Worcester Business Journal

wbjournal.com | January 11, 2021 | Worcester Business Journal 9 W Draper Corp. is born By the turn of the 20th century, the Draper family had grown substantially, and the company absorbed a number of area manufacturers, officially organizing as Draper Corp. in 1916. e company was widely known by that time to be the largest manufacturer of auto- matic cotton looms in the world. e Drapers had made a name for themselves, boasting influence both in and out of the manufac- turing sphere, includ- ing William F. Draper, a Civil War general who later served as a U.S. congressman and ambassador to Italy, as well as Eben Sumner Draper, who served as the 44th governor of Massachusetts beginning in 1908, and Princess Margaret Draper Boncompagni, who married Prince Andrea Boncompagni of Rome in 1916. Notably, Gov. Draper and his wife donated the original land and buildings used to establish what is now Milford Regional Medical Center in 1903. In many ways, the Drapers were Hopedale. e Draper company, according to a 2007 report from the state Department of Conservation and Recreation, "paved 12 miles of streets, installed granite curbs and sidewalks, laid out municipal parks, built a sewage system and laid water and gas lines." e business built and maintained housing for its workers, oen in the form of duplexes, or double houses, many of which stand today. According to the 2007 DCR report, one cluster of 30 double houses near Hopedale Pond, dubbed the Lake Point Development, was a landmark in the design of com- pany housing. e Drapers, per Malloy, would eventually sell these homes by the half between 1955-1954, sometimes to the workers who lived in them. e Draper family, over the years, donated the town hall, the Hopedale Community House and George Albert Draper Gymnasium, temporary library space (a president of Draper Corp., Jo- seph Bancro, built the Bancro Memo- rial Library that stands today), as well as the town's Unitarian church, which now houses the Hopedale Unitarian Parish. During the company's heyday, many town buildings were heated by the Draper Co., whether or not they were Draper built or owned, through under- ground steam pipes, said Malloy, which caused a challenge for property manag- ers as the company began to shutter. "ey all had to put in heating sys- tems they hadn't had before," he said. A sputtering stop As the textile business began moving south, Draper followed suit. Layoffs, Malloy said, began in dribs and drabs. "People knew it was going downhill, certainly, before it did," he said. "ere were a lot of Milford news articles, and the company was always denying them." Draper enticed some of its Hopedale workers to move to South Carolina, where the company maintained opera- tions. Some, Malloy said, took the bait. Others turned to the technology and electronics industry, which was cropping up in Massachusetts along Route 128, which first opened in 1951. Malloy, who attended school in Hopedale, said his classmates' fathers worked at Draper around this time. Over the next three decades, the struggling company was sold, even- tually closing its Hopedale operations completely in 1980. e business, which had virtually built the town from the ground up, supported its infrastructure, and maintained the community through a paternalistic partnership, at one time employing as many as 4,000 people in and around Hopedale, was no more. The Draper mill should be demolished F L AS H P O L L Do you agree with the decision to demolish Draper mill in its entirety? Draper mill owner Hopedale Properties, run by principal Philip Shwachman who has owned the property for 30 years, originally planned to salvage the majority of the 19th-century sprawling building after undergoing a partial demolition. However, the Worcester Business Development Corp., which is helping Shwachman assess the property for potential development, announced on Dec. 1 the 1.8-million-square- foot building would be demolished in its entirety, citing environmental and safety concerns. This decision will overhaul the character of Hopedale, a small town with approximately 6,000 residents. When polled online, the majority of WBJ readers said tearing down the historic property was the right decision. "Community input should be taken into consideration as well." C O M M E N T S : PHOTOS/COURTESY OF BOB ANDERSON-DAN MALLOY "All of the industry was looking for a more economical way to keep them- selves in business," said Jeannie Hebert, president and CEO of the Blackstone Valley Chamber of Commerce. "Wages were lower, and it didn't cost as much in taxes to be in the South." On Dec. 1, 2020, Hopedale Proper- ties, which is run by principal Philip Shwachman, announced the entire Draper building would be demolished, aer announcing three months earlier it would take down only a quarter of the remaining structure. Shwachman, who bought his first Hopedale property in 1990, a decade aer Draper shut down, said he was not familiar with Hopedale prior to that purchase, but that he was looking forward to developing the land. "It is not oen that the opportunity to revitalize the core downtown of a community arises," Shwachman said in an email. "Given the large acreage we have, we are excited by the opportunity presented and look forward to working with the Community (sic) envisioning the future." e announcement has triggered mixed reactions from local residents and others invested in the social, histor- ical and economic wellbeing of both Hopedale and the Blackstone Valley. He- bert, who said she was sad the structure was coming down in full, said she hoped the Draper legacy would be commem- orated, such as with a brick courtyard built from the mill's remains. "ere's a lot of fond memories," He- bert said. "ere's a lot of families whose entire history was… at the Draper mill because the mills were a way of life." Still, she said, the development of the land will likely be a net positive both for Hopedale and the region, citing the current upswing of manufacturing in Central Mass., following periods of un- certainty in recent decades. She pointed to the Worcester Building Development Corp., which is helping Shwachman fix up the property, as well as the Cen- tral Massachusetts Regional Planning Commission, which she expects to be mindful of the area's needs. e future of the Draper property remains unknown, but what is clear is the town likely would never have existed without it. As in other towns in the region, among them Whitinsville, which housed Whitin Machine Works, or Webster, the home and final resting place of Samuel Slater, known famously as the father of the American Industrial Revolution, mill work and life in Central Mass. were one in the same. "It's always sad to say goodbye to an old friend," Hebert said. "It was long past time to get rid of this eyesore. The owner never intended to rehab the site and brought blight to Hopedale. I can only hope that the remediation goes without issue. There is a horrible smell in the air from the exposed wooden floors, soaked with creosote or some other toxic chemical." Yes, it's difficult to restore massive older properties in an economically feasible way. 56% No, historic structures like the Draper mill should be creatively reused, with sufficient incentives in place to do so. 44% Both of these photos, taken by Draper staff photographers and preserved before the mill closed, show the operations during the 1960s. W

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