 P

Scope and Contents

Includes photogrpahs of textile machinery manufactured by the New England Butt Company of Providence, R.I. Depicted are a 36-strand harness braider, two other braiders, and two circular knitters. Also includes a view of the New England Butt Company building in Providence, R.I. Building is one story, behind chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. There is also a photograph of original etching by Boris Artzybasheff (1899-1965), copyright Wickwire Spencer Steel Co. [1940-1949]. Cartoon shows braiding machinery depicted with human-like faces and muscled arms with hands coming out to guide braided material onto flywheels.

Dates

  • 1940-1952

Language of Materials

Collection material in English

Conditions Governing Access

Access to the collections in the Kheel Center is restricted. Please contact a reference archivist for access to these materials.

Conditions Governing Use

This collection must be used in keeping with the Kheel Center Information Sheet and Procedures for Document Use.

Biographical / Historical

The New England Butt Company is a historic factory building at 304 Pearl Street in Providence, Rhode Island. It is a 3-1/2 story brick structure with a monitor roof, built in 1865 to designs by Spencer P. Read. The New England Butt Company originally manufactured cast iron butt hinges, but later changed to producing machinery for braiding and stranding wire. Many of the machines are still used today by wire companies throughout the world.

The New England Butt Company factory building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.[1] The drawings for all of the stranding machinery were sold to Watson Machinery International in Paterson, New Jersey in the mid 1980s. The drawings for all of the braiding machines were sold to Wardwell Braiding Company in Central Falls, Rhode Island, at the same time.

Watson went out of business in 2001 and the drawings were purchased by Kinrei of America, LLC. Today, information about the older stranding machines is available through Kinrei of America, LLC, in Wayne, New Jersey.

Extent

1.11 cubic feet

Abstract

Images depict braiding machines and circular knitters.

Related Materials

Related Collections: 6805: New England Butt Records 6805 GPN: New England Butt Glass Plate Negatives 6012: Charles D. Wrege Papers 6395: Charles D. Wrege Research Papers

Quantity:

0.1 linear ft.

Forms of Material:

Gelatin silver print, photographs.

General

Contact Information:
Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives Martin P. Catherwood Library 227 Ives Hall Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 (607) 255-3183> kheel_center@cornell.edu http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/library/kheel-center
Compiled by:
R. Miles, October 12, 2017
EAD encoding:
Randall Miles, December 04, 2017
Title
New England Butt Photographs
Status
Completed
Author
Compiled by R. Miles
Date
December 04, 2017
Language of description
Undetermined
Script of description
Code for undetermined script

Revision Statements

  • 02/23/2024: This resource was modified by the ArchivesSpace Preprocessor developed by the Harvard Library (https://github.com/harvard-library/archivesspace-preprocessor)

Repository Details

Part of the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation & Archives Repository

Contact:
227 Ives Hall
Ithaca NY 14853