GARMENT DISTRICT

The Garment District is a store in Cambridge, MA and is well known for its Dollar-A-Pound clothing store.
The Garment District started out as an offshoot of Harbor Textiles, a textile company which produced wiping cloths for industry that began in the late 1940s. In 1979 as demand began to rise for used clothing Dollar-A-Pound was opened - first on Saturdays only. Here you could come in and buy large quantities of clothing by the pound. No frills. No racks. No price tags. Instead of cutting used clothing up for wiping cloths it was now sold off as fashion. In the 1980s finding large quantities of vintage 1940s and 50s clothing at Dollar-A-Pound was commonplace.
In 1986 as the demand for used and vintage clothing continued to rise The Garment District was born. Now in addition to Dollar-A-Pound both new & used clothing is sold on racks - tradional style. Except this place is still what it once was - a rag factory. Hundreds of thousands of pounds of clothing are still sorted on site. Though the cutting machines are now gone and wiping cloths are no longer produced much is still done the same way it was over 50 years ago.
In 2004 The Garment District was under threat of closure. The pressure to turn the buildings into residential condos almost succeeded. With help from the City of Cambridge, among others, The Garment District was able to acquire the buildings and as a result remain an integral part of the local community.