11:00 AM – 4:00 PM
The Oaks [Willimantic Linen Co Worker Homes
47 Crescent St,
Willimantic, CT06226
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Victorian Days has changed this year. Tours will focus on the houses built for and rented to skilled workers after 1880. When William E. Barrows was General Manager of the Willimantic Linen Company, he championed progressive ideas, popular among some industrialists at the end of the nineteenth century. We will visit cottages in the “Oaks,” which were built in 1880 to attract skilled workers such as loom fixers, mechanics, and trades workers and, to a certain extent, to diffuse potential industrial unrest. Rents were set at equivalent to 12.5% of a worker's wages at that time. There are four styles of houses, no two of similar style placed next to each other. In addition a school was built, a library established, a park was created. Tickets are available at http://victorianwillimantic.org
