14033_Western Electric_ChathamMfg_10-4-2010

Chatham Manufacturing Company/Western Electric Plant
Winston-Salem, Forsyth County, North Carolina October 2010 draft prepared by Heather Fearnbach Section 7. Narrative Description

Setting Located northwest of downtown Winston-Salem’s central commercial district, the Chatham
Manufacturing Company/Western Electric complex occupies a triangular 5.96-acre parcel bounded by
the Southern Railway tracks to the south and west, Peters Creek to the north, and Chatham Road to the
east. The site includes a series of interconnected one- to five-story brick, heavy-timber frame, steel, and concrete industrial buildings constructed between 1907 and 1951; a 1907 coal trestle; three freestanding buildings (a concrete block boiler house, a small brick fire pump house, and a small
concrete block workshop); a cylindrical metal fuel-storage tank; and an electrical substation.

The industrial complex was originally situated on approximately nine acres, but three acres on the north end (adjacent to Northwest Boulevard) and a three-tenths-of-an-acre parcel at the property’s southeast corner have been subdivided since Western Electric closed their plant at this location in
1966. The small parcel that fronts Chatham Road just north of the railroad contains a one-story brick
office building that Chatham Manufacturing Company erected in 1937, now separated from the main
mill by a tall chain-link fence. That parcel is included within the proposed National Register boundary. The northern three acres, which once served as the industrial complex’s parking lot, encompass two long rectangular commercial buildings constructed in 1972 on two of the parcels facing
Northwest Boulevard. The other parcels are vacant. This acreage has been excluded from the
proposed National Register boundary.
The Chatham Manufacturing Company/Western Electric complex is adjacent to the National Register-listed West End Historic District, which is primarily residential and includes a few modest dwellings
that were erected to house the company’s mill workers in an area that became known as Chatham
Heights. The Hanes Dye and Finishing Company plant, which was constructed in the 1940s and
expanded in 1953 and 1965, stands on the east side of Chatham Road. Commercial development lines Northwest Boulevard north of the industrial sites.
Main Mill, Warehouses, and Later Additions, 1907, 1912-1917, early 1930s, 1944-1948, 1951
Contributing Building
800 Chatham Road Although the main mill, warehouses, and later additions are linked, creating one large building
encompassing approximately 330,000 square feet, the following description is broken down into an
inventory list and keyed to a site plan that references each section by the number it was given by
Western Electric.1

As a few of the buildings once encompassed in the complex have been demolished, the number sequence is not continuous. The list is arranged in chronological rather than sequential
order.
1 Small plaques above interior doorways delineate some building numbers, but the Western Electric Company’s
March 1953 revised isometric view of the Chatham Road Plant serves as the most comprehensive primary source of building numbers.

Chatham Manufacturing Company/Western Electric Complex 2
Heather Fearnbach, October 2010
The main mill and subsequent additions angle slightly to the west rather than having a true north/south
orientation, but, for the sake of clarity, the following description is written as though the main mill’s northwest elevation faces due north.
Main Mill (Building 4), 1907, 1944, 1960s
The April 1907 Sanborn map indicates that “Chatham Manufacturing Company Mill No. 2,” a woolen
factory, was under construction at that time. The 1907 mill is a three-story brick edifice executed in
seven-to-one common bond with segmental-arched window and door openings and a very low-pitched gable roof. Documentary photos illustrate that the window openings originally contained paired,
double-hung, eight-over-eight sash windows surmounted by eight-light transoms. The majority of the
building’s window openings were partially enclosed and smaller aluminum-framed windows installed
before 1968. A few window and door openings near the south elevation’s center and on the west elevation’s first story have been enclosed with brick; while most of the openings on the south elevation are covered with metal siding or painted plywood.

An original brick stair tower projects from the north elevation and a frame stair tower, likely
constructed by Western Electric in the late 1950s, extends from the south elevation. The original mill was fifteen bays wide (in the east-west direction) and five bays deep (in the north-south direction). In the early 1930s, Chatham Manufacturing Company demolished the one-story, four-bay-wide, 1920s
brick addition and constructed a new three-story wing as well as a stair and elevator tower at the
building’s southeast corner.2 Chatham Manufacturing Company also expanded the original north stair
tower with a full-height (three-story) restroom addition on its west elevation about the same time. In 1944, National Carbon Company reconfigured the north tower to create larger restrooms on each floor
and erected new wooden stairs between the floors.3

The mill’s open interior features wood floors, exposed brick walls, chamfered square wood posts, and
substantial wood beams. Steel braces and girders reinforce some areas, most likely to compensate for the weight and vibration of heavy equipment. Metal-clad fire doors slide on metal tracks and are held open by weighted pulleys. Florescent lights and sprinkler system pipes have been dropped from the
ceilings throughout the mill.

National Carbon Company used the main mill’s first floor as a machine shop and assembly area and created a storage room at the northeast corner and a shipping and receiving center at the northwest end. The company renovated a portion of the first floor’s western end to create a large women’s cloak
room, a garment room, and a rest room and changing room for African American men, and constructed
new restrooms on the second and third floors.4

During Western Electric’s tenure, the main mill’s first floor contained the receiving department,
offices, a packing room, and a large testing area. The second floor housed the drafting department and
a cable storage area at the west end. The third floor served as the Navy projects department.5

2 It is possible that Chatham Manufacturing Company constructed two new floors above the one-story addition
that projected from the main mill’s east elevation rather than demolishing it, but building investigation was inconclusive. 3 National Carbon Company, Inc., “Building Alterations, 2nd and 3rd Floors,” January 14, 1943. 4 Ibid.; National Carbon Company, Inc., “Equipment Plan for NC-2, First Floor Layout,” March 9, 1943. 5 Western Electric Company, Inc., North Carolina Works, Factory Planning and Plant Engineering, “Floor Level
Layout,” Chatham Road Plant, 1962.

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Dye House (Building 8), 1907, 1944
The 1907 Sanborn map illustrates a one-story-on-basement brick dye house located north of the main mill’s stair tower, which connects the two buildings. By 1917 the building housed a wool picker room
as well as wool washing, drying, and dying operations. The building’s function is not specified in the
1942 Sanborn map update.
The dye house has a low-pitched gable roof with a central monitor-roofed skylight that illuminated the interior. The building’s roof system features conventional joists supported by built-up triple-member
beams reinforced with underslung steel rods.

Documentary photographs illustrate that the dye house had large eight-over-eight sash windows surmounted by eight-light transoms (identical to the main mill’s original windows) on all four elevations, but they have been enclosed by later additions. Some original window sash and transoms
are intact on the north and west elevations.

The dye house interior encompasses wood floors, plywood sheathing covering most walls, a dropped acoustical tile ceiling, circa 1950s ceiling vents, and florescent lighting. This space served as the “RS-201” production area and a storeroom during Western Electric’s tenure. The National Carbon
Company constructed the small, metal-lined corner room around 1944 to test their underwater
detonators. The room retains a thick steel door hung on steel strap hinges, wire mesh covering the
walls, and a ventilation system designed to move exhaust from explosions out of the building.6

A 1946 photograph shows that a gable-roofed frame passage with a long, horizontal band of high
windows had been constructed along the dye house’s north elevation. The National Carbon Company
utilized the building as a cafeteria and erected the passage as well as the frame storage room that
extends from the dye house’s west elevation around 1944. The two spaces are constructed in a similar manner and simply finished with wood floors and plywood sheathing on the exterior walls. A double-
leaf door on the storage room’s north elevation provides access from the passage.7

Engine Room (Building 9) and Boiler Room and Pump House (Building 11), 1907, 1940s
A one-story engine room projects from the main mill’s north elevation, with a pump house to the north and a boiler room at its northwest corner. An eighty-foot-tall brick chimney stood just north of the
boiler room, and a coal trestle supplied fuel to the engine and boiler rooms. A small brick addition
with a concrete floor and exposed brick walls was constructed at the boiler room’s northeast corner
after the chimney was removed and the 1942 updates to the Sanborn map issued. A long, narrow, late 1940s frame passage now extends from the boiler room’s northeast corner to the dye house’s northwest corner. The boiler room’s large, segmental-arched window openings have been infilled with brick, but
the substantial metal-clad fire doors are intact. The space has a concrete floor and a tall ceiling.
Exposed concrete I-beams, installed by either National Carbon Company or Western Electric, support
the replacement roof.
6 Western Electric Company, Inc., North Carolina Works, Factory Planning and Plant Engineering, “Floor Level Layout,” Chatham Road Plant, 1962. 7 National Carbon Company, Inc., “Equipment Plan for NC-2, First Floor Layout,” March 9, 1943. A small addition extended from the dye house’s northwest corner by April 1942. The other frame additions were constructed after
April 1946, based on a documentary photo that shows that elevation.

