Mills Mill

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Coordinates: 34°49′40″N 82°24′38″W / 34.82778°N 82.41056°W / 34.82778; -82.41056
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Mills Mill
Mills Mill, 2012
Mills Mill is located in South Carolina
Mills Mill
Mills Mill is located in the United States
Mills Mill
Location400 Mills Avenue, Greenville, South Carolina
Coordinates34°49′40″N 82°24′38″W / 34.82778°N 82.41056°W / 34.82778; -82.41056
Areasix acres
Built1896
Architectural styleRomanesque Revival
NRHP reference No.82003861[1]
Added to NRHPJuly 1, 1982

Mills Mill was a textile mill in Greenville, South Carolina (1897-1978) that in the 21st century was converted into loft-style condominia. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

History

Mills Manufacturing Company was organized during the mid-1890s by entrepreneur Otis Prentiss Mills (1840-1915), a native of

bed sheets, twills, and satin. Workers pastured their cows on the flood plain and put outhouses, pig sties, and chicken coops behind their residences. The mill also built a company store, a church used alternately by Baptist and Methodist congregations, and a YMCA that employed two paid social workers.[3]

After O.P. Mills died in 1915, he was succeeded by his son-in-law, Walter B. Moore, who had both

textile mill experience and a paternalistic style of management typical of the era.[4] Moore hired an English "gardener," a landscape architect, to beautify the grounds and provided running water and a sewer system for all the mill village houses.[5]

After Moore's death in 1918, the mill was sold to Alan Graham, who in 1920 sold it to the Reeves Brothers Company of Spartanburg. In the 1920s the mill built more houses in the village and sponsored the Mills Mill Millers textile league baseball team. In the late 1930s the village had about 1,200 residents.[6]

The

textile workers strike of 1934
.

During World War II the mill operated on three shifts, seven days a week to produce herringbone fabric for Marine uniforms. Mills Mill continued to prosper in the immediate postwar era, though Reeves Brothers sold the village houses and discontinued support for the sports teams and for community maintenance and security. During the 1970s, domestic textile production came under increased foreign competition. In 1977, Reeves Brothers dismissed two hundred workers, and the following year, the plant was closed.[9]

Post-closure

Like many

Greenville Hospital System. In 1982, the mill was listed on the National Register.[10] In 1985 the Greenville County Redevelopment Authority made extensive changes to the village's water supply and drainage system and provided financing to renovate ninety houses near what had become a major Greenville thoroughfare. The YMCA was converted to apartments, and retail outlets and restaurants operated from the former mill from 1979 to 1996.[11]

In 2004, Centennial American Properties converted the mill to condominia that boasted "16-foot ceilings, 9-foot window bands, giant heart of pine beams, and exposed red brick walls." Developers also provided a club room, a gym, a pool, and "professionally landscaped common areas."[12]

Photographs

Photographs of the mill, village, and community can be viewed in the Greenville County Library System digital collections.[13]

References

  1. ^ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. July 9, 2010.
  2. ^ James McDowell Richardson, History of Greenville County, South Carolina: Narrative and Biographical (Spartanburg, S.C.: Reprint Co., 1980 [1930]), 147-8.
  3. ^ Judith G. Bainbridge, "The Mills Mill Community", Greenville County Redevelopment Authority, 1997. (www.parkerwwcs.com/mydocuments/mills_text.pdf); "Judith Bainbridge, "Brief History of Mills Mill," Greenville News, May 2, 2017, 2; South Carolina Department of Archives and History. Early comparative statistics are available in August Kohn, The Cotton Mills of South Carolina (Spartanburg, SC: The Reprint Company, 1975 [1907]).
  4. ^ See William Hays Simpson, Southern Textile Communities (Charlotte, NC: Dowd Press, 1948).
  5. ^ Bainbridge.
  6. ^ Bainbridge. On textile league baseball, see Thomas K. Perry, Textile League Baseball: South Carolina's Mill Teams, 1880-1955 (Jefferson, NC: NcFarland & Company, 1993).
  7. ^ The "stretch-out" included increasing the number of looms assigned to each worker, limiting breaks, paying piece rates, and increasing the number of supervisors to keep workers from slowing down, talking, or leaving work.
  8. ^ Archie Vernon Huff, Jr., Greenville: The History of the City and County in the South Carolina Piedmont (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995), 303.
  9. ^ Bainbridge.
  10. corbelled
    brickwork. On the east façade is a five-story square tower with arched windows and an open arcade."
  11. ^ Bainbridge; "Mills Mill to Become Loft Condominiums," Greenville Journal, unknown date, 2003, Teaching US History website (Accessed April 23, 2013).
  12. ^ Judith Bainbridge, "Brief History of Mills Mill," Greenville News, May 2, 2017, 2; Carolina Realty Guide (accessed April 23, 2013).
  13. ^ Greenville County Library System. "Mills Mill Digital Collection".
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