Knowlton Hat Factory
Knowlton Hat Factory is a factory listed on the National Register of Historic Places in Upton, Massachusetts, that specialized in hat manufacturing. The building produced high-quality hats from various materials including straw, plastic braid, and wool for nearly 100 years.
The factory started in the late 1800s under William Knowlton's leadership and recruited young women from Canada and Maine as workers. It became the world's largest factory for women's hats and drove Upton's economy for nearly a century before being added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.
The factory employed nearly 1,000 workers, many of them young women from Canada and Maine who came to find work. These workers shaped the community and left a lasting mark through the French family names still common in Upton today.
The building now houses Millhaus Apartments providing affordable housing for seniors, so it is viewable from the outside but not open for interior tours. A visitor center at the Upton Historical Museum on Grove Street displays exhibits about the factory's history with original hats, tools, and photographs.
The factory produced hats under many different brand names that were sold in stores from New York to Paris, yet few people knew all these hats came from Upton. This broad distribution helped it gain worldwide recognition for quality while remaining largely unknown as the actual manufacturer.
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