Chatham Manufacturing Company/Western Electric Complex 4
Heather Fearnbach, October 2010

The pump house, which also has a concrete floor, retains an Allis-Chalmers pump and associated pipes and has a replacement wood joist roof system. The bottom third of the window opening on the east elevation has been enclosed with brick. It appears that the original transom may have been removed
and the original eight-over-eight wood sash reused in the smaller opening.

National Carbon Company used the engine room as a steel electrode manufacturing area. The boiler room and pump house retained their original function.8

Machine Shop (Building 10), erected between 1912 and 1917

A door on the boiler room’s south elevation leads into a small room which originally functioned as a machine shop. The space has exposed brick walls, a concrete floor, and a central heavy-timber post
supporting a central heavy-timber girder and floor beams. The segmentally-arched window opening
and eight-over-eight wood sash window on the west elevation appear to be original, but the exterior
door north of the window is a later addition. The room now contains a metal tank and pipes in addition
to a work bench and sink.
“Whiting” Room (Building 7), erected between 1912 and 1917
A small, hip-roofed, rectangular building was erected east of the stair tower between the main mill and
the dye house between 1912 and 1917. As the 1917 Sanborn map labels the space “whiting,” the
building likely contained the plant’s wool-bleaching operation until the company constructed two long, narrow bleach houses north of the water reservoir in the 1920s.

In 1944, National Carbon Company used Building 7 as an “acid room,” where batteries were filled and
inspected. Western Electric utilized the space as a laboratory.9

Warehouse (Buildings 13 and 14), 1917, late 1930s addition
This warehouse footprint appears on the 1917 Sanborn map with the notation “from plans,” indicating
that it was soon to be constructed. A central fire wall divides the large, one-story, brick edifice in half.
The flat-roofed warehouse is executed in six-to-one common bond. One segmental-arched door opening and two later loading bays pierce the south elevation. A narrow brick addition was constructed on the building’s west elevation in the late 1930s, and is set back approximately five feet
from the 1917 warehouse’s south elevation to accommodate the small frame shed that projects from
the 1917 building’s west elevation. A large casement window pierces the 1930s addition’s south
elevation.10

Large double-hung windows originally illuminated the 1917 warehouse’s interior, but the arched window openings have been bricked-up, likely in 1944 when National Carbon Company erected the additions that wrap around the warehouse’s east, north, and west elevations.
8 National Carbon Company, Inc., “Equipment Plan for NC-2, First Floor Layout,” March 9, 1943. 9 Ibid.; Western Electric Company, Inc., North Carolina Works, Factory Planning and Plant Engineering, “Floor
Level Layout,” Chatham Road Plant, 1962. 10 The addition does not appear on the 1935 aerial view but is shown on the 1942 Sanborn map, indicating that
Chatham Manufacturing Company erected it before moving their operations back to Elkin in 1940.

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The warehouse’s open interior features wood floors, exposed brick walls, square wood posts, and
substantial wood beams. Metal-clad fire doors slide on metal tracks and are held open by weighted pulleys. Florescent lights and sprinkler system pipes have been dropped from the ceilings throughout the building.

Documentary images show that a loading platform extended across the warehouse’s south elevation,
but the extant formed concrete loading dock is a later replacement. The 1907 coal trestle separates the loading platform from a covered concrete loading shed erected on the main mill’s west elevation about 1939.

During Western Electric’s tenure, Building 13 and 14’s first and second floors functioned as
storerooms. A silk screening workshop occupied Building 13’s northwest corner.11

Loading Shed, circa 1939
The loading shed that projects from the 1907 mill’s west elevation has a flat roof supported by open-
web steel joists and posts resting on a formed concrete foundation. A metal railing composed of two round horizontal steel bars secures the west and north elevations. A covered walkway extends from
this loading shed, which is on the coal trestle’s south side, to the loading platform on the coal trestle’s
north side. The steel plates that span the coal trestle may be detached from the shed and platform so
that the bridge can be rolled as needed to facilitate product delivery and loading.
The 1912 and 1917 Sanborn maps depict a narrow L-shaped loading platform that ran north-south
across the main mill’s west elevation and then turned to the west. By 1938, as illustrated in a
documentary photo, a covered wooden platform, most likely a blanket chute, extended from the
northernmost second-story window to the loading platform. A new loading shed is depicted at this
location (on the coal trestle’s south side) on the 1942 Sanborn map. As Chatham Manufacturing Company began moving their operation to Elkin in January of 1940, it appears that they erected the
loading shed just before the move.

National Carbon Company Addition (Building 3), 1944
Construction drawings indicate that National Carbon Company erected the three-story frame addition
at the main mill’s east end in 1944. The addition was sheathed with asbestos shingles and is now
covered with metal siding. The windows—large, paired, double-hung, six-over-six and eight-over-
eight sash surmounted by multi-light transoms—were similar to those of the original mill building and
are intact behind the metal siding.
During Western Electric’s tenure, the building’s first floor contained an “RS 152 Assembly” room, a
small library, and spaces labeled “telephone,” “Wenoca,” and “Wenoca store.” The Wenoca Club, a
social group organized by Western Electric employees, sponsored events to benefit local charities. The
second floor housed the drafting and reproduction departments, and the third floor the Navy projects department and “test set maintenance.”12

11 Western Electric Company, Inc., North Carolina Works, Factory Planning and Plant Engineering, “Floor Level Layout,” Chatham Road Plant, 1962. 12 Ibid.

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In the early 1980s, the first floor was converted into windowless offices with sheetrock walls above a
parged brick kneewall, dropped acoustical tile ceilings, and commercial carpeting.13

Warehouse space with a rollup-door and loading dock on the east elevation occupies first floor’s northern end. The second and third floors retain open floor plans, wood floors, frame exterior walls with horizontal-board
wainscoting, and square, braced, wood posts supporting wood beams.
National Carbon Company Addition (Building 6), 1944 The National Carbon Company constructed the five-story addition that extends north from the main
mill’s northeast corner and Building 3’s north elevation in the summer of 1944, greatly increasing the
plant’s overall size.14

The large, paired, six-over-six sash windows surmounted by six-light transoms
that illuminated the interior were covered with foam in the early 1970s but are intact. The addition’s eastern section contains four floors, while the western section includes an L-shaped fifth story. A stair tower projects from the western elevation’s center. The wing’s northern end also contains a stair tower
with an exterior double-leaf glass door.
The building’s lower four floors have open plans reflecting their most recent use as warehouse space. The exterior walls are exposed brick. The concrete block and frame central partion walls were later additions. Twin City Records Management installed the modular office on the third floor’s western
side in the 1980s.

Like Building 15, Building 6’s structural system consists of concrete floors and steel post and beam construction. Metal-clad fire doors slide on metal tracks and are held open by weighted pulleys. Florescent lights and sprinkler system pipes have been dropped from the ceilings throughout the
building. Twin City Records Management added a climate control system and the requisite ductwork
to the third floor.
The fifth floor’s northern end encompasses a side hall that was originally more of a breezeway, as it featured large windowless openings on the west elevation. Metal casement windows, many of which
are now covered with foam, illuminate the large northern room and the three smaller rooms to the
south. The southern section, which extends to the east, contains restrooms, a large storage room, and
two small rooms at the east end. Several doors provide roof access. National Carbon Company’s construction drawings indicate that a rooftop garden and snack bar were to be built at this location, but it does not appear that the plans were executed.15

During Western Electric’s tenure, the building’s first floor contained offices, a vault, and a small
hospital. The second floor housed the kitchen, serving, dining, and storage areas. The third floor functioned as offices, and the fourth encompassed mechanical and electrical laboratories and “film” and “system” areas. The fifth floor included offices, a classroom, a “secret file” room, and a pent
house.16
13 Henry A. Brown, Jr., telephone conversation with Heather Fearnbach, September 21, 2010.

14 The wing is not illustrated on the 1942 Sanborn map but appears in the April 1946 photograph of the Western Electric job applicant line. National Carbon Company, Inc., “Winston-Salem Plant Expansion Part 2, 4 Story Addition to
Mfg. Bldg,” June 24, 1944. 15 National Carbon Company, Inc., “General Arrangement and Details, Snack Bar and Roof Garden, Building No.
6,” March 26, 1945. 16 Western Electric Company, Inc., North Carolina Works, Factory Planning and Plant Engineering, “Floor Level
Layout,” Chatham Road Plant, 1962.

