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NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES - NOMINATION FORM
Used with the permission of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, Division of Archives and History, Archaeology and Historic Preservation Section
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
- 1. NAME
Glencoe Mill Village Historic District
- 2. LOCATION
CATEGORY - District
OWNERSHIP - Private
STATUS - Occupied
ACCESSIBLE - Yes, restricted
PRESENT USE - Commercial / private residence
(Note: current owner, 1997, is Preservation North Carolina)
5. LOCATION OF LEGAL DESCRIPTION
Alamance County Courthouse, Graham, NC
Historic American Engineering Record, Washington, DC
CONDITON - Good
ALTERED/UNALTERED - Unaltered
ORIGINAL/MOVED SITE - Original
DESCRIBE THE PRESENT AND ORIGINAL (IF KNOWN) PHYSICAL APPEARANCE
The Glencoe Historic District is located on the east bank of Haw River about three miles north of Burlington in Alamance County. It is a typical but remarkably well-preserved example of nineteenth century industrial villages that once flourished in North Carolina's Piedmont region. The district covers a little more than 100 acre and consists of three parts: 1) a manufacturing and commercial complex; 2) a power and water system, and 3) a residential and social unit.
The manufacturing and commercial complex is situated between Haw River and SR 1598 or River Road. The complex includes a three-story main mill building, a wheel house, a one-story picker house, a dye-house, finishing room and napper house, cotton warehouses-and other storage buildings, and an office and company store complex. The power and water system begins northwest of the mill at a concrete dam which runs 250 feet across Haw River. The dam creates a small pond from which a head race flows 400 yards to the wheel house at the north end of the mill. Much of the power system at the wheel house, including turbine water wheel, the main shaft and flywheel, and a generating plant, survives. A tail race runs from the wheel house back to Haw River. The water system includes two fire hydrant stations and two metal water towers. Forty one frame dwellings, some with detached kitchens and outbuildings, a lodge, and the ruins of the village church form the residential and social unit. These structures are built along the two streets of Glencoe, SR 1600 or Front Street, and Hodges Road or Back Street which run up a small hill that rises to the northeast from Haw River. Within this unit there is also an abundance of garden space between dwellings and a large tract (about 50 acres) of vacant land in the northwest corner of the historic district. (see map attached)
The most significant structure on the Glencoe site is the three-story brick mill building, a fine example of Victorian commercial architecture incorporating popular features of the Italianate style. The mill is 200' and 18 bays long and 50', or three bays, wide. It has quoined stucco corners (except on the west, or rear, side), a central tower, windows with heavy, arched stucco labels and accented keystones (again, not on the west), and a corbelled cornice with dentils. The mill's flat roof is parapeted along the north and south sides. The north side of the building displays more architectural ornamentation than the south because until 1904 the main approach to the mill was over a bridge at the north end of the mill site. [1]
The 45' high square central tower, one bay wide, rises several feet above the mill roof line on the east. It displays the same quoined stucco corners, heavy arched stucco labels with accented keystones, and corbelled cornice with dentils as the mill building. It also has a flat roof which, like the mill's and other flat roofs on the property, is built-up (of tar paper and gravel construction). All basic processes took place within the mill including spinning and spooling on the first floor, carding, drawing, and warping on the second floor, and weaving on box looms in the basement. The third floor was used for the storage of machinery.
A one-story and basement brick addition running the length of the mill building was attached on the east side between 1952 and 1954. It has few windows on the east. It is two bays (53') wide. The windows and doors display heavy arched stucco labels with accented keystones consonant with the ornamentation of the original mill building. There is a parapet immediately above and extending several feet to each side of the main (east) doorway. The north and south ends of the addition have corbelled cornices and are parapeted. The roof is flat.
Attached at the northwest corner of the original mill building is a one-story 42' by 52' wheel house with tin roof. The 400-yard-long head race enters the wheel house from the north and the tail race flows out south to rejoin the Haw River. The building was rebuilt in 1910, with new masonry, wood, and cement replacing deteriorate wood. [2]
North of the mill building is a one-story picker room, where bales of cotton were opened. It is 60' by 33' and has a 12' ceiling. The windows are arched and the roof is flat.
The picker room is attached to a two-story 45' by 64' brick warehouse on its north side, apparently added after 1940 connecting the picker room to the south end of a one-story frame cotton warehouse.
East of the warehouses is a two-story brick machine shop and storage building with auto shed attached at the rear (west). The building is 60' by 26'. It has one window on the north and south sides and two on the east and west. The roof is gabled and of tin.
