History of the famous 'Alice Mills'

WOONSOCKET, R.I. (WPRI) - The factory, known as the Alice Mill, is a historic Woonsocket landmark that was once the largest rubber goods factory in the world.

It was built in 1889 by the Woonsocket Rubber Company, which was purchased just three years after that by the United States Rubber Company.

The 217,000-square-foot building was sold to real estate company Fairmount LLC in December 2010 for $310,000, according to tax records. The assessed value of the building and land is more than $900,000.

At the height of its operation, 2,000 employees worked at the Alice Mill, according to Robert Bellerose's history of Woonsocket. Joseph Banigan, the head of the Woonsocket Rubber Company, named it after his mother, Alice.

The United States Rubber Company closed the Alice Mill in 1932, but reopened it in September 1941 to meet demand during World War II, according to Bellerose. "The mill manufactured barrage balloons, ten-man rubber attack boats, wading suits, and lifesaving suits," the book said.

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The mill remained in operation until the 1960s, according to published reports. It was later occupied by Tech Industries, a manufacturer of plastic packaging components, which changed its name to Portola Tech after being acquired by another firm in 2003.

Portola Tech moved out of the Alice Mill building in 2009 because of its deteriorating condition, company officials said at the time. They laid off 130 of their 231 workers and relocated the rest of the firm's operations to Cumberland, Central Europe and Asia.

Target 12 Investigator Tim White and WPRI.com reporter Ted Nesi contributed to this report.