Trained at the nearby and earlier Elliot Manufacturing Company (1824), Otis Pettee established his textile machinery factory on South Meadow Brook, a tributary of the Charles, in 1831. He built machinery here for the rapidly industrializing New England area and markets abroad. Consolidated as the Pettee Machine Works in 1880, the company began in 1887 to focus on producing flat-card cotton-carding machines, a new technology successfully introduced from England in 1885. Lockwood, Greene and Company designed a new brick foundry here in 1893, now the oldest building on the Pettee site. An additional three-story brick mill was constructed in 1895, a new steam generating plant between 1910 and 1913, and another new foundry in 1920. Most of the mill buildings erected between 1893 and 1920 have been divided into multiple commercial and industrial uses; a large parking lot replaces the former millpond.