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Heather Fearnbach, October 2010

National Carbon Company Passage, 1944 National Carbon Company erected this passage during their 1944 construction campaign. The long,
narrow, asbestos-clad, frame edifice connects Building 6, the dye house (Building 8), the 1907 mill
(Building 4), the boiler and engine rooms (Buildings 9 and 11), and Building 12. Horizontally-sliding
eight-pane wood sash illuminate the interior. An April 1946 photograph shows the passage’s double-leaf entrance, but not the central loading dock, indicating that Western Electric subsequently reconfigured the building. The passage was known as “Michigan Boulevard” by 1962, perhaps in
reference to its heavy use and lack of climate control.17

Wood piers elevate the passage to the same height as the second floors of Buildings 6 and 12. Wood steps lead to the double-leaf rear entrance, which is sheltered by a shallow roof overhang supported by square wood posts. A ramp near the passage’s west end provides access to the main mill.

National Carbon Company Warehouse (Building 12), 1944
The National Carbon Company also constructed the two frame warehouses (Buildings 12 and 15) that wrap around the 1917 brick warehouse’s east, north, and west elevations in 1944, more than doubling the factory’s storage space. The buildings, which are sheathed with asbestos siding, were erected in
the summer of 1944.18

The L-shaped Building 12 projects from the 1917 warehouse’s east end. The southern section is two-stories tall and four bays deep in the north-south direction. The south wall is in line with the older
building’s south elevation. A sliding plywood door on a metal track opens into the shallow, one-story,
shed-roofed addition on the east elevation. A single-leaf door provides access to the basement on the
south elevation just west of the machine shop’s exterior door.
Building 12’s northern section, which is also four bays deep in the north-south direction, extends east-
west the width of the two earlier warehouses. Given the site’s grade, which slopes down to the north
and west, the eastern elevation has two stories but the west and north elevations rise to three stories in
height. The large, paired, eight-over-eight sash windows that illuminated the interior were covered
with foam in the early 1970s but are intact. Eight-pane transoms surmount the north elevation’s second-story windows.

Building 12’s northeast corner connects to the 1951 Western Electric building’s second story (top
floor), which is accessed through a sliding interior door that opens to a wide corridor with a sloped
floor to accommodate the difference in the two buildings’ floor levels. The recessed first-story entrance bay on the warehouse’s north elevation has a concrete floor, a sliding metal-clad door at the
west end, and an enclosed window at the east end. The fenestration has changed over time, as the
17 Western Electric Company, Inc., North Carolina Works, Factory Planning and Plant Engineering, “Floor Level
Layout,” Chatham Road Plant, 1962. The passage is shown on the 1948 aerial photograph. By 1930, a one-story, frame, L-shaped platform extended from Building 13 to the dye house’s northwest corner and then north to a bleach house, but it
appears the platform was removed before the passage was erected. The platform is visible on the 1930 and 1935 aerial photographs and the 1942 Sanborn map. 18 National Carbon Company, Inc., “Winston-Salem Plant Expansion, 2 Story Addition to Warehouse,” May 15, 1944, and “Winston-Salem Plant Expansion Part 2, 3 Story Addition to Warehouse,” May 1 and 15, 1944. The warehouse
additions appear on the 1948 aerial photograph.

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original openings have been infilled with terra cotta block, likely in the 1950s. Several loading docks
pierce the north elevation. The building rests on a brick foundation. The warehouse interior retains an open floor plan with wood floors, frame exterior walls with
horizontal-board wainscoting and plywood sheathing, and square wood posts with wood braces
through-bolted to wood joists. Metal-clad fire doors slide on metal tracks and are held open by
weighted pulleys. Florescent lights and sprinkler system pipes have been dropped from the ceilings throughout the building.
Western Electric used most of Building 12’s southeast section as storage, with spare parts packing and
inspection rooms at the south end. The north wing contained offices, a classroom, and the electrical
lab department. The third floor encompassed a box shop, shipping and cable department areas, and a spray paint room.19

National Carbon Company Warehouse (Building 15), 1944

Building 15 extends from the west elevations of the 1917 warehouse and Building 12. The National Carbon Company warehouses are similar in appearance with the exception of the windows, as
Building 15 has smaller six-over-six sash with six-pane transoms at the second story. The structural
systems are quite different, however, as Building 15 has concrete floors and steel post and beam
construction.
On the west elevation, a metal stair with a two-bar railing provides access to a central second-story
entrance sheltered by a metal canopy supported by metal posts. The building’s west and south
elevations are angled to accommodate the railroad tracks. The south elevation intersects the circa
1930s addition to the 1917 warehouse. A shed-roofed canopy shelters the large door and windows on
that elevation. A narrow concrete loading dock occupies the space between the warehouse and the coal trestle.

The warehouse interior is open. A freight elevator occupies the southeast corner. Metal-clad fire
doors slide on metal tracks and are held open by weighted pulleys. Florescent lights and sprinkler
system pipes have been dropped from the ceilings throughout the building.
During Western Electric’s tenure, a sheet metal shop, plating room, and spray paint room occupied
Building 15’s first floor (lowest level). The second floor contained the Nike “B” guided missile
assembly room, and the third floor a large box shop.20

National Carbon Company Paint Manufacturing and Paint Storage Building (Building 21), 1945 This two-story, flat-roofed building has a formed concrete structure (columns, joists, and floor system)
with terra cotta block filling the spaces between the concrete columns on the first story’s exterior
walls. On the second story, concrete columns support the steel beams below the frame roof system. Corrugated cement siding is attached to frame studs on the exterior walls, which have no interior
19 Western Electric Company, Inc., North Carolina Works, Factory Planning and Plant Engineering, “Floor Level Layout,” Chatham Road Plant, 1962. 20 Ibid.

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sheathing. Large metal casement windows illuminate the interior. Brick infill flanks the first-floor
window openings on the north and west elevations. A concrete ramp with a metal pipe railing leads to a door opening on the first-floor’s west elevation
that has been enclosed with terra cotta block. The sliding door north of the ramp has been boarded-up,
creating a central single-leaf entrance. A metal ladder on the elevation’s north end rises to a shallow
wood platform below a narrow wood door. A one-story shed addition with plywood-paneled exterior walls and a metal roof extends was erected
on the building’s south elevation using the original concrete loading platform as a floor. The sliding
door that provided access to the interior has been boarded-up. A concrete ramp south of this entrance
slopes down to the west. The building’s first floor plan is open. The south elevation, which also serves as a retaining wall, has
always been blind at this level and the window openings on the east elevation have been infilled with
concrete block or painted. A concrete ramp at the room’s northeast corner leads to the concrete block
hyphen, constructed in the early 1970s, that extends east to the 1951 Western Electric building (number 23). The second floor encompasses a large room at the west end, with frame partition walls sheathed with plywood panels creating narrower rooms on the building’s south and east ends.
Florescent lights and sprinkler system pipes have been dropped from the ceilings throughout the
building. This building is not illustrated on the 1942 Sanborn map but appears on the 1948 aerial photograph. National Carbon Company plans indicate that the building was erected in 1945.21

A small, one-story,
gable-roofed building stood to the north until the early 1970s.
Western Electric Building 23, 1951
This large two-story-on-basement brick building, which stands at the northeast corner of the frame
warehouse (Building 12) erected by National Carbon Company, is an excellent example of mid-
twentieth-century industrial architecture. Steel trusses support the low gable roof, which has a deep
overhang in the gable ends above vertical board siding. An internal elevator tower projects from the
roof near the north elevation’s center. The building rests on a formed concrete foundation.
Bands of steel casement windows with continuous concrete sills fill the upper sections of the first- and
second-story walls, while the basement is illuminated by only a central window grouping on the north
elevation. Some of the windows have been painted, but most are intact and appear to be functional.
A frame shed-roofed canopy shelters the loading dock at the north elevation’s center.22

The double-
leaf entrance on the east elevation’s south end was once sheltered by a similar canopy. A loading dock
with a roll-up garage bay and a single leaf entrance were added near the east elevation’s north end in
the 1980s. Wooden steps with a wooden railing lead to the entrance.
Two small, one-story, plywood-sided, shed-roofed additions project from the north elevation just south
of the electrical substation.

21 National Carbon Company, Inc., “Paint Manufacturing and Paint Storage Building,” April 17, 1945. 22 A 1968 photograph illustrates that a flat-roofed canopy originally projected above the loading dock.

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The building’s open interior features wood floors, painted brick exterior walls, and steel columns supporting steel beams and girders. Frame partition walls have been added to create offices and storerooms in the basement’s northwest corner and the first floor’s northeast corner. The second floor
is now completely open with the exception of the elevator tower. Metal stairs adjacent to the elevator
tower provide access to the roof, and a ramp constructed in 1975 leads to the warehouse’s northeast
corner. Full-height towers at the building’s north and south ends contain steel stairs with steel-pipe railings. Florescent lights and sprinkler system pipes have been dropped from the ceilings throughout the building.

