One Kendall Square in Cambridge, MA is a business complex with a variety of biotech startups, restaurants, bars, and a movie theater. Parts of it have been renovated or rebuilt in the style of modern office buildings, but some retain the 19th century brick facades typical of American mills and factories of that era. Since I often frequent Cambridge Brewing Company and other establishments, I became interested in the history of these buildings. They were built by the Boston Woven Hose & Rubber company and operated as a rubber goods factory from 1884 until 1981.

While I haven’t discovered anything in my research that would surprise anybody, I wanted to gather everything I found in one place for anyone else who is interested.

Rubber Manufacturing

The Americas were the first major source of rubber available to Western civilization. Natural rubber is made from the latex fluid produced by many plants, but most notably the Para tree of South America. Boston, as a major trading center, was a natural place for the rubber trade, as well as its industrial applications.

But rubber in its natural state gets sticky in hot weather and hard in the cold. This makes it unsuitable for manufactured products. The remedy to this was discovered in the mid-19th century, most famously by Charles Goodyear after whom the Goodyear tire company was posthumously named. With this new process called vulcanization, long-lasting rubber products like tires and hose could be produced. Many of the major milestones in the development of such products took place in New England. Goodyear himself operated a small factory in Springfield, MA.

Another important businessman was Nathaniel Hayward, who worked with Goodyear and produced rubber clothing in a factory village called Haywardville in what is now the Middlesex Fells. That factory operated until the 1890s.

More significant was the Boston Belting Co. which operated out of Roxbury. This company had its beginnings in the 1820s, prior to the discovery of vulcanization. They also crossed paths with Goodyear and went on to use his discovery to become a major manufacturer of rubber belts and hose which operated until 1926.

Right across the tracks from Boston Woven Hose in Cambridge was American Rubber Co., which was at one time the largest producer of rubber clothing in the world¹.

Sadly, none of the above factories exist today. The Boston Woven Hose buildings are the only monuments I know of in New England to the pioneers of this technology. While rubber goods continue to be produced all around the world, these businesses were the beginning of the many rubber products that today we take for granted.

Cambridgeport and Broad Canal

First, a bit about where the factory was built.

The City of Cambridge dates back to the earliest European colonies. But for centuries, the eastern part, adjoining the mouth of the Charles River, was a swampy estuary. In the late 18th century, canals started to be built to transport goods by water to inland towns. The Middlesex Canal, the Erie Canal, and dozens of others were built in this time period. Cambridge wanted to get in on some of this action and in 1805 was officially declared a port of entry by an act of Congress – hence the name “Cambridgeport.” At this time, the Charles River was not dammed, and was in theory navigable all the way from Boston Harbor. Broad Canal was dredged from the riverbank to what is now the corner of Hampshire and Portland Streets. Also built was Lechmere Canal further downstream. But as a consequence of decreased shipping during the war of 1812 and the relative convenience of Boston’s wharves, the project of turning Cambridge into a seaport never took off. Railroads began to be built in the 1830s, and the age of canals was over.

The Boston Woven Hose company was built on the corner of Hampshire and Portland in the 1880s. They and other companies along Broad Canal used it for transport of supplies and fuel. For some time, the Boston Woven Hose power plant got its coal deliveries this way as well. Increasingly, supplies began to be brought by railroad, and the only remaining use of the canal was to supply water for the plant’s operations.

I searched for any information about Broad Canal and found that most of the newspaper reports were mundane, reporting on drownings or accidents in the canal. However one interesting revelation was that the end of the canal was used as a swimming hole by local boys. An article in the Boston Globe from August 28, 1930 vividly describes an encounter between the boys and the police:

The problem is written about again on August 2, 1934. Apparently, numerous windows at American Rubber had been broken, and the youngsters were blamed. Police raided the swimming hole in a boat. Incidentally, the railroad bridge over the canal, visible in the power station photo below, was popularly known as “Dizzy Bridge” according to the article. The article goes on to state that “The boys were in varying moods while in custody. One entertained the others with a number of ballads given in a rich tenor voice. Three others were crying.”

On June 13, 1935, there was another raid, after “more than 100” windows were broken at the factories.

The thing that finally did Broad Canal in was the Kendall Sq. redevelopment of the 1960s. Many of the old factories including American Rubber were torn down, Broad Canal was filled up to its present length, and the NASA research center (now the Volpe transportation building) built on top. For more on the redevelopment, there is an article here with some great archival photos of Broad Canal and Kendall Sq. Here is another blog post talking about the redevelopment.

