Cheney Brothers Historic District

The Cheney Brothers Historic District was a center of the silk industry in the late 19th and early 20th century. The 175acre district in Manchester, Connecticut includes over 275 mill buildings, workers houses, churches, schools and Cheney family mansions. These structures represent the well-preserved company town of the Cheney Brothers silk manufacturing company, the first America-based silk company to properly raise and process silkworms, and to develop the difficult techniques of spinning and weaving silk. The area was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1978.Description and historyThe Cheney Brothers district encompasses a 175acre area of South Manchester, bounded roughly on the south by Interstate 384 on the west by Fairfield Avenue, on the north by West, High, Laurel, Forest, and Eldridge Streets, and on the east by Chestnut and Spruce Streets. The centerpiece of the district is a collection of sixteen surviving mill buildings, which mostly front on Pine and Elm Streets. These are almost all brick buildings, some of them quite large, most of which were built between about 1880 and 1920. The mansions of the Cheney family are located in a 70acre area east of the mills; this is a park-like area including 13 primary buildings, the oldest of which is the original 1780s Cheney Homestead, now a historic house museum owned by the Manchester Historical Society. These houses were built from the early 19th century into the early 20th century by various members of the family. There are large clusters of mill worker housing built by the Cheneys to the north and west of the mill complex, with a smaller cluster east of the mansion area. These are typically frame structures one or two stories in height, most of them 19th century in construction. Public architecture built by the Cheneys include a large social venue (Cheney Hall) at 177 Hartford Road, a fire station at 230 Pine Street, a water treatment plan at 49 Cooper Hill Street, and several schools and churches.