During Western Electric’s tenure, a round centrifuge chamber and an adjacent vibration room occupied
the basement’s northeast corner, with a test area, storage, an impact room, and another vibration room to the west. The basement’s southern half served as a machinery room and a machine shop. The majority of the first floor functioned as a test area with atmospheric chambers, and the second floor
contained offices.23

Free-standing Buildings and Structures
Coal Trestle, 1907, contributing structure
A heavy-timber trestle, which appears on the 1907 Sanborn map, supports the short railroad spur that
led from the main track to the boiler and engine rooms.
Fire Pump House (Building 18), erected circa 1944, contributing building
This one-story, hip-roofed, brick building stands at the warehouse’s northwest corner, a few feet east
of Building 22. Paneled, double-leaf, wood doors on the west elevation provide access to the interior. The six-over-six sash windows on the north, east, and south elevations and the transom above the door
have been boarded up. The small, gable-roofed, asbestos-sided, frame addition that projects from the
west elevation north of the door served as “Hose House #6” according to Western Electric’s 1953 plan
of the Chatham Road plant.24

Workshop (Building 22), erected between 1942 and 1948, contributing building This one-story, gable-roofed, concrete block building, which stands at the complex’s northwest corner,
is not illustrated on the 1942 Sanborn map but appears on the 1948 aerial photograph. Double-leaf
doors, metal casement windows, and roll-up doors pierce the south and east elevations. The metal casement windows on the west elevation have been boarded-up. The interior has a concrete floor, an acoustical tile ceiling, and florescent lighting. The south end is lined with wooden shelves, while most
of the north end is open.

23 Western Electric Company, Inc., North Carolina Works, Factory Planning and Plant Engineering, “Floor Level Layout,” Chatham Road Plant, 1962. 24 The pump house is not illustrated on the 1942 Sanborn map but appears on the 1948 aerial photograph. National Carbon Company’s construction drawings do not give a complete date, only the month and year (9-10), but were likely
created in 1943 with the building erected soon after.

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Electrical Substation, erected between 1948 and 1954, contributing structure
A chain-link fence surrounds the electrical substation, which is located north of the 1951 Western Electric building (number 23). The substation contains steel and wooden posts carrying the electric
lines to transformers and into Building 23.

Boiler House (Building 19), circa 1975, noncontributing building This two-story, gable-roofed, concrete block building housed two boilers and thus has two roll-up
service doors on each gable end. Vertical board siding sheathes the gable ends below the metal roof.
Adele Knits erected the boiler house to furnish power for their equipment.25

Fuel Storage Tank, circa 1975, noncontributing structure A cylindrical fuel storage tank stands at the substation’s west end south of the concrete block garage.
Adele Knits erected the tank at the same time as the adjacent boiler house.26

Chatham Manufacturing Company Office (Building 1), 1937 750 Chatham Road
This austere one-story brick building is executed in five-to-one common bond. A pointed parapet tops
the Art Moderne-style entrance bay, which is flanked by a stepped surround. A semi-circular canopy surmounts the double-leaf entrance and transom. A soldier-course brick band wraps around the building above the metal casement windows.

A flat-roofed, two-tier porch shelters the central entrances at the basement and main floor on the east
elevation. Steel stairs with steel-pipe railings extend north and south of the stair landing. A concrete ramp leads to the roll-up garage door at the east elevation’s north end.
The building stands on a three-tenths-of-an-acre parcel at the complex’s southeast corner. A tall chain-
link fence encloses the lot, which fronts Chatham Road just north of the railroad.
25 Henry A. “Hal” Brown and Mike Hollman, interview with Heather Fearnbach, September 29, 2010. 26 Ibid.
Section 8. Statement of Significance
The Chatham Manufacturing/Western Electric complex meets National Register of Historic Places Criterion A for industry and Criterion C for architecture. Chatham Manufacturing Company, which
ultimately became an internationally-recognized woolen blanket producer with sales offices throughout
the United States, began as a small Surry County, North Carolina enterprise. The corporation
expanded their operations to Winston, the industrial center of neighboring Forsyth County, in 1906. During the next three decades, Chatham Manufacturing Company dominated North Carolina’s woolen industry and became one of the largest wool weavers in the nation. After the corporation consolidated
their manufacturing and finishing plants in Elkin in 1940, the United States Government leased and
then purchased the company’s Winston-Salem facility. The Cleveland-based National Carbon
Company utilized the complex from 1943 until 1945, erecting several large additions to facilitate their submarine battery and underwater detonator manufacture for the United States Navy. Western Electric occupied the plant from 1946 until 1966, initially producing military communications equipment and
gradually transitioning to the fabrication of switches and circuits for national telephone networks.
Western Electric was one of Forsyth County’s leading industrial concerns during this period, operating
four plants with over seven thousand employees—approximately ten percent of the county’s work force—by 1960. The complex’s period of significance begins in 1907, with the construction of the original Chatham Manufacturing Company factory, and continues to 1966, when Western Electric’s
use of the facility ceased.

The Chatham Manufacturing/Western Electric complex is also significant architecturally, as it contains one of Winston-Salem’s oldest mills associated with textile manufacturing as well as other intact industrial buildings erected through the early 1950s. The 1907 mill’s seven-to-one common bond
brick walls, very low-pitched gable roof, segmental-arched window and door openings, and large,
eight-over-eight, double-hung, wood sash surmounted by eight-light transoms are representative of
late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century industrial architecture. The National Carbon Company and Western Electric additions to the former Chatham Manufacturing Company plant, constructed from 1944 through 1951, manifest the ongoing use of heavy-timber frame construction in industrial
buildings as well as the steel and concrete structural systems frequently utilized during this period.
The United States Government’s ownership of the complex and the defense-related production of the
companies who leased it allowed for the complex’s expansion when construction materials and labor were in short supply during World War II and the Korean War.
Historical Background

Chatham Manufacturing Company’s story begins in 1877, when Alexander Chatham and his brother-in-law Thomas Lenoir Gwyn expanded their entrepreneurial endeavors, enlarging the Richard Ransome Gwynn and Company grist mill and store to encompass a woolen mill. The entire complex,
located approximately one mile north of Elkin on Big Elkin Creek, was eventually dedicated to the
production of wool yarn used to weave jean, flannel, and cashmere fabrics. Both men had previously
worked in the Gwyn family’s cotton mills, the first of which, the Elkin Manufacturing Company, was established in 1847. Chatham and Gwyn recruited mechanical engineer Gilvin T. Roth of Philadelphia in 1878 to install new mill equipment and train and supervise their workers.27
27 Pam Green, “First Industry Was Cotton Mill,” North Carolina Collection Clipping File Through 1975, Reel 28, pp. 454-455, Wilson Library, UNC-Chapel Hill; Laura A. W. Phillips, Simple Treasures: The Architectural Legacy of Surry
County (Winston-Salem: Winston Printing Company, 1987), 34, 91, 104; Elkin, 1889-1989: A Centennial History (Elkin: Town of Elkin, 1989), 6-7.

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Heather Fearnbach, October 2010

Alexander and his sons Richard Martin Chatham and Hugh Gwyn Chatham purchased Thomas Gwyn’s interest in the Elkin Woolen Mill in 1893 and established the Chatham Manufacturing Company. Gilvin T. Roth became their partner and the company’s vice-president. The corporation
constructed a one-story brick plant on Standard Street in Elkin, close to the railroad and the Yadkin
River, the same year. The new mill featured the latest technology, with steam engines powering
electric generators and allowing for the installation of electric lights. The company began manufacturing wool blankets in 1893 and added a tailoring department offering custom-made men’s suits in 1895. The purchase of new blanket looms and other equipment that year dramatically
increased production, resulting in the need for a second-story addition in 1899.28

Chatham Manufacturing Company began acquiring property in Winston, the industrial center of neighboring Forsyth County, in 1906, and soon erected a mill north of downtown. Upon the company’s 1907 reorganization, Hugh Chatham recruited influential Winston businessmen to become
involved in the corporation’s administration. Tobacco magnate Richard J. Reynolds served as first
vice-president and Winston businessmen and industrialists R. G. Norfleet, J. L. Gilmer, H. R.
Starbuck, W. M. Nissen, C. J. Ogburn, F. H. Fries, A. S. Hanes, and W. A. Blair became directors on the company’s board.29