North of the warehouses is the finishing or napper room (1903). This building is 100' by 43' with an 18' ceiling. A two-story stock room, 86' by 40', was added at the south end of the finishing and napper room, forming an L which extended west toward the river. [3] Later a two-story folding and storage structure 132' by 43', was added onto the west side of the finishing and napper room. At the north end of the complex were boiler and engine rooms. This building and a small wood frame cotton warehouse south of the stock room were demolished.
Adjoining the northeast corner of the finishing and napper room is the one-story dye house. The dye house, 145' by 30' with 12' ceiling, has a cement floor in which several dye vats remain recessed. The roof is flat with parapets at the north and south ends. As in most of the structures connected with the mill operation, the windows are arched. The dye house also features four-foot-high raised wood slat sidelights.
Several hundred yards beyond the dye house, still on the west side of the River Road, is a 250' long dam of reinforced concrete spanning the Haw River. This dam was built in the mid-1940s to replace a wooden dam built on a cement foundation in 1909, which in turn had replaced the mill's original log and stone dam. [4]
Back at the mill complex, across from the gabled storage building, at the northeastern juncture of the River Road and Front Street stands the combination mill office and company store. The building has a corbelled cornice with dentils and a flat roof. On the west side is the two-story office area, 65' by 17', divided into three rooms with closets and a front waiting area. The back room is presently wood paneled while the rest of the office displays the original wainscoting. The office has a projecting octagonal bay at the corner where the two roads meet. The ceiling in the office is 12'. A wooden porch fronts the 55' by 45’ one-story and basement store which makes up the bulk of the red-painted brick building. The store's ceiling is 15'. A small stone room is attached on the east side of the store and once served as the quarters of the mill superintendent's cook. [5] The basement features Romanesque arches two bricks wide, approximately 8½' wide at the base and 6' high.
South of Front Street and east of Main (State Road 1598 below its intersection with Front Street), opposite the southeastern segment of the mill building, is a one-story brick warehouse, 48' by 24', originally designated Cotton Warehouse No. 1. It has a 12' ceiling and a flat roof.
Additional structures in the mill complex include triangular wooden fire hydrant stations, two metal water towers (one across the road from the dye house and the other, a 30,000 gallon tank added in 1905, [6] across the street from the north end of the mill building), and a 140' by 40' Quonset warehouse erected opposite the mill building for cotton storage during World War II. [7]
The 18' by 37' one-story brick storage house south of the mill building is no longer standing.
The original village part of Glencoe is still largely intact. The wooden schoolhouse is gone, replaced by a brick structure. The church fell in 1976. [8] Of the 48 original wood frame dwellings, 41 remain. (Several houses are known to have burned down.) One, the mill superintendent's house opposite the office and store, is distinctive for the ornate woodwork and railings on the porch which extends on its north and west sides.
The mill village includes three basic house configurations, all with brick nogging, hand sawed timbers, tin roofs, brick pier foundations and simple, functional design. Houses vary in size from three to six rooms, with 16' by 16' the average room size.
Most of the houses are on Front and Back Streets (21 and 12, respectively). The predominant house type was originally a four room, two-story structure typical of North Carolina rural housing of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The front porches are two bays wide and supported by four un-ornamented posts. A central hallway opens onto rooms to the east and west. The western rooms of houses on these two streets do not have windows on the river (west) side. Chimneys are set on the east. Upstairs there are usually two rooms, with the railing from the narrow staircase extending into the west room. Detached kitchens of brick and batten construction are set behind the houses; a typical kitchen was about 20' by 12'. Open wells serve four houses each.
A later modification of the mill housing is the kitchen, attached at the back of the east wing of most houses forming an L. These rooms had, by 1910, largely replaced the detached kitchens, [9] of which only a handful remain. The connected kitchens have chimneys and customarily have side porches facing the river and the mill (west).
Most of the buildings in the Glencoe mill complex remain structurally sound, with the exception of the dye house, in which the brick at the north end of the east & west walls is badly deteriorated due to chemical action instigated by the dye process.
The windows on the first and second stories of the mill building are boarded up, as are many of the windows on the other mill complex structures and all the windows on the east side of the dye house. The windows on the napper room are largely broken; those on the east side of the finishing and napper room are bricked in.
The wheel house at the north end of the mill houses a 48" cylinder Victor Gate turbine wheel, main gear fittings, a Lombard governor, main power shaft, and a fly-wheel with a 9' diameter. There is also a General Electric 2,300 volt generator installed in the late 1930s. Other surviving power equipment in the district include some line shaft and pulleys in the dye house. The dye house also retains recessed vats in the cement floor.
