Following the construction of the nearby Bristol Steam Mill, this second cotton mill was built in 1839. The Pokanoket Mill is a brick building, four stories in height, its gable presenting a tier of freight doors to the street. Following a fire in 1856 it was rebuilt with an addition to the north. It was then expanded repeatedly after it was acquired by Charles B. Rockwell's Cranston Mills in 1891. The Cranston Mills additions included a nine-bay extension to the north (c. 1911), a twelve-bay extension facing Church Street (1921), and a modern, flat-roofed brick wing along Constitution Street (1940). The result is a continuous line of mills, identical in height but depicting a full century of changing mill-building technology.