The April 1907 Sanborn map indicates that the Winston’s first blanket-manufacturing plant was under
construction, illustrating a three-story brick factory on the Southern Railway line’s north side. A one-
story engine room projects from the factory’s north elevation, with a pump house to the north and a boiler house at its northwest corner. An eighty-foot-tall brick chimney stood just north of the boiler
house, and a coal trestle supplied fuel to the engine room and boiler house. A three-story stair and
elevator tower extended from the main mill’s north elevation east of the engine room, separating the
factory from a one-story dye house with a clerestory roof.30

By April 1912, the three-story building’s first floor encompassed a weaving room and a picker room, the second floor was utilized for spinning and carding, and the third floor for storage. A small one-
story blacksmith shop and a one-story dye house had been erected west of the boiler house, a 160,000
reservoir stood north of the factory, and a two-story bleach house with a one-story wing had been
constructed east of the reservoir. The factory, which remained Winston-Salem’s only woolen mill, produced $450,000-worth of wool blankets in 1916.31

28 Ibid.; Elkin, 1889-1989: A Centennial History, 17-18, 20. A devastating July 16, 1916 flood severely damaged
Chatham Manufacturing Company’s Elkin plant, causing an estimated $100,000 in damage and requiring several months of
clean-up. The company began planning a new facility located on higher ground, and shifted operations to the three-story
brick plant by 1919. The 1890s plant was subsequently restored, but was damaged in a 1940 flood and later burned. The
company demolished the ruins in the early 1970s.
29 Forsyth County Register of Deeds, Deed Book 81, page 378; Book 82, page 256; Book 83, pages 89, 128, and
192; Ruby Bray Canipe, ed. Early Elkin-Jonesville History and Geneaology (Jonesville, North Carolina: Tarheel Graphics, 1981), 38. 30 Ibid.; Elkin, 1889-1989: A Centennial History, 32; Winston-Salem Chamber of Commerce, Winston-Salem: Half-Century of Progress, 1885-1935 (Winston-Salem: Winston-Salem Chamber of Commerce, 1935), 19; 1907 Sanborn
Map. 31 1912 Sanborn Map; Harris Copenhaver, “An Industrial Survey of Winston-Salem, North Carolina,” University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Master’s Thesis, 1917, page 10.

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Heather Fearnbach, October 2010
The company employed hundreds of mill workers by the 1910s and purchased additional acreage
adjacent to the factory upon which they constructed modest bungalows to house their employees. As the area south of the Chatham Manufacturing complex is slightly higher in elevation, the neighborhood became known as Chatham Heights.32

Chatham Manufacturing Company president Hugh Chatham and his wife Martha Lenoir, called
“Mattie,” also resided near the factory, boarding at the Zinzendorf Hotel for several years. By 1912, they occupied a dwelling at 832 W. Fourth Street in the West End neighborhood. Carl C. Poindexter,
who began working for the company in 1906, moved to Winston to serve as Hugh Chatham’s private
secretary in 1907 and became the Winston plant superintendent in 1910. Hugh’s brother and company
treasurer Richard M. Chatham and vice-president Gilvin Roth remained in Elkin.33 The Chatham
family continued to spend time at their country estate, Klondike Farm, near Elkin, as well as in Roaring Gap, a summer resort in Alleghany County that Hugh Chatham and other investors established in the 1890s after he discovered the locale’s scenic beauty during a wool-buying expedition.34

In addition to his primary occupation, Hugh Chatham was politically active and became well-known
for his philanthropic efforts. He was a member of the Wachovia Bank and Trust Company’s executive board and served as president of both the North Carolina and the Alleghany railroad companies. North
Carolina voters elected Chatham to serve in the state senate in 1914 and he became a member of the
Council of National Defense, which met in Washington, D. C. The United States Government
subsequently conscripted Chatham Manufacturing Company to produce blankets for the military
during World War I. The need for additional storage resulting from this commission may have prompted the construction of an expansive brick warehouse at the Winston-Salem plant around 1917.35

Hugh and Mattie Chatham had two children, Richard Thurmond, born in 1896, and Dewitt, born in
1899. Thurmond attended the Salem Boy’s School, Woodbury Forest School in Orange, Virginia; the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1915-1916), and Yale University (1916-1917), before enlisting in the United States Navy in May 1917. After two years in the service he returned to
Winston-Salem in July 1919, and began working full-time at Chatham Manufacturing Company,
where he had previously been employed during summer breaks from school. Thurmond married Lucy
Hodgin Hanes, the daughter of John W. and Anna H. Hanes, on October 29, 1919.36

The union joined
Winston-Salem’s leading textile-manufacturing families.
32 The bungalow at 811 North Spring Street in 1917 and the almost identical residence erected at 806 Eighth Street
around 1924, both of which are now encompassed within the West End Historic District boundaries, were owned by Mattie
T. Chatham or the Chatham Manufacturing Company until 1944. Gwynne Taylor and Laura Phillips, “West End Historic
District,” National Register of Historic Places nomination, 1986.
33 Ernest H. Miller, compiler, Winston City Directory (Asheville, North Carolina: Piedmont Directory Company,
1910); “Went With Company in Year 1906,” Elkin Tribune, February 8, 1940. 34 Lillian Britt Phillips Shelton, “Modestly Grand:” The Wake Forest President’s House, Built by Ralph and Dewitt Hanes, 1929, MA Thesis, Wake Forest University, May 2006, 41-42. 35 William S. Powell, ed., Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, Volume 1, A-C (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1979), 357. The 1917 Sanborn map illustrates the warehouse footprint with the notation “from plans,” indicating that it was soon to be erected. 36 Ibid., 43; “Biographical Sketch,” Thurmond Chatham Papers, 1776-1956, Private Collection 1139, North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh; “Richard Thurman [sic] Chatham,” North Carolina Biographical Dictionary (New York:
Somerset Publishers, Inc., 1993).

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Heather Fearnbach, October 2010
By 1921, Thurmond was secretary of Chatham Manufacturing Company and resided with his wife at
953 West Fourth Street. His sister Dewitt completed her studies at Salem College, and, on April 24, 1923, further aligned the Chatham and Hanes families by marrying Lucy’s brother, Ralph P. Hanes. Both couples soon erected expansive homes designed by nationally-recognized architects. In 1925,
Thurmond and Lucy Chatham commissioned Philadelphia architect Charles Barton Keen to design the
stuccoed, two-story, Georgian Revival-style house they constructed at 112 North Stratford Road in
Stratford Place, a subdivision at the northwest corner of the Five Points intersection in Winston-Salem on property that had belonged to Lucy’s father, John W. Hanes. Philadelphia landscape architect Thomas Sears created the Stratford Place neighborhood plan as well as the Chatham’s residential
landscape.37 New York architect Geoffrey Platt designed Thurmond and Lucy’s country house at
Klondike Farm.38

Winston-Salem experienced tremendous growth and development in the early decades of the twentieth century, becoming North Carolina’s largest and richest city by 1926. Chatham Manufacturing
Company, with the capacity to produce one million blankets a year by 1921 and employ between six
and eight hundred mill workers at their Elkin and Winston-Salem plants, generated a significant
amount of revenue. In 1924, the company was one of seven woolen mills in North Carolina, contributing to a total annual production valued at approximately $3,636,771. The booming economy prompted factory upgrades during the 1920s, when the company spent approximately $800,000 on new
equipment.39

The corporation also revamped their advertising and sales approach in the 1920s. Rather than continuing to market their products through a commission house, the company organized their own
sales department in 1923 and opened offices in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and New Orleans
by 1929. Popular magazine campaigns and showroom displays promoted affordable new blankets,
sheets, and tweed and homespun fabrics nationwide. Given the seasonal nature of blanket sales, goods
were finished and stored in Winston-Salem from March until October, when they were shipped to retailers.40

The company initially utilized vacant tobacco warehouses to meet their overflow storage needs, but
erected a large warehouse with a covered loading platform adjacent to the Southern Railway spur line
south of their Winston-Salem factory in 1917. The main mill’s third floor also served as inventory storage, and the company expanded the building with a one-story addition on the main mill’s east end
37 Ernest H. Miller, compiler, Winston-Salem City Directory (Asheville, North Carolina: Piedmont Directory
Company, 1921); Gwynne Stephens Taylor, From Frontier to Factory: An Architectural History of Forsyth County (Raleigh: North Carolina Department of Archives and History, 1981). John Wesley Hanes passed away in 1903. The Five
Points intersection is at the junction of West First, Runnymede, Stratford, Country Club, and Miller streets. The former Pleasant Henderson Hanes estate stood to the southeast at what is now 1920 and 2000 West First Street until 1963, when it
was demolished to make way for commercial development on Stratford Road. Hanes family members erected other houses in the vicinity, including two to the west in Stratford Place, and three to the north in West Highlands. Dewitt Chatham and
her husband Ralph P. Hanes and James G. Hanes, Ralph’s brother, constructed residences on her parent’s approximately one-hundred-acre hobby farm adjacent to the Reynolds estate—north of Brookstown Road (now Robinhood Road) and
west of Reynolda Road. 38 Lillian Britt Phillips Shelton, “Modestly Grand:” The Wake Forest President’s House, Built by Ralph and Dewitt Hanes, 1929, Master’s Thesis, Wake Forest University, May 2006. 39 Chatham Manufacturing Company, “From Wool to Blankets: Season 1921,” Elkin and Winston-Salem, N. C.,
Thurmond Chatham Papers, 1776-1956, North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh; Ralph C. Maultsby, “Aggressive Merchandising Has Contributed to Success of Chatham Blankets,” Textile World, August 17, 1929. 40 Ibid.; “Woolen Mills,” North Carolina Yearbook (Raleigh: News and Observer), 1924, p. 67.

