THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, October 14, 1996 TAG: 9610140025
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: EDENTON LENGTH: 71 lines
The textile mill town is so clearly slipping into North Carolina history that preservationists want to renovate one that remains intact to give future generations a glimpse.
Where humming machinery once churned out yarn, the Edenton Cotton Mill now stands dark, quiet and empty, except for a few tufts of cotton in remote corners. Along the tree-lined streets next to the mill, many of the small, tin-roofed houses where mill workers once lived now stand vacant.
Preservation North Carolina, which buys historic properties across the state to preserve them, owns the abandoned factory and the remaining 57 workers' houses.
The Winston-Salem-based group is selling unoccupied houses with strict covenants forcing the new owners to preserve the uniformity of the village. Asbestos shingles must be removed from the original wood siding. The rules also will govern the way that house numbers are placed.
Plans also are in the works to convert the brick mill building into artists' studios, a wellness center, a 35-room inn, a conference center and satellite classrooms for East Carolina University.
``A textile mill and mill village is as strong a representation of how people in North Carolina lived and worked in the early 20th century as anything you could find. And they've disappeared,'' said Myrick Howard, Preservation North Carolina's executive director.
``I really do feel that 25 years from now or 50 years from now, you will have substantial tourism here because of the character of the village - people going to see their roots,'' he told the Winston-Salem Journal.
The mill was built in 1899 to turn locally grown cotton into yarn. Over the next 20 years, its owners built 70 houses for the ``operatives'' they hired from across Albemarle Sound in Tyrrell County to work in the mill.
The mill survived the Great Depression and remained locally owned until 1990. Unifi Inc. of Greensboro closed it a year ago and gave the mill and the 57 houses to Preservation North Carolina.
Similar factory buildings have been renovated in Raleigh, Durham, Carrboro and Winston-Salem, Howard said. But none of those projects included the living quarters of mill workers.
``This was one mill village that was thoroughly intact,'' he said. ``You are not going to find that in North Carolina now. In the 1920s, there would have been dozens, if not hundreds, of them.''
The retired mill workers who live in many of the village's houses can continue renting them or buy them. Others also are moving in.
Matt Hobbs, 22, a Princeton graduate and engineer whose parents have restored a bed-and-breakfast in neighboring Perquimans County, bought one of the houses on Elliott Street.
At $18,000, ``it wasn't quite a giveaway, but it was a pretty good price. You figure you put another $20,000 into it, plus some sweat equity, and you've got a pretty nice house,'' Hobbs said as he dug into the ground for an addition.
Longtime residents of the village - many of whom survived decades of the mill's ups and downs - are cautious about the preservation plan.
Some worry that they won't be able to keep a window air conditioner because it might offend someone's historic sensibilities or that they might have to remove outbuildings to make way for a new park behind their homes. Others worry that their rent will increase.
But Dewey and Madge Whitehurst say they are generally optimistic about the future as they sit on the porch of the yellow house where they have lived for 43 years.
``I think it's great that they're going to restore the houses and people are going to move back in,'' Madge Whitehurst said. ``I hate to see 'em boarded up.'' ILLUSTRATION: ASSOCIATED PRESS
Streets near the Edenton Cotton Mill are lined with houses where
mill workers once lived. An unusual number of the houses stand. by CNB