D. T. Dudley & Son Company, Providence Road, Wilkinsonville, Worcester County, MA

Significance: The Dudley Firm, producers of wood shuttles for power textile looms, traces its origins to 1825. The present shop site was purchased and built on in 1867. In that year the business was reorganized as a sole ownership by David T. Dudley and son Henry, who in 1894 sold out to a corporation headed by Louis E. Chase. His son Daniel M. II was the last proprietor before sale to Howard S. Pellatt in 1961 and reorganization as Dudley Shuttles, Inc. The main building developed from a rectangular two-story block built in 1885 after a fire destroyed all previous structure. The brick powerhouse-maching shop, built in 1900, remained in use until 1954. Technologically the firm's most significant feature is the highly specialized production machinery, much of which was designed and built on the premises by the Chases. With the increasing use of shuttleless looms by the textile industry, the shuttle as means of carrying the filling yarn through the warp threads in the weaving process appears doomed to eventual obsolescence, the particular reason for this survey.
Survey number: HABS MA-1144