currently

What is now known as Imperial Place was once home to the Imperial Knife Company and the Vesta Knitting Mills which occupied it into the mid eighties. One of the first mill to condo conversions, it has been condominiums and office space since the early nineties.

It is made up of four buildings, occupying a block bounded by Imperial Place, Elm Street, Hospital Street, and Bassett Streets:
14 Imperial Place (22 units of residential/mixed use)
18 Imperial Place (46(?) units of residential/mixed use)
Imperial Dorms (Johnson & Wales) on Hospital Street
and one low slung building on Hospital Street.

14 Imperial Place is home to the restaurant CAV as well as Jerry’s Art-a-Rama art supply store and framing shop.

history

(From the RIHPHC’s 1981 Industrial Buildings Survey)
In 1883 Rudolph Berry established a company to manufacture ribbed, knitted underwear and hosery made on circular-knitting machines. This type of jersey underwear for women and children previously had been imported from France, England, and Switzerland. Berry's company started in a small, 2-story building. By 1888 he had outgrown these structures and built two 3-story buildings. A few years later, in 1891, the business incorporated as the Vesta Knitting Mills. By this time the company had doubled its output of knitted goods. The machinery included spinning. carding, drying, scouring, and knitting machines which were operated by 300 employees. The company soon established a sales office in New York and Vesta products were distributed throughout the country.

The Vesta Knitting Mills, one of the few textile companies located in this part of the city, took advantage of the proximity of the jewelry district in a few blocks to the northeast when it expanded its factory in 1893 and 1903. The Vesta Company occupied most of its 1893 factory – a handsome, 6-story, brick structure with segmental-arch windows, rounded comers, and manufacturers. With jewelry-manufacturing rental space at a premium in or near the jewelry district, the Vesta Knitting Mills soon invested in a second large factory designed primarily for jewelry manufacturing. The company rented five of the six floors to jewelry manufacturers and occupied one floor of the new structure. This plain brick structure with a flat roof, segmental-arch windows, and granite sills is adjacent to the earlier structure. In 1916 the Vesta Knitting Mills reorganized as the Vesta Underwear Company with Ovide de St. Aubin as the president and his brother Percival as the treasurer. By 1930 the Vesta Underwear Company was producing 4000 dozen garments a week. In 1941, however, the Vesta Underwear Company closed its plant and sold the buildings to the Imperial Knife Company which already occupied the 1903 structure.

The Imperial Knife Company founded by Felix Mirando was the first large American manufacturer of jack knives, a product which had previously been imported from Germany and England. By 1929 the company employed 1,000 workers. The Imperial Knife Company, which now manufactures all kinds of cutlery, still occupies these buildings.

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