The store retains some of the toiletry and other items sold there until it closed when the mill ceased operations. The office--its equipment, records, and furnishings--is almost totally intact.
Much of the mill housing is deteriorating, although slowly. Only seven dwellings are currently occupied, four on Front Street. Most of the houses have rotted sills. Many unoccupied houses are plagued by weather damage or are overgrown. Few houses--the mill superintendent's house being an exception--have indoor plumbing. Many houses, especially on Back Street, never had electricity.
The bulk of the 105-acre site is overgrown and poorly maintained. Back Street is badly eroded and nearly impassable by automobile.
1. Dan Bluestone, "Historic American Engineering Record Report Documenting Industrial Processes at Glencoe Mills" (Raleigh: N. C. Division of Archives and History 1977), p. 4. Hereinafter cited as Bluestone, HAER Report.
2. lbid., p. 23.
3. Sanborn Insurance Map of Burlington, N. C., May, 1918 (New York: Sanborn Insurance Company) p. 11.
4. Bluestone, HAER Report, p. 4.
5. Author's interview with Charles Murray, resident and worker at Glencoe since 1900, Glencoe, June 8, 1978 (notes on interview in possession of author); hereinafter cited as Murray interview.
6. Bluestone, HAER Report, p. 22.
7. Author's interview with Clarence R. Shepherd, officer of Glencoe Carpet Mills, Glencoe, June 8, 1978 (notes on interview in possession of author); hereinafter cited as Shepherd interview.
8. Murray interview.
9. Ibid.
8. SIGNIFICANCE
PERIOD: 1800-1899
AREAS OF SIGNIFICANCE: Architecture, Commerce, Community Planning, Industry, Social/Humanitarian
STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE
The original Glencoe Mill, consisting of a cotton mill and associated worker tenement community, was built on a 105-acre site along the Haw River in Alamance County between 1880 and 1882. [1] It remains one of the best preserved mill villages in North Carolina, providing a comprehensive picture of the social and commercial organization of a late-nineteenth century water-powered Southern cotton mill village.
Criteria Assessment:
A. Glencoe is a remarkably complete mill village associated with and exemplifying the post-Civil War development of the textile industry along the streams of Piedmont North Carolina, an event of major significance in the social and economic history of the state; it is typical of the small, isolated mill complexes where the industry (now huge and urban) began, where the social, industrial, and commercial functions were combined in a community established for and by the mill.
B. Glencoe is associated with James H. and William E. Holt, two of the five influential sons of Edwin M. Holt, textile industry pioneer; the Holt family was a powerful factor in the development of the textile industry in Alamance County and the Piedmont, of whom it has been said, "What the Flemish have been to England, what the Venetians have been to southern Europe, that are the Holts to Alamance and to North Carolina."
C. The mill complex embodies distinctive characteristics of mill and mill housing construction in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the mill of the Italianate brick type used nation-wide for mills, the housing consisting of small frame structures of uniform design.
At a time when there were only four cotton factories in North Carolina Edwin Holt took advantage of readily available raw cotton and established the first cotton mill in Alamance County on Great Alamance Creek in 1837. [5] Describing Holt's motivation, one biographer wrote:
To him it seemed a geographic and economic inconsistency and perversity that this staple should be carried thousands of miles from the place of its growth to be made into cloth, much of which was to be brought back and used to clothe the very people who had produced it. . . . [6]
Holt later learned dying from an itinerant Frenchman and became the first power loom manufacturer of plaid or colored cotton fabrics in the South. [7] His "Alamance Plaids" and "Alamance Ginghams" achieved wide distribution and popularity. He and his five sons and 15 grandsons soon built a chain of cotton mills in Alamance County and elsewhere, prompting one turn-of-the-century writer to exclaim, "What the Flemish have been to England, what the Venetians have been to southern Europe, that are the Holts to Alamance and to North Carolina." [8]
The Haw River, with a drainage area of 1,675 square miles and an average fall of six feet per mile, was ideally suited for water-powered technology, a characteristic which made it one of the principal manufacturing streams in North Carolina in the late nineteenth century. [9]
After building Carolina Mill along the Haw in 1869, E. M. Holt and Sons began purchasing land at another site upriver in 1878. Located where a grist and saw mill stood, Glencoe Mill (named after the site in Scotland of a seventeenth century massacre involving the MacDonald clan) was established primarily by two of the elder Holt's sons, James and William, between 1880 and 1882. [10]
Reliance on water power had much to do with the development not only of the Glencoe mill, but of the mill village as well. Since the power available from the Haw was insufficient to support a group of mills at any one site, mills were built isolated from one another. Besides, property taxes were significantly less in outlying rural districts. This isolation, coupled with a poor transportation system, forced the mill owners to build housing, albeit cheaply and quickly constructed, to support their workers. [11] Provision of other 'necessities' in the form of a retail store, church, school, and athletic teams were also included in establishing the Glencoe mill village.
