One of the mansions of the Cheney family of silk manufacturers, the Clifford D. Cheney House, on Forest Street in Manchester, faces Hartford Road across the “Great Lawn,” around which the mansions are situated. The house, like a number of the other Cheney mansions, was designed by Charles Adams Platt, an architect, artist and landscape designer, whose mother was Mary Elizabeth Cheney. The house is distinctive with its pink stuccoed exterior.
The Cheney School house of 1859 was originally located on a hill, west of Pine Street and north of Cooper Hill Street, in Manchester. In 1914, it was moved to its current location, on Cedar Street, by the Cheney Brothers Silk Manufacturing Company to make room for a new dye house. Over the years, the building has served as a day care center, storage space and a children’s museum. In 1985, it became the Museum of Local History, now known as the Old Manchester Museum, managed by the Manchester Historical Society. Another notable schoolhouse nearby is the 1975 replica of the original 1751 one-room Keeney Schoolhouse, located on the grounds of the Cheney Homestead.
The brothers, Timothy and Benjamin Cheney, were important early American clockmakers. Timothy built the Cheney Family Homestead around 1785, and used a nearby brook to operate a grist mill that he built around 1790. After Timothy’s death in 1795, his oldest son, George Cheney, inherited the house. Among George‘s numerous children, his sons John and Seth became noted artists, while Charles, Ralph, Ward, Rush and Frank founded what would become the Cheney Brothers Silk Manufacturing Company. Today the Homestead is museum, owned and operated since 1969 by the Manchester Historical Society.
The Cheney family of silk manufacturers had a firehouse constructed on Pine Street in Manchester in 1901 to house the South Manchester Fire District‘s Hose & Ladder Company No. 1, which served the Cheneys’ silk mills and the surrounding neighborhoods. At that time, the Cheney Fire Station relied on the latest horse-drawn equipment. The Cheneys later sold the building, which is now owned by the town of Manchester. Since 1979, it has been rented to the Connecticut Firemen’s Historical Society, who operate the Fire Museum in the building.
One of the mansions of the Cheney family of silk manufacturers in Manchester is the house constructed around 1900 for Frank Cheney, Jr. on Hartford Road. A Colonial Revival structure, designed by Charles Adams Platt, it includes such features as a hipped roof, a prominent palladian window and portico with Ionic columns. Purchased in 1958 by the nearby South United Methodist Church, it has been used for various purposes and currently houses the offices of the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce and New Hope Manor.
The Clock Tower Mill, originally called the Spinning Mill, was constructed in 1886, on the corner of Forest and Elm Streets in Manchester, as part of the Cheney family‘s mill village complex. The earliest mills of the Cheney Brothers Silk Manufacturing Company were built in the 1830s along Hop Brook. As steam power superseded water power by the 1880s, the Cheney Brothers began to build in the area north of Hartford Road, starting with the Spinning Mills. The functional mill buildings feature some architectural decorations, including the Spinning Mill’s five-story Italianate clock tower. During World War II, the mill housed the Cheney Brothers’ Pioneer Parachute Co. (founded in 1938). There is an interesting story of a WWII private from Manchester who, about to jump over Normandy, was making a final inspection of his parachute and discovered it had been inspected by his own mother, who worked at the factory! Today the Clock Tower Mill is part of the Cheney Brothers National Historic Landmark District. In an example of adaptive reuse, the structure has been converted to apartments available for rent.
The Cheney Brothers Silk Manufacturing Company flourished in Manchester in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Nineteenth century mill village complexs, which included housing for workers, also featured entertainment venues for the community. Built in 1866, as a theater and cultural center, Cheney Hall was designed by the Boston artist and architect C. H. Hammatt Billings, who had also created the original illustrations for Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Over the years , audiences at Cheney Hall would see theatrical performances, boxing matches, high school graduations, and many famous speakers, including Horace Greeley (who had dedicated the building in 1867), Mark Twain, Susan B. Anthony, Henry Ward Beecher, Grover Cleveland and William H. Taft. The building was used as a hospital during the 1918 flu pandemic. Used as a fabric salesroom from 1925 to 1976, the building was then in bad condition, but was saved from demolition when the Cheney Brothers National Historic Landmark District was created in 1978. Restored in 1991, Cheney Hall today hosts performances of the Little Theatre of Manchester and is available for rentals.