Now the future of the Volpe building is in doubt, and the possibility of uncovering Broad Canal again is being discussed (See the Connect Kendall Square Competition). I hope this idea comes to pass.

The Boston Woven Hose Company and its Products

Early beginnings

All the histories of Boston Woven Hose begin with Lyman Reed Blake, who is famous for inventing a leather sewing machine for attaching the soles of shoes just before the start of the Civil War. Gordon McKay, manager of the Lawrence Machine Shop, came upon his invention and became fabulously wealthy by supplying the Union army with footwear.

Blake went on to develop a machine which could analogously stitch tightly-woven cotton canvas or duck fabric into a tube. This machine led to the formation of the Blake Hose Company in 1870 which was not successful. It is said that the public was suspicious of hose which had a seam in it, and sales were slow.

Blake was financially successful from his shoe invention, but died at the age of 48 from tuberculosis.

Theodore Ayrault Dodge

Col. Theodore A. Dodge was a decorated Civil War veteran, having lost his leg in the Battle of Gettysburg, and upon returning home became a businessman and war historian. His books on Alexander the Great and Hannibal remain popular on Amazon to this day. But it was while he was treasurer at the McKay Sewing Machine company that he formed the connections that bring him into our story².

The sources are hazy on whether Dodge was part of the Blake Hose venture or whether he came in after its failure. In any case, in 1872 inventor James E. Gilliespie approached him with a machine that could weave seamless hose. Although seamless goods such as stockings were already being made by machine, a seamless fabric with the required tightness for making waterproof hose had not yet been mastered.

As explained in Gillespie’s patent 163925, “In this class of looms, as heretofore constructed, it has been impossible to weave tubular fabric of sufficient strength, or with warp and weft sufficiently compacted and accumulated, to form practical hose for hydraulic purposes, because the warp-carriers, as heretofore constructed, could not be brought sufficiently close together […].” It was this deficiency that his new machine tried to rectify. However, it was overly complex and unreliable, supposedly containing 80,000 parts.

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Nevertheless, Dodge persevered, and with the assistance of inventor Robert Cowen they continued developing the product, spending (according to Dodge) the scarcely believable sum of $150,000 ($3.5 million today) on their research. In 1880, they began producing hose in two rented rooms of the Curtis Davis Soap Factory on Portland St. Initially, their product was just seamless cotton tubing, to be rubberized elsewhere.

I have not been able to find a patent for a redesigned weaving loom. It’s possible that Cowen concluded that a special loom was unnecessary, given a satisfactory rubber lining. In 1880 patent 226038 for weaving fabric hose around a rubber tube, “I desire it to be understood that I make no specific claim for the apparatus herein shown for making the textile part of the hose, as it is well known and in common use, and instead of the apparatus shown I may employ any other well – known equivalent apparatus to either weave, braid, or knit the textile covering.”

In 1884, the company outgrew its accomodations, and put up the first buildings on the corner of Hampshire and Portland. Dodge remained in control of the company until a reorganization in 1898 led to his retirement, and he continued writing his war histories and vacationing in Paris until his death in 1909. He married twice, and had three surviving children. He is buried at Arlington Cemetery.

Robert Cowen

Cowen was apprenticed to a machinist in Worcester at the age of 12 as he “early evinced a decided bent for machines.”³ He was only 23 years old at the time he joined Dodge in his venture, and quickly became the mechanical mastermind of the Woven Hose factory. He soon became vice president of the company, an office he held until the reorganization when he was made technical manager of the plant.

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He died in 1902 at the age of 53 as a consequence of what the newspaper calls “ulceration of the stomach.”⁴ It is said that he was much loved by his employees, and a crowd of 600 attended his funeral⁵.

He married twice: his first wife, Emma Thomas, died in 1884. He had one child with her. He had three children with his second wife, Emma J. Rawson. Incidentally, she was the daughter of another prominent Cambridge machinist, George W. Rawson. His firm Rawson & Morrison, just a few blocks down Broad Canal, produced steam engines and hoisting machinery.

Further History

The first brick building, right on the corner, was built in 1884. Luckily the plan of the site as built is readily available.

An engraving of the factory from the 1880s.

Cambridge Tribune Article (Click to view full size)