Glencoe began operation with 186 looms and 3,120 spindles. [12] Sanborn Insurance maps of the mill building indicate that the first floor housed the weaving machinery, the second floor was devoted to spooling and spinning cotton, and the third was used for carding the cotton and as a cloth room. Finishing operations were also carried out on the third floor until 1903, at which time the finishing and napper room was completed north of the mill building.
In 1899 the mill and mill village were sold for $112,000 to "Glencoe Mills," a corporation run by Robert Holt. [13] Using locally grown cotton until about 1900, Glencoe produced plaid, checked and striped cotton cloth. In the early 1900s the mill equipment was extensively upgraded, allowing for napping and the production of cotton outings for items like nightgowns and blankets. In 1900 there were 4,000 spindles; in 1907 there were 5,000. The number of looms stayed about the same throughout Glencoe's 72 years of operation, rising slightly to 206 in 1927 and remaining at that level. The production of cotton and shirting flannels was added in 1913. [14]
From the 1890s through at least the 1930s Glencoe employed between 110 and 150 workers. [15] Few, if any, were black, except Robert Holt's personal cook. [16] (No blacks live at Glencoe today.) Although strikes hit several mills in the nearby town of Haw River, Glencoe apparently escaped any labor unrest. The mill was a signator of a 1900 mill owners' resolution involving 41 North Carolina cotton mills which pledged the signees not to use, and to oppose, union labor.
In 1889 the average Glencoe mill hand worked six 11-hour days, or 66 hours per week. Men earned from one to two dollars per day; women earned from 50 cents to a dollar; children earned 40 cents per day. [17] In 1905 the average worker worked six 10.5-hour days, or 63 hours per week. Men earned from 75 cents to $2.75 per day; women earned between 60 cents and one dollar; children still earned 40 cents per day. [18] By 1924 Glencoe employees were working 55-hour weeks with men earning between $2.10 and $6.60 per day and women between $2.10 and $2.38. [19]
Robert Holt died in July, 1923 and his brother-in-law, Walter G. Green, took over Glencoe Mills. Green ran the mill with his son, Holt Green, who, unlike his father, had some training in mill operations. [20]
The late 1930s saw considerable change at Glencoe. It was at that time that the shafting and textile machinery were converted to electric drive, that the water power was adapted to generate the electricity which powered the electric motors driving the line shafts [21] and that Glencoe first purchased its electricity from an outside utility Duke Power. [22] (Glencoe did utilize power from the Holt’s Latonia Power Plant 1.5 miles upriver, thus making it one of the first Alamance County cotton mills to draw electric power from a generating plant outside the mill as early as 1910.) [23]
Holt Green served in the Navy in World War II and was lost in action in Europe. He was replaced at Glencoe by his brother, Walter G. Green, Jr., a lawyer, who remains one of Glencoe's owners.
Throughout its history Glencoe Mills remained a modest, isolated operation. This worked especially well during the era of water power and continued to allow for the mill's success as long as it was able to compete with other mills' prices.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s Glencoe increased the number of its spindles to 5,760; rebuilt the dam along the Haw River; added the one-story and basement addition to the mill building at a cost of approximately $350,000. [24] But while it was making these large capital expenditures Glencoe failed to modernize its equipment, either to keep up with increasingly efficient looms being used by competitors or to switch to printed plaids when the woven plaid market unraveled. During that same period large textile corporations were purchasing many small cotton mills, thereby providing inexpensive and well-organized competition for independent mills like Glencoe, [25] which was finally forced to close in 1954.
The housing at Glencoe remained in use, though at a reduced rate of occupancy, from the time of the mill's closing to the present. All of those still living at Glencoe worked for Glencoe Mills when it was operating.
The mill buildings remained full of equipment but unused until 1961, when Glencoe Carpet Mills began leasing the mill buildings. At that time the old mill equipment was sold for scrap metal. [26]
All of the main mill building is in use today. The ground floor of the 1950s addition houses a retail mill outlet store. Glencoe Carpet Mills has its offices on the second floor of the mill in what was the slasher room and has various wholesale and small manufacturing operations located throughout the rest of the building. All of the other mill complex buildings are used for storage.
1. Dan Bluestone, 'Historic American Engineering Record Report Documenting Industrial Processes at Glencoe Mills" (Raleigh: N. C. Division of Archives and History, 1977), p.1; hereinafter cited as Bluestone, HAER Report.
