Over the Mill
By Lori K. Tate

As the presence of the textile industry diminishes across the state, it leaves behind some beautiful structures awaiting a second chance. Many people are up to the challenge of restoring these structures and aren’t about to throw in the towel.

Drive through almost any town in North Carolina, and you’ll see the bones of a vanishing industry. With red brick, large windows, and the occasional kudzu vine aiming for the roof, old mill buildings are an architectural reminder of how so many North Carolinians earned a living for decades.

With the textile industry moving operations overseas, many of these buildings sit dreading the sight of a wrecking ball while simultaneously hoping for reincarnation. That hope isn’t so far-fetched, as many developers and history buffs realize the value of these structures and are doing their best to make sure they remain woven into the fabric of our history and our future.

It takes a village
Three miles north of Burlington, the Haw River rambles over rocks past the Glencoe Cotton Mill and Village. Built by the Holt family between 1880 and 1882, the water-powered cotton mill was the nucleus of the village, which included a barbershop, church, company store, school (which the Holts required village children to attend), and even a baseball team. When the mill closed in 1954, the village was abandoned until 1997, when Preservation North Carolina (PNC) purchased the 105-acre property, which was jointly owned by the Holts and the Rhyne family. Sarah Rhyne donated her half of the property to PNC.

Two years prior, Jerrie Nall and her husband, George, purchased the mill owner’s house (circa 1897) in the village as a second home. While restoring the house, Nall realized that the village was rich in history and that a textile museum was in order. She kept asking PNC to put a museum in the property’s company store, but the organization wasn’t receptive. They kept her name and telephone number, however.

In 2001, Kathy Barry, a resident of Burlington, visited Lowell National Historical Park in Massachusetts, a site which features Market Mills, the former Lowell Manufacturing Company mill complex. “I suddenly thought of Glencoe,” recalls Barry, who immediately called PNC to offer her help. She was given Nall’s phone number.

“We knew immediately that we both had the same passion, and even though we were not in the museum business, both of us had been in education, and we had a lot in common,” says Nall, a former home economics and science teacher. “Neither of us were working at the time so we decided, ‘Hey, let’s do some research here.’”

The duo headed to Cotton Incorporated in Cary and North Carolina State University among other places. “Every place that we went said, ‘Yes, [a textile museum] is so needed in North Carolina,’” says Nall.

The women visited an attorney, got their 501(c)(3) status, incorporated, and chose a board of directors.

“This place was a ghost town. It was all falling apart, and here we are trying to start something,” says Barry with a laugh. “It was really a grassroots thing.”

Working in a museum without walls in the beginning, the twosome made display boards outlining their textile research and spoke wherever they got the chance. In 2002, PNC gave them access to the front of the 6,000-square-foot company store, which had no heat or electricity. “This building here was stacked to the ceiling with junk,” says Nall.

“Filthy junk,” adds Barry.

They cleaned out the front of the building for their display boards and borrowed screens to mask the background. To raise money, they held a tour, which featured the company store and a villager’s home. By then, some of the people who had purchased some of the 35 remaining homes and 11 vacant lots from PNC were starting restoration.

In February 2004, two supporters purchased the company store building, and the next month the Textile Heritage Museum opened. Last year, 3,000 people visited the museum filled with looms, newspaper clippings, maps, and vintage machinery that Nall and Barry, now codirectors of the museum, have collected.

A favorite spot is the mock company store in the back of the building that’s stocked with items from the 1800s to the 1950s. It features a life-size mannequin of James Waddell, the store operator, who wore a three-piece suit to work every day and was responsible for giving out pay envelopes each week.

Excitement about Glencoe is growing as all 35 homes have been purchased and about 23 are occupied with people from California, Kentucky, Minnesota, Tennessee, and Vermont. There are only two vacant lots left. “It’s very rapidly becoming such a wonderful community,” says Nall.

Raleigh-based Hedgehog Holdings is in the process of purchasing the mill buildings and has plans to do a green renovation of the property for mixed use. “The location on the river was certainly an important factor in our consideration,” says Frank Gailor, managing member of the firm. “The excellent original condition of the buildings was another consideration and its reasonable proximity to the town and to the Interstate 40/85 thoroughfare from Atlanta to Boston. These mills in due course will certainly come back to life, [especially] those that are located along the major corridors and approximate to employment centers.”

