PEEKING INTO THE PAST – Mill Towers

Today’s picture is a postcard published by Starnes Jewelry Store circa 1910. It shows several towers located at Efird Manufacturing and Wiscassett Mills in Albemarle. Towers such as these are a very distinctive part of many of the textile mill buildings throughout the South. These towers had several purposes. Some were used as a primary entrance into the mill buildings. The towers frequently held the stairs that led to the upper floors of the mills, and in some cases they may even have housed elevators. Mill towers also were known to house the bells and/or steam whistles used to signal a change in the workday shifts. Many mills used the upper parts of these towers as a storage area for large tanks to hold water for the mill sprinkler systems. Documentation that might explain which of these uses were in place in the towers of our Stanly County mill buildings has not yet been found. Please contact me at lpbramlett@hotmail.com if you can add information to this part of our local textile mill history. {Lewis Bramlett – Stanly County Historical Society}

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