2. bid., p. 25.
3. Walter Whitaker, Centennial History of Alamance County (Burlington: Burlington Chamber of Commerce, 1949), p. 164; hereinafter cited as Whitaker, Centennial History.
4. W. J. Cash, The Mind of the South (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941), p. 180-181.
5. Whitaker, Centennial History, p. 97.
6. Martin H. Holt, "Edwin M. Holt", Volume VII of the Biographical History of North Carolina, edited by Samuel A. Ashe and Stephen B. Weeks (Greensboro: Charles L. Van Noppen, 1908), p. 182.
7. bid., p. 184.
8. Sallie W. Stockard, The History of Alamance (Capital Printing Company, 1900), p. 123.
9. George Beecher, Science and Change in Alamance County Life (Alamance County Board of Education, 1938), p. 50.
10. Bluestone, HAER Report, p. 1.
11. Julian Hughes, Development of the Textile Industry in Alamance County (Burlington Burlington Letter Shop, 1965), p. 152.
12. Bluestone, HAER Report, p. 8.
13. Alamance County Corporation Books, Office of the Register of Deeds, Graham, Corporation Book 21, p. 155.
14. Bluestone, HAER Report, p. 21.
15. Ibid., p. 23.
16. Author's interview with Charles Murray, resident and worker at Glencoe since 1900, Glencoe, June 8, 1978 (Notes on interview in possession of author); hereinafter cited as Murray interview.
17. Bluestone, HAER Report, p. 9
18. Ibid., p. 24.
19. Ibid., p. 25.
20. Murray interview.
21. Ibid., pgs. 27 and 28.
22. Ibid., p. 28.
23. Ibid., p. 27.
24. Author's interview with Clarence R. Shepherd, officer of Glencoe Carpet Mills, Glencoe, June 8, 1978 (notes on interview in possession of author); hereinafter cited as Shepherd interview.
25. Bluestone, HAER Report, p. 30.
Beecher, George. Science and Change in Alamance County Life. Alamance County Board of Education, 1938.
Bluestone, Dan. "Historic American Engineering Record Report Documenting Industrial Processes at Glencoe Mills." Raleigh: N. C. Division of Archives and History, 19__
Cash, W. J. The Mind of the South. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1941
Herring, Harriet. "The Industrial Worker." From Culture in the South, edited by William T. Couch. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1934.
Holt, Martin H. "Edwin M. Holt." Volume VII of the Biographical History of North Carolina. Edited by Samuel A. Ashe and Stephen B. Weeks. Greensboro: Charles L. Van Noppen, 1908.
Hughes, Julian. Development of the Textile Industry in Alamance County. Burlington: Burlington Letter Shop, 1965.
Sanborn Insurance Maps of Burlington, N. C., July, 1913; May, 1918; April, 1925; January, 1929. New York; Sanborn Insurance Company.
Stockard, Sallie W. The History of Alamance. Capital Printing Company, 1900.
Whitaker, Walter, Centennial History of Alamance County. Burlington: Burlington Chamber of Commerce, 1949.
ACREAGE OF NOMINATED PROPERTY: 105 acres
UTM REFERENCES:
A. 17/641650/4000980
B. 17/641490/4000120
C. 17/640990/4000380
D. 17/641050/4000600
E. 17/640940/4000670
F. 17/640000/4000830
Glencoe is a mill village and mill on a 105-acre site bounded on the west by the Haw River, on the north by State Road 1599, and on the east and south by North Carolina Highway 62 and a 181.4 acre tract owned by Daisie Holt Green. State Road 1598 bisects the property parallel to the Haw River at the western edge and State Road 1600 bisects the property centrally in an east northeasterly direction, connecting with State Road 1599.
11. FORM PREPARED BY
NAME: Description and Significance prepared by Barry Jacobs, Consultant
ORGANIZATION: Division of Archives and History
DATE: (blank)
STREET: 109 East Jones Street
CITY: Raleigh
STATE: North Carolina 27611
12. STATE HISTORIC PRESERVATION OFFICER CERTIFICATION
THE EVALUATED SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS PROPERY WITHIN THE STATE IS:
NATIONAL ___ STATE _X_ LOCAL ___
As the designated State Historic Preservation Officer for the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 (Public Law 89-665), I hereby nominate this property for inclusion in the National Register and certify that it has been evaluated according to the criteria and procedures set forth by the National Park Service.
STATE HISTORIC PRESERVATION OFFICER SIGNATURE: (signed)
TITLE: State Historic Preservation Officer
DATE: November 9,
1978
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