O'Bannon Mill (also known as O'Bannon Corporation Leather Division, or Collins & Aikman Mill) is an historical mill at 90 Bay Spring Avenue in Barrington, Rhode Island.
In 1905, a Mr. Frost founded the Frost Finishing Company and built the original 1905 structure which is part of the current O'Bannon building. Mr. O'Bannon, the treasurer, bought Frost's shares and the mill became the largest manufacturer of imitation leather in the world. O'Bannon went on to acquire other mills arounds Rhode Island and New Jersey. Mr. O'Bannon was became incompetent in 1921, died in 1923 and the company went bankrupt in 1926. Cranston Worsted Mills and then Collins and Aikman and finally American Tourister and Piling Chain owned the company until the 1970s. The mill building was converted into elderly apartment housing in the early 1990s, known as the "Barrington Cove Apartments". It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.
Famous quotes containing the word mill:
“Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds your stuff to any degree of fineness; but, nevertheless, what you get out depends on what you put in; and as the grandest mill in the world will not extract wheat flour from peascods, so pages of formulae will not get a definite result out of loose data.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895)