Finance History | 97 Cove Street, New Bedford — The Last Looms That Named Berkshire Hathaway

People treat Berkshire Hathaway as an Omaha holding company that always owned insurers and railroads.

The name was stitched in a New Bedford mill yard.

Hathaway Manufacturing Company opened on Cove Street in 1888, capitalized by Horatio Hathaway and partners who were shifting money out of a fading whale fleet into cotton.

Berkshire Cotton Manufacturing had been incorporated a year later in Adams, Massachusetts.

In 1955 the two books merged as Berkshire Hathaway, Inc., with headquarters in New Bedford, fifteen plants, about twelve thousand workers, and more than $120 million in annual sales.

Seven of those plants were shut before the decade ended.

By 1964 the surviving mills had a net worth of about $22 million, down from $53 million at the merger.

Warren Buffett's partnership had been buying the stock since 1962 at prices near $7.50 a share, expecting a tender when more mills were liquidated.

On 10 May 1965 he took control of the company at the New Bedford headquarters after a tender fight with Seabury Stanton's family.

Cotton spinning ended in 1969. Rayon linings and synthetic curtains ran until 1985, when the last textile operation was closed.

A mill sold that year for $215,000 was later demolished. The surviving Hathaway complex still stands at 97 Cove Street, beside the hurricane barrier in the city's South End.

The holding company kept the mill's name. The looms did not.

Photo: Marc N. Belanger, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.