Woodside Mills Archives - Greenville County

City Directories and History: Greenville, S.C. had one of the largest concentrations of textile manufacturing companies in the U.S., including the enormous Woodside Brothers Mills. These images are a gallery of those provided R&R via the Willis Collection.

Greenville’s Woodside Cotton Mills – The Complex

The Rock Hill Herald reported on June 2, 1900 – “Mr. H.F. Moody, who has been Supt. of the Crescent Mill in Rock Hill, will go to Greer where he will be Supt. of the Victor Mill.”

Courtesy of the AFLLC – Pettus Group 2017

The Woodside Cotton Mill Village Historic District has industrial and architectural significance as a good example of an early twentieth century urban South Carolina textile mill village. Centered around a mill founded by John T. Woodside in 1902, the district includes 375 buildings and sites (280 contributing and 95 non-contributing) just west of the city limits of Greenville. The village is largely intact over eighty years later despite modernizations made to individual buildings by a succession of mill and home owners. The spatial integrity of the village has been maintained. Mill and community exist in the same relationship as it has for more than eighty years – the massive cotton mill rises above a village of modest cottages built for the mill workers. Transportation arteries have also survived without major change. A historic garden/greenway provides an additional pleasing visual element. The mill is a rectangular plan, brick, four-story textile mill designed by J.E. Sirrine and built between 1902 and 1912. In addition to the cotton mill, the village contains 343 surviving mill houses, one cotton waste house, on mill office building, one recreation building, two churches, one baseball park, and one pasture/common garden area. The village is divided into four parts by man-made and natural features. Woodside Avenue, a broad, oak-lined street, forms the village’s central boulevard. The mill, the village churches, and some supervisory housing front along the avenue. The curving side streets in the village are lined with neat rows of mill houses and are also lined with large oaks. Listed in the National Register April 30, 1987. (Courtesy of the SC Dept. of Archives and History)

Alexander, Milton O., mill superintendent and textile manufacturer; born in Cabarrus County, N. C.; son of L. H. and Martha (McClellan) Alexander; educated at Rocky River Academy; began career as textile manufacturer as operative in mill of Odell Manufacturing Co., Concord, N. C.; later worked in Union Cotton Mills of Lafayette, Ga., and from there went to Union Cotton Mills of Union; later went to Seneca; became superintendent of Woodside Mill, Greenville, in 1902, and has served as such ever since; member Southern Textile Assn. Presbyterian. Married May Park, Lafayette, Ga. Address, Greenville, S. C. Courtesy of Who’s Who in S.C. – 1921

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R&R HISTORY LINK: the interview with John H. Gates, Sr., of Anderson SC

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