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Heather Fearnbach, October 2010
in the 1920s. The complex continued to grow during this period, as two long, narrow bleaching houses
and several smaller gable-roofed buildings stood north of the reservoir and water tower by 1930.41

Chatham Manufacturing Company purchased most of their wool from sheep farmers located
throughout the United States and offered producers an alternative to simply selling wool at a low
market cost. The corporation entered into cooperative agreements with many of their suppliers,
turning their raw wool into blankets and other merchandise. Blanket manufacture required approximately five pounds of wool per 74-inch by 84-inch blanket, while automobile robes
necessitated between eight and ten pounds of wool each. Chatham Manufacturing Company charged a
small processing fee to clean the wool, provide the cotton warp, and produce and ship the desired
product. Maryland’s Cooperative Extension Service promoted the exchange opportunity, and sheep
farmers in twenty of the state’s twenty-three counties participated in the program in 1920-21. Attorney and ranch owner E. C. Gaines and his wife of Austin, Texas, who exchanged 225 pounds of wool and
$108 for forty blankets and two automobile robes in 1921, were also satisfied customers. They
intended to keep twelve blankets so that they would “have a supply of this article of the very best for
life” and sell the remainder.42

Thurmond Chatham became president of Chatham Manufacturing Company upon his father Hugh’s death in 1929. Thurmond continued to diversify the family’s business investments, purchasing a large
lot between North Cherry and North Marshall streets in 1929 and erecting a streamlined, two-story,
limestone-veneered commercial block with classical and Art Deco features at what is now 301-311
West Fourth Street the next year.43

In 1930, twelve textile mills operated in Winston-Salem, employing 3,232 workers. Chatham
Manufacturing Company remained the only blanket producer.44 Although sales decreased during the
early 1930s as a result of the economic depression, the corporation remained solvent. Thurmond
Chatham was determined to keep the Elkin and Winston-Salem plants in operation, even if they generated a product surplus, and consequently his facilities retained most of their employees.45

As the country slowly recovered from the Great Depression, Chatham Manufacturing Company
diversified their product offerings and increased plant capacity. The company reinvented their
automobile robe line in the 1930s by updating the design and marketing the robes as “gauchos” in the tradition of the Spanish garment. Promotional materials touted the gauchos as ideal cold-weather
outwear, suitable for myriad occasions.46
41 Ibid.; 1917 Sanborn map. The factory rendering on the 1920s company letterhead in the Thurmond Chatham Papers, 1776-1956, at the North Carolina State Archives in Raleigh; an aerial photograph in Winston-Salem, North Carolina: Booklet No. III, compiled by Major A. R. Lawrence for the Industrial Commission of Winston-Salem, Inc. in 1930; and an aerial photograph in the Winston-Salem: Half-Century of Progress, 1885-1935, published by the Winston-
Salem Chamber of Commerce, provide three-dimensional images of the complex.

42 Chatham Manufacturing Company, “From Wool to Blankets: Season 1921.” 43 Frank A. Smith, who sold men’s apparel, and Ideal and Montaldo's department stores occupied the Chatham Block from its opening until the 1970s and early 1980s. The Chatham family rehabilitated the building in 1984. Laura A.
W. Phillips and Gwynne S. Taylor, “Downtown Winston-Salem Historic District,” National Register of Historic Places nomination draft, 1989. 44 Major A. R. Lawrence, compiler, Winston-Salem, North Carolina: Booklet No. IV (Winston-Salem: Industrial Commission of Winston-Salem, Inc., 1930), 12. 45 Elkin, 1889-1989: A Centennial History, 75. 46 Chatham Manufacturing Company, “Introducing the Chatham ‘Gaucho’,” Thurmond Chatham Papers, 1776-
1956, North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh.

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In 1935, Chatham Manufacturing Company’s capital was valued at $2,500,000 for both the Elkin and Winston-Salem plants. The corporation operated 500 wool looms and 280 cotton looms in Elkin and finished blankets in Winston-Salem, where it was one of six textile manufacturing businesses including
Arista Mills, which primarily produced chambray fabric and encompassed 534 looms and 18,000
spindles. Indera Mills, Winston-Salem’s smallest knitting plant at that time, owned 98 circular knitting
machines, while P. H. Hanes Knitting Company operated 400 such machines and Hanes Hosiery Mills 2,000.47

Chatham Manufacturing Company developed a new “Airloom” blanket in 1936, so named due to its
lighter cotton warp and long-staple, virgin wool weft. The blankets were available in ten “jewel-like”
colors and three sizes. Black Mountain College ordered three hundred Airloom blankets for their campus in August 1936 and, a month later, reported that the new blankets were “dispensing with a
great amount of lint.” Company sales representative John Eller promised to visit to inspect the
blankets and provide advice as to the best manner to clean and store them.48

In the spring of 1937, the United States government awarded Chatham Manufacturing Company a $1,500,000 contract to supply 250,000 blankets for the Civilian Conservation Corps, a New Deal relief program. The company began manufacturing fabric for the Packard Motor Company’s car seats in
August 1937 and soon cultivated Chrysler, Ford, Hudson, Studebaker, Nash, and General Motors as
clients. These contracts undoubtedly contributed to the construction of a new brick office building at
the Winston-Salem plant in 1937 and the expansion of the Elkin factory soon after. By February 1940, Chatham devoted 150 looms to the production of wool upholstery material. The Getsinger-Fox Company of Detroit marketed the finished product to the automobile industry.49

Thurmond Chatham campaigned for industrial and agricultural causes during his tenure on the North
Carolina Board of Conservation and Development, as president of the North Carolina Dairyman’s Association, and as a spokesman for the National Association of Wool Manufacturers in the late 1930s. In his congressional committee testimony regarding wool importation tariffs in 1938, Chatham
stated that less than fifty United States firms produced wool blankets at that time, and fewer than ten
operated more than one hundred looms. Chatham Manufacturing Company was one of the largest of
these concerns, employing approximately 2,100 workers. Most wool mills were located in New England, particularly in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Demand for domestic wool products dropped during the economic depression of the 1930s, and, coupled with increased
importation of wool blankets and fabrics from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Italy, and, after
1936, Japan, the domestic wool industry suffered great losses. Chatham thus advocated for higher
tariffs on imported goods.50

47 North Carolina Yearbook, 1935, pages 107 and 115. 48 Black Mountain College Correspondence, “Chatham Manufacturing Company,” North Carolina State Archives,
Raleigh. The folder includes a 1936 color Airloom blanket catalog complete with color swatches, advertisements, and price sheets. 49 “Chatham Receives $1,500,000 Order From Government,” Elkin Tribune, April 1, 1937; Elkin, 1889-1989: A Centennial History, 78; “Manufacture of Auto Upholstery Growing Business at Chatham,” Elkin Tribune, February 8,
1940. 50 “Paragraph 1111 – Blankets and Similar Articles,” 1938, Thurmond Chatham Papers, 1776-1956, North
Carolina State Archives, Raleigh.

