Charlotte’s mill villages: NoDa, Chadwick and Hoskins

The neighborhoods Charlotte is proudest of now, NoDa above all, were built as company towns for cotton mills, and the pattern of every street in them was set by a textile engineer around 1903. This guide is the story of the mill villages: who built them, what the houses were, why the mills outlasted the mansions, and what happened when the looms stopped. Every fact links to a source; the businesses in the old villages link to the directory.

North Charlotte, 1903

North Charlotte began in 1903 when three textile men, William Holt of Alamance County and Jesse Spencer and Charles W. Johnston of Charlotte, joined to build the Highland Park Manufacturing Company’s Mill No. 3 and the villages around it (Charlotte Mecklenburg Library). The site was rolling farmland two miles past the city limits at the meeting of two railroads, chosen so cotton could come in and cloth go out by rail (NoDa Neighborhood Association). Stuart W. Cramer designed the mill for $600,000; it covered 101,125 square feet, employed more than 1,500 people and was the first textile mill in North Carolina built to run on electricity instead of steam (Charlotte Mecklenburg Library). It was, briefly, the biggest cotton factory in the state (History South). The Mecklenburg Mill followed north of 36th Street with about 50 mill houses on Mercury, 37th and Herrin; the water tower still stands at North Davidson and 37th (NoDa Neighborhood Association). Johnston Mill and the hosiery and waste companies came after.

The $325 house

The villages were built to a plan. The standard house was the T-plan cottage promoted by D.A. Tompkins, the Charlotte engineer who published its plans under the title “Three-room Gable House, Cost $325”; roughly 55 of them stood in the Mecklenburg Mill village by 1905, and versions line the villages of the Chadwick and Hoskins mills west of town and the mill towns of Davidson, Cornelius, Huntersville and Pineville (North Charlotte Historic District nomination). Cramer’s plan included a hotel, Shue’s Boarding House, for salesmen, single workers and couples not ready to rent a whole house (History South). The company built the church, the store and the school. A worker’s whole life ran inside a few blocks, which is why the old villages still feel like villages.

Chadwick and Hoskins

West of the city, the Chadwick Mill went up in 1901 and the Hoskins Mill in 1903-04, a three-story brick building by contractor J.A. Jones, who would go on to run one of the country’s largest construction firms; inside, heavy timber and maple planking painted white to reflect the light, and windows that were never bricked in when air conditioning came (Dr. Thomas Hanchett, History South). Hoskins was listed on the National Register in 1988 (Wikipedia). The Piedmont and Northern electric railway connected the village to Charlotte in 1911, and the Thomas family began platting the farm next door as Thomasboro in 1914 (History South). The names survive on the map west of Uptown: Hoskins Road, Thomasboro, and the Coulwood and Mountain Island pages cover what’s out there now.

Why the mills survived

Charlotte tore down its Masonic Temple and its grand hotel, but the mills stood, and Dan Morrill of the Historic Landmarks Commission explained why: they’re both pragmatic and romantic, and pragmatic wins (Charlotte Urban Institute). A brick mill with 14-foot ceilings and timber floors converts to apartments; a 1920s hotel with small rooms doesn’t. Highland Park No. 3 became market-rate apartments, Mecklenburg Mill became affordable housing and Johnston Mill is adding 230-odd units (Charlotte Urban Institute). The mill houses fared worse; scores remain, many demolished, and the ones that survive don’t meet the landmark criteria because they aren’t above the norm (Charlotte Urban Institute). That’s the tension in NoDa today: the mill is protected and the village isn’t.

How North Charlotte became NoDa

Textile production faded after the 1950s and North Charlotte languished until artists found it. Paul Sires and Ruth Ava Lyons opened the Center of the Earth Gallery in the late 1980s in a row of shops whose roof and back wall had fallen in; by the 1990s there were enough galleries for crawls, which drew businesses and young buyers for the mill cottages, and the name NoDa stuck (History South, Charlotte Urban Institute). Today the anchor is NoDa Brewing Company, the light rail runs through, and Starlight on 22nd and the bars along North Davidson fill the old company district. The NoDa and Villa Heights pages list the rest. The Optimist Park page covers the village nearest Uptown.

Walking the villages

History South publishes a self-guided NoDa mill district walking tour (History South), and it’s the best hour of local history in the city: the mill, the water tower, the boarding house, the T-plan cottages on Mercury Street, the church behind its brick wall. Uptown Funk Tour runs guided versions. For the furniture that came out of those houses, Main St. Antiques in Mooresville and Catawba River Antique Mall in Belmont, itself a mill town, are where it ended up; the antiquing guide explains.

The other villages

Dilworth’s Atherton Mill, whose village the Tompkins plans were drawn for (NoDa Neighborhood Association), is a shopping district now; the Atherton Millhouse was among four landmarks facing demolition applications in late 2024, the most preservationists had seen at once (WFAE). The lake towns were mill towns first: Davidson, Cornelius, Huntersville and Pineville all keep T-plan streets (North Charlotte Historic District nomination), and Belmont, McAdenville and Kannapolis are mill towns whole. City Club at Gibson Mill in Concord is a restored mill you can hold a wedding in, and Beverly Knits in Gastonia is a reminder that textiles didn’t leave entirely. The town pages have the rest. Live in a mill house and know its story? Tell us.