Mills Mill: A Self-Contained Cotton World in Greenville
Near Greenville, South Carolina
Captain Otis P. Mills broke ground on his Romanesque cotton mill in eighteen ninety-six and had it spinning five thousand spindles with two hundred employees by eighteen ninety-seven. He did not just build a factory. He built a world. Within a few years the Mills Mill Village contained about a hundred twenty houses, a shared Baptist and Methodist church, and a YMCA, all arranged around the mill so that workers never had to leave.
By nineteen oh seven the operation had grown to twenty-seven thousand spindles and about four hundred fifty workers, specializing in cotton sheets, twills, and satins. More than a thousand people called the village home. Mills Mill ran for most of the twentieth century before closing in nineteen seventy-eight with only one hundred thirty-six employees remaining. The old building reopened in the early two thousands as the Lofts at Mills Mill, part of a broader revitalization of Greenville's textile corridor. The smokestack still stands.
