Small Towns in the Carolinas: Understanding Their Heritage
Did you know that...
by the 1920s textile manufacturing was the dominant business in the Carolinas and that Charlotte was the center of the textile industry in the south?
many of the small towns in the Carolinas began as mill villages with a textile plant surrounded by company-owned housing for the workers and a company-owned general store for provisions?
in 1894, a Charlottean received a patent for "air conditioning" to regulate temperature and humidity in textile mills?
Last winter, I learned these facts when I visited the Levine Museum of the New South in downtown Charlotte. What a great way to learn about the heritage of the Charlotte area! The main exhibit at the museum is called Cotton Fields to Skyscrapers: Charlotte and the Carolina Piedmont in the New South. The New South is defined as the period beginning just after the Civil War until today. Five "environments" in the exhibit tell the story of how the South has reinvented itself over the decades.
Bringing Mills to the Cotton, 1880s to 1930s is the section that gives insight into Carolinas small towns. Here you can find recreated sections of a textile factory and a millhand's house. Vintage films, photos and artifacts tell the story of what life was like in a mill village. Fascinating!
Understanding how the small towns around Charlotte began helps me appreciate the transformation now taking place in some of them. Fort Mill, South Carolina is a good example of how a sleepy village during most of the 20th century is now being transformed into a thriving vibrant new town. Because the Springs and Close families of Fort Mill owned over 7000 acres in the town, they have been able to develop a master plan for the town that incorporates residential, commercial and light industrial uses as well as thousands of acres of parks and greenways. McAdenville and Kannapolis, North Carolina towns adjacent to Charlotte, are two other examples of former mill villages being transformed in the 21st century.
I highly recommend a visit to the Levine Museum of the New South if you want to understand where and how small towns in the Charlotte area began and how their unique history presents development opportunities today.