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Heather Fearnbach, October 2010
Despite the economic challenges of the 1930s, Chatham Manufacturing Company continued to
successfully promote their products and streamline their organization. In 1939, the Chatham Blanket Shop in the Consumer’s Building at the New York World’s Fair sold wares to thousands of visitors. Chatham Manufacturing Company also embarked on a major facility upgrade that year, announcing in
late March that they would close the Winston-Salem plant and consolidate operations in Elkin upon the
construction of 145,000-square-foot plant and a 50,000-square-foot warehouse to replace the Winston-
Salem finishing and shipping complex. The Winston-Salem plant would continue to serve as storage for several years.51

Thurmond Chatham estimated that up to 650 employees and their families might move to Elkin,
potentially increasing the small town’s population by as many as 2,400 people. Chatham
Manufacturing Company did not plan to erect dwellings for their relocating employees, as they felt that Elkin had sufficient housing stock. The company’s loyal workforce included nearly fifty Winston-
Salem employees who had labored for Chatham Manufacturing for at least twenty-five years, some of
whom, such as Winston-Salem plant superintendent R. W. Harris, had been steadily promoted. Harris
was hired in 1920 to work in the weaving department and became general superintendent of the
finishing department in 1926 and a director on the company’s board in 1934. He continued to work for the company in the same capacity in Elkin.52

The Elkin Tribune reported that Chatham Manufacturing Company began installing the machinery and
equipment from the Winston-Salem factory in the new four-story Elkin plant on January 17, 1940.
The newspaper printed a special issue commemorating the move. The company soon took advantage of their increased production capacity, as they received “one of the largest single military contracts
made since the defense program went into action” on October 23, 1940. The Elkin plant subsequently
manufactured thousands of blankets valued at $1,923,750.53

Thurmond Chatham volunteered for another tour of duty in the U. S. Navy in February 1942, serving in Bureau of Ordnance, the secretary of the navy’s office, and then in combat in Europe and the
Southwest Pacific until November 1945, during which time he received numerous commendations. He
retired from his position as Chatham Manufacturing Company president in 1944 and became chairman
of the board. After his return to North Carolina, he lost his first bid for a legislative seat but then
successfully campaigned for election as a democratic representative in the Eighty-first Congress and three subsequent terms from 1949 until 1956. Ralph J. Scott defeated Chatham in the 1956 election,
ostensibly due to Chatham’s refusal to sign the “Southern Manifesto,” a document drafted by
legislators opposed to racial integration mandated by the U. S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board
of Education decision. Both North Carolina congressmen and eight of the twelve representatives
endorsed the manifesto; Chatham was among the four non-signatories and the three representatives to fail in their re-election attempts. Thurmond Chatham passed away in Durham on February 5, 1957,
one month after completing his fourth congressional term, and was buried in Winston-Salem’s Salem
51 “Chatham Blanket Shop Ad,” Thurmond Chatham Papers, 1776-1956, North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh;
“Chatham Manufacturing Company To Move Plant in Winston-Salem Here; Plan $500,000 Building,” Elkin Tribune, March 23, 1939; “Mill News,” Textile Bulletin, November 15, 1940 and January 1, 1941, Wilson Library, UNC-Chapel
Hill. 52 “Chatham Manufacturing Company To Move Plant;” “Employees Boast of Long Service” and “Harris Heads
Finish Plant,” Elkin Tribune, February 8, 1940. 53 “Chatham Manufacturing Company To Move Plant;” “Mill News,” Textile Bulletin, November 1, 1940, Wilson
Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.

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Cemetery. He endowed the Chatham Foundation to facilitate educational opportunities for high-
achieving youth.54

Given Thurmond Chatham’s military and political connections, it is not surprising that Chatham
Manufacturing Company leased and then sold their vacant Winston-Salem factory to the United States
Government in the 1940s. The property was one of thousands across the nation acquired in an effort to
augment industrial production in support of the United States’ participation in World War II. America’s goal to become “the arsenal of democracy” benefited large corporations—more than half of
the $175 billion-worth of government contracts awarded between 1940 and 1944 went to thirty-three
nationally-known firms who had demonstrated their capacity to produce large quantities of quality
goods—as well as small businesses, finally remedying the high unemployment rates that lingered after
the Great Depression. Industrial jobs increased by seventy-five percent in the South over the course of World War II, with traditionally underemployed groups such as women, African Americans, and the
elderly receiving invaluable education, training, and experience. In Winston-Salem, P. H. Hanes
Knitting Company and R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company accelerated their production of garments and
cigarettes to meet the needs of servicemen and women and Allied Aviation manufactured weapons for
the military. Output soared after May 1943, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Office of War Mobilization to coordinate a diverse array of support endeavors including
manufacturing, scientific research, and agricultural production.55

It was in this economic climate that the Cleveland-based National Carbon Company, a United States
Navy subcontractor, began producing submarine batteries and underwater detonators at the former Chatham Manufacturing Company plant in 1943. The company expanded the complex by constructing the three-story frame addition at the main mill’s east end, the large five-story brick wing that extends
north from the frame addition, the elevated one-story passage, the two- and three-story warehouse
additions that wrap around the 1917 warehouse, and the two-story concrete and frame paint
manufacturing and storage building. Although National Carbon Company’s domestic battery production increased dramatically in the late 1940s, their Winston-Salem operation was short-lived, as the factory closed in 1945 when the company’s military product demand declined at World War II’s
end.56

Winston-Salem Chamber of Commerce director Harry J. Krusz subsequently facilitated negotiations between the city’s industrial leaders, the United States Navy (who purchased the former Chatham
Manufacturing Company complex in 1944), and Western Electric to lease the complex. Western
54 “Biographical Sketch,” Thurmond Chatham Papers, 1776-1956, North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh; “Richard Thurman [sic] Chatham,” North Carolina Biographical Dictionary (New York: Somerset Publishers, Inc., 1993),
William S. Powell, ed., Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, Volume 1, A-C, 357-358; Tom Wicker, “Congressmen Mourn Death of Chatham,” Winston-Salem Journal, February 7, 1957; Marjorie Hunter, “Chatham: Versatile, Personable,
Determined,” Winston-Salem Journal, May 20, 1956. 55 Marilyn M. Harper, et. al. World War II and the American Home Front (Washington, D. C.: The National
Historic Landmarks Program, October 2007), 3, 13-16; Frank V. Tursi, Winston-Salem: A History (Winston-Salem: John F. Blair, Publisher, 1994), 229. 56 James Howell Smith, Winston-Salem in History, Volume 8: Industry and Commerce, 1896-1975 (Winston-Salem: Historic Winston-Salem, Inc., 1977), 47; Thomas Pepper, “Electronics—New Industry, People,” Winston-Salem Journal, April 10, 1966; Fambrough L. Brownlee, Winston-Salem: A Pictorial History (Norfolk, Virginia: Donning Company, 1997), 194; “Agency History,” Eveready Company Papers Finding Aid, Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center
Library, Fremont, Illiniois, http://www.rbhayes.org/hayes/mssfind/285/eveready.htm#Scope and Content. National Carbon Company, which was established in 1886 and acquired the American Every Ready Company in 1914, eventually became
the Energizer Corporation.

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Heather Fearnbach, October 2010
Electric had opened a Burlington, North Carolina plant in early 1946 and was interested in establishing
a Winston-Salem operation due to the large potential labor force and available industrial square footage. At that time, the company fabricated communications equipment for use in national and international defense installations.57

Western Electric, founded in 1872, initially manufactured telegraph equipment for Western Union,
becoming the United States’ largest electrical parts supplier before its 1881 acquisition by Bell Telephone, which became AT & T in 1899. Western Electric then served as AT & T's sole telephone
manufacturer. Telephone demand declined during the depression years, but increased significantly
beginning in 1939, when the telephone was marketed as a “weapon of preparedness.”58

Western Electric leased the Chatham Road facility and began interviewing for their first nine hundred Winston-Salem plant positions on April 29, 1946. Approximately 2,500 applicants formed a line that wound down Chatham Road to Northwest Boulevard. The company soon began manufacturing
military communications equipment such as radar and telephone components and systems. By October
they employed 1,600 workers in their Winston-Salem division and had expanded into a former tobacco
warehouse on Oak Street. Increased production soon resulted in the growth of the Chatham Road facility and the acquisition of additional properties including the former Butner Roller Mill on Church Street, a textile mill on Brookstown Avenue, the Star and Liberty warehouses on North Cherry Street,
and the former Nissen Wagon Works factory in Waughtown.59

The United States Government augmented Western Electric’s defense contracts during the Korean War, when the company produced technical publications to guide military operations and
manufactured sophisticated equipment and weapons including Nike guided missiles and anti-aircraft
apparatus. Western Electric’s field engineering division moved its headquarters from New York to
Winston-Salem in 1952 to be in closer proximity to their production facility, although many of their
military experts were stationed internationally. The engineering division utilized the top floor of a newly-constructed building at the Chatham Road plant, where analysts processed data from systems
around the world and dispensed technical assistance. Supervisors coordinated the division’s military
interaction from this location and trained engineers before their deployment to military installations.
Several guided missile systems were set up on the Chatham Road property to serve instructional
purposes. Western Electric also purchased the former Security Life and Trust Building on West Fourth Street to function as classrooms and faculty offices. The Winston-Salem engineer training school was
one of only three such facilities that the company operated nationwide.60

Western Electric continued to increase their Winston-Salem production and occupied an expansive
new Lexington Road manufacturing plant and office building, which encompasses almost seven hundred thousand square feet on a sixty-acre parcel, in late 1954. The company’s impact on the local economy was enormous, both in terms of direct employment and subcontracts. In 1955, Western
Electronic ordered $9.2 million-worth of goods and services from several thousand North Carolina
57 Ibid. 58 http://www.porticus.org/bell/westernelectric_history.html. 59 James Howell Smith, Industry and Commerce, 47. 60 Ibid.; Adelaide L. Fries, et. al., Forsyth: The History of a County on the March (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1976), 238, 345; “Electronics Industry Brought New Ideas, Methods to Winston-Salem,” Winston-Salem Journal and Sentinel, April 10, 1966, page L12; Jackie Owen, “WE Field Engineers: Godfathers of Defense,” Winston-Salem Journal and Sentinel, July 6, 1958; Harold Ellison, “Western Electric Revitalizes Tired City,” Winston-Salem Journal, September 21, 1958.

