Founded as Washington Cotton Factory, this mill is located just inside the city line along Jones Falls. Its original design was modeled on Slater Mill in Rhode Island and featured a long, narrow, three-and-a-half-story building of stone with a gable roof. One of the generation of early mills inspired by President Thomas Jefferson’s 1807 embargo on British goods, it is currently perhaps the oldest extant textile mill outside of Rhode Island. The complex was changed and added to over the years, including the 1847 brick addition on the east end of the original mill and a one-story brick dye house and machine shop built in 1850.
In 1853 William E. Hooper and Sons, the leading manufacturers of cotton sail cloth in the country, added this complex to its group of seven Jones Falls mills. Another even larger consolidation in 1899 added Hooper’s mills to the Mount Vernon Woodberry Cotton Duck Company. After World War I most production of cotton duck moved to mills in the South. Maryland Bolt and Nut Company purchased the mill and operated here until the late 1980s. During the 1990s several buildings in the historic complex were preserved and incorporated into a shopping center.