Highland Park Mill #1
(ca. 1892)
The late 19th century textile mill, designed by Daniel A. Tompkins and once the nation’s third largest gingham producer, has been repurposed as a food hall and retail/office space.
340 E. 16th St., Charlotte, NC 28206
Organized in 1891, the Highland Park Manufacturing Company set out to construct and operate Charlotte’s fifth cotton mill. Chief among its investors was Daniel Augustus Tompkins (1851-1914), a South Carolina native who moved to Charlotte in 1883 as an agent for the Pittsburgh-based Westinghouse Engine Company, selling and coordinating the installation of the company’s equipment throughout the Carolinas. Tompkins quickly became a driving force in the southern textile industry. One of the first engines he installed was in a cottonseed oil mill belonging to Fred Oliver. The two men combined in 1883 to form the Southern Cotton Oil Company, which soon took over its competitor, the American Cotton Oil Company. Also in 1883, Tompkins partnered with Charlotte grain merchant R. M. Miller, Sr. to establish the engineering firm of D. A. Tompkins Company that, by 1910, had helped build at least 250 cotton oil mills, 150 electric plants, and 100 cotton mills, including Highland Park Mill #1.
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Constructed at an estimated cost of $28,000, Highland Park Mill #1 began weaving gingham fabric with a workforce of 200 people operating 500 looms within one year of its 1892 opening. By 1895, the Highland Park Manufacturing Company was among Charlotte’s three largest textile manufacturers with some 300 employees producing cotton yarn and fabric on 6,000 spindles and 430 looms. As demand quickly increased, the building went through a series of expansions and improvements, including the addition of a 5,000-spindle capacity spinning mill, warehouses, and a collection of company-owned employee houses and amenities. Within three years, the workforce had doubled. The company also expanded its operations through the acquisition of Standard Mills in Rock Hill, South Carolina (renamed Highland Park Mill #2) and the construction of new facilities, including a cotton gin, a cotton seed oil mill, and the significantly larger Highland Park Mill #3 on North Davidson Street (designed by Stuart W. Cramer, a Tompkins protégé and the namesake of the town of Cramerton). By 1907, the company had grown to become the third-largest gingham producer in the United States with approximately 46,000 spindles and 3,000 looms.
Despite challenges posed by increasing competition from new textile mills within the Charlotte region, worker and supply shortages stemming from World War I, and the rise of organized labor, Highland Park Manufacturing Company continued to prosper. Improved manufacturing technologies and diversification of production helped the company weather the Depression era, including production adjustments that enabled the company to fulfill U.S. military requisitions during World War II. From 1950 through the mid-1960s, Highland Park Mills Nos. 1 and 3 maintained a workforce of some 1,200 employees who produced broadcloth, gingham, and combed shirting utilizing 42,000 ring spindles, 4,000 twisting spindles, 868 broad looms, and 150 cards. By that time, however, the domestic textile industry had begun to wane, prompting the dissolution of the Highland Park Manufacturing Company in 1969. The Highland Park Mill #1 complex continued to be used by other companies for textile production until 2016, when the property was acquired by a real estate company for redevelopment as Optimist Hall, an innovative food hall and retail/office space.