Boston Manufacturing Company cotton mill, Waltham, MA, circa 1901

About this postcard

The view looks across the mill pond or canal toward the Boston Manufacturing Company's brick cotton mill in Waltham, Massachusetts. Long mill buildings with rows of windows flank the water, bare winter trees stand in the foreground, and a small footbridge crosses in the middle distance. The caption identifies the works as the "First Cotton Mill in New England." The Boston Manufacturing Company, established in Waltham in the early nineteenth century, was an early example of the integrated textile mill, where raw cotton was spun and woven into cloth at one site, a model that spread through New England mill towns.