“Another thing that draws us to Glencoe is the fact that there’s already the mill village out there,” says Carrie Ehrfurth, Hedgehog’s historic preservation specialist. “There’s definitely sort of a redevelopment of the community and putting the buildings back to work and having people living and working out there again. That’s another very attractive feature.”

Plans for a park, complete with a canoe put-in, are in the works, as is a 40-acre nature park adjacent to the village. Nall and Barry couldn’t be happier with Glencoe’s progress. Says Nall, “People from all over are becoming interested and are wanting to be a part of it.”

Divine design
Tony Pressley is a man who believes in preservation. He’s also a man who believes in seizing opportunity. Lucky for him, the 59-year-old is able to incorporate those beliefs into a day’s work as the president of MECA Properties in Charlotte.

Although Pressley has developed many adaptive reuse projects in the Historic South End design district, the Design Center of the Carolinas is a standout because it is one of the largest. Housed in three buildings, the DCOC consists of the atrium, the courtyard, and the plaza and offers approximately 150,000 square feet of showroom, studio, and office space.

Restored in phases, the project began with the atrium building, which was originally built in 1946 as an annex to the Nebel Knitting Mill. German immigrant William Nebel founded his hosiery business in 1927 next door in the courtyard building and was known for manufacturing some of the finest high-fashion silk hosiery in the country. The mill remained operational until 1968.

“In the case of Nebel Mill, we saw an opportunity to build office, showroom, and studio space for what was emerging as the creative class of our community,” explains Pressley. “So we began to design toward meeting the needs of that particular market niche. Little did we know when we started out how deep that market was. We also didn’t realize the impact that those three buildings that would make up the design center would have on the larger neighborhood. At last count, we had some 266 design firms that call South End home.”

Pressley purchased the Atrium building in the late 1990s, and although the building had been used for textile manufacturing until 1989, it needed a lot of work to make it desirable for its new purpose. Working with Charlotte architect Reg Narmour, Pressley raised the middle part of the building to create an open space for light — hence the name Atrium.

“Water had caused a lot of damage to the hardwoods on the second floor, so the wood products that we took out of the center to open up and create the Atrium we recycled to fill in where there was rot and decay,” says Pressley, adding that they incorporated large windows on the second floor and moved the large, brushed silver, art deco Nebel logo (circa 1930s) to the back wall of the Atrium from the front of the building. The front door hardware is also original to the structure. “We preserved as much of the character as we could,” he says. In 1998, DCOC’s first tenant moved into the Atrium building.

Phase two of the project involved the Plaza building, which is the least historically significant of the three buildings and not a part of the Nebel Knitting Mill. The oldest part of the building was constructed in the early 1930s, and the building went through a series of expansions. Before it was converted to the DCOC, it was a package products facility.

The Courtyard building was the last phase of the DCOC and is the most historically significant: This is where the mill began. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, a portion of the Courtyard building had been restored by the Spaghetti Warehouse restaurant when Pressley purchased it. In the courtyard of the building stands the original water tower of the mill, now painted in bright colors.

Bright is also a suitable adjective for the DCOC. Walking in and around the buildings, it’s easy to become inspired by the colorful banners that feature a brush painting a globe. Creative folks from architecture firms, film companies, and home-design showrooms scurry around the property in search of the day’s big idea. “It’s been very well received,” says Pressley.

For Bill Nebel, a doctor in Chapel Hill, professor at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, and the grandson of William Nebel, the DCOC continues his family’s legacy in the neighborhood. “My grandfather was a remarkable person,” says Nebel. “He made the equipment, patented it, trained people, and built those two buildings. The company was a worldwide business at one time: It had an office in the Empire State Building.”

He also remembers that his grandfather did a lot of things for people, like taking stockings to the nurses at Mercy Hospital on Christmas Eve. In his South End office, Pressley proudly keeps a box of Nebel nylons that Bill Nebel gave him.

“I think that people who get involved in this type of stuff, they really get caught up in it emotionally because of these discoveries and the correlation you begin to make of how that relates to what’s going on today,” says Pressley. “You know, for me to be able to have in my hands and to own this and to know how this relates to those sticks and bricks across the street over there … it’s certainly satisfying, there’s no doubt about that, to see things preserved and given a new life.”

Lori Tate writes from her home in Huntersville.