Defiance Sock Mills
(ca. 1918)
The Defiance Sock Mills marks one of the city’s forays into hosiery manufacturing.
520 Elliot St, Charlotte, NC 28202
One of Charlotte’s first hosiery mills when constructed in 1918, the Defiance Sock Mills building is the city’s only such mill building still standing. Soon after organizing the Defiance Sock Mills company in 1915, Charlotteans Morehead Jones (1890-1965) and Kenneth S. Tanner (1885-1963) purchased land in the city’s Third Ward section on the south side of the McNinchville subdivision, a small streetcar suburb located near the Woodlawn and Irwin Park neighborhoods. Laid out primarily for single-family houses, the area soon attracted industrial development as well. McNinchville was bounded by the Southern Railway to the east, the Piedmont and Northern (P&N) Railway to the south, and the 1884 Victor Cotton Mill to the north. After paying $500 for its first land acquisition, the company purchased two more adjacent parcels for the same price before beginning construction in 1918. Located alongside the P&N Railway, the brick mill included a concrete loading dock served by a P&N spur line.
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Only one other local hosiery mill – the Charlotte Knitting Company in Dilworth – was in operation when the Defiance mill opened. By the early 1930s, however, hosiery manufacturing had expanded across Charlotte and the region, reflecting the rapid diversification of the textile industry and the emerging demand for women’s full-fashioned hose. The new hosiery mills were all built along the Southern Railway in Dilworth’s industrial section, the largest (the Nebel Knitting Mill) employing 250 workers by WWII. While Charlotte’s hosiery industry advanced during the 1920s, Defiance Sock Mills ceased operations in 1922. The property was purchased for $10,000 by Charlotte businessmen Felix and Henry Hayman. Owners of downtown meat markets, the Hayman brothers also invested in a variety of downtown buildings and business ventures, including the Philip Carey Building on Seventh Street and Wearn Field on South Mint Street. With the purchase of Wearn Field, Felix Hayman became president of the Charlotte Hornets baseball team.
Under the Haymans’ ownership in the 1920s, the Defiance Sock Mills building housed Dixie Waste Mills and Caro Bedding Company, manufacturers of mattresses and upholstery padding from cotton waste. By the mid-1930s, the building became a warehouse for Guy Beaty Roofing Company, a marketer of asbestos insulation and shingles. The building remained a roofing supply warehouse until 1996 when the Beaty family sold the property. The building was later converted to professional offices. However, the building still retains several of the original telltale elements of its early twentieth-century mill architecture, including its heavy timber construction, brick walls, tall windows, and narrow form.