A looming void

An image from James Hunt’s   show  “The Draper Factory Demolition,’’ at the RI Center for Photographic Arts, Providence, through Feb. 11.

The Draper factory, in Hopedale, Mass., was once the world’s largest manufacturer of powered cotton looms, with the machines built there playing a role in the American Industrial Revolution. The demolition of the 80-acre complex, in 2020, came after it had stood vacant since 1980, creating a void in the fabric of Hopedale.

A utopian Christian community (there were a lot of them in the mid-19th Century) was established in 1842 in Hopedale. It went bankrupt in 1856, and its assets were purchased by Ebenezer and George Draper, manufacturers of looms.