Chatham Manufacturing Company/Western Electric Complex 21
Heather Fearnbach, October 2010
vendors including the Winston-Salem-based Superior Manufacturing Company. Approximately thirty
percent of that firm’s production was for Western Electric.61

The company purchased the former Chatham Manufacturing complex, where they began their
Winston-Salem operations, in 1956, and subsequently, with funding from the Mary Reynolds Babcock
Foundation, constructed a plant on Reynolda Road in 1960. The new facility housed Western
Electric’s technical publications and engineering services divisions.62

At that time, Western Electric was one of Forsyth County’s leading industrial concerns, operating four
plants with over seven thousand employees earning approximately forty-one million dollars a year. As
military equipment demand declined, Western Electric increased production of switches and circuits
for national telephone networks, and, in 1962, converted the Lexington Road plant into a telephone manufacturing operation. The company closed the Chatham Road plant in 1966, but the Lexington
Road facility employed thousands through 1988, when AT & T announced plans to move production
to Burlington. Only four hundred employees worked at the plant at the end of 1989.63

Western Electric sold their Chatham Road property in 1968. Chicago investors purchased the complex and hired Winston-Salem residents Ken Hamilton and Stan Kelly to manage it. The men resided in the former Chatham Manufacturing Company office (Building 1) and began salvaging and selling metal
and other materials from the property before leasing the space for warehouse and manufacturing use.64

Henry A. Brown Jr., known as “Hal,” and his wife Patricia were among the first tenants. The couple rented five thousand square feet of Building 12 to house their new company, Adele Knits, in 1970.
They constructed an office near the building’s north end, and, as the business grew and the company
required additional square footage, the Browns purchased the entire complex in 1972. Although the
property went from being almost fully leased to forty-percent vacant in 1974, they continued to
cultivate warehouse clients and soon served as a storage and distribution center for businesses including Hanes Hosiery, Piedmont Airlines, R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, and Western Electric,
who utilized portions of Buildings 3, 4, 6, and 12. Hanes Dye and Finishing Company leased the
fourth floor of Building 6 for fabric storage for about ten years beginning in the late 1970s. Texas Pete
stored barrels of peppers on Building 6’s third floor for a short time.65

Other parts of the complex housed a variety of fledgling entrepreneurial endeavors, many of which grew to become successful businesses. Watson Wood Works, an architectural millwork producer,
occupied 1,800 square feet of the Chatham Road complex from 1984 until 1987 and now operates a
40,000 square foot facility on Megahertz Drive in Winston-Salem. Carolon, a compression bandage,
stocking, and hosiery manufacturer, utilized the first floors of Buildings 3 and 4 from around 1975
61 Ibid.; Chester Davis, “Western Electric and Winston-Salem…How an Industry Found a Home,” Winston-Salem Journal and Sentinel, April 29, 1956. 62 James Howell Smith, Industry and Commerce, 47-48. Architect Nils F. Larson, the son of Wake Forest
University’s chief architect Jens Fredrick Larson, designed the Reynolda Road facility. Adelaide L. Fries, et. al., Forsyth: The History of a County on the March, 345; Tursi, Winston-Salem: A History, 268; Larry Edward Tise, Winston-Salem in History, Volume 9: Building and Architecture (Winston-Salem, NC: Historic Winston, 1976), 46. 63 Bill East, “6,000,000 in New Construction is Scheduled in Forsyth for 1955,” Winston-Salem Sentinel, January
3, 1955, page 1B and 4B; "Electronics Industry Brought New Ideas, Methods to Winston-Salem;" Tursi, Winston-Salem: A History, 292; Harold Ellison, “Western Electric Revitalizes Tired City,” Winston-Salem Journal, September 21, 1958. 64 Henry A. “Hal” Brown and Mike Hollman, interview with Heather Fearnbach, September 29, 2010; Tom Edmonds, “Discovering new uses for old buildings,” Triad Business, November 13-20, 1989, page 8. 65 Henry A. “Hal” Brown and Mike Hollman, interview with Heather Fearnbach, September 29, 2010.

Chatham Manufacturing Company/Western Electric Complex 22
Heather Fearnbach, October 2010
until 1990, when they moved to Rural Hall. Other tenants included Thermcraft, Inc, an industrial and
laboratory oven, furnace, and ceramic heater producer still based in Winston-Salem, and Winston Yarns, a textile operation that moved to Gastonia.66
The Browns only made a few changes to the Chatham Road complex over the years. In an effort to
keep the wood window sashes in place, they covered many of the property’s window openings with
foam around 1974. Facility manager Mike Hollman began working for the company in 1979, and soon thereafter coated the foam with a sealant to keep it from deteriorating. Building 16 and the adjacent
water tower were removed around 1985 and the central water reservoir was filled in to create
additional parking about the same time. Other edifices removed from the site in the 1980s include
Building 2, the two-story, hip-roofed, frame structure that served as Chatham Manufacturing
Company’s recreation building and later as offices; Building 17, a one-story, flat-roofed edifice at Building 6’s north end; the small guard house that stood north of Building 17; the one-story gable-
roofed building that stood just north of Building 21; and most of the small free-standing fire hose
houses throughout the property. Building 5—a one-story, flat-roofed, triangular-shaped, frame, late
1930s warehouse that was located south of the railroad spur line at the loading shed’s north end—was
demolished around 1995.

67

The Browns continued to use Buildings 12, 13, and 14 for Adele Knits production and yarn storage.
They also diversified their business interests through ventures such as purchasing six hundred
Simmons caskets and storing them on Building 15’s first floor before selling and delivering them to
funeral homes throughout the southeast. After several years of warehousing toiletries and linens for Holiday Inn, the Browns also began storing the local franchise’s business records in Building 8. They
soon incorporated this new endeavor as Twin City Records Management. Their first large records
storage clients were Western Electric, who rented 3,500 square feet of Building 8, and the law firm of
Bell, Davis, and Pitt. As the demand for records storage space increased, Twin City Records
Management occupied additional square footage in the Chatham Road complex and expanded their operation to other Winston-Salem locations and facilities in High Point, Greensboro, Charlotte, and
Raleigh.68

Hal and Patricia Brown’s sons Andy and Bruce, who now manage the family’s businesses, purchased
the former Western Electric plant on Old Lexington Road in 1995 and gradually moved Twin City Warehouses and Records Management and Adele Knits into that facility. Around 2002, they rented Western Electric’s basement computer room to a small online data storage company that they
subsequently purchased, thus expanding their records storage business through the creation of Data
Chambers, which provides a full range of information technology and records management services.
Twin City Warehouses stored records at the Chatham Road complex until 2005. Adele Knits continues to produce specialty industrial fabrics.69

66 Ibid.; “Watson Wood Works,” http://watsonwood.com; “Carolon Health Care Products,”
http://www.carolon.com/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=3; “Thermcraft, Incorporated,” http://www.thermcraftinc.com/. 67 Henry A. “Hal” Brown and Mike Hollman, interview with Heather Fearnbach, September 29, 2010. 68 Ibid. 69 Ibid.

Chatham Manufacturing Company/Western Electric Complex 23
Heather Fearnbach, October 2010
Architectural Context
Chatham Manufacturing Company, like many of North Carolina’s early textile producers, expanded an existing frame building to serve as their first Surry County woolen mill. Such structures, which
usually had rough-sawn wood floors and wood shingle roofs, often resembled large residential or
agricultural buildings as they were typically located in rural settings along the rivers and streams that
provided their power source. As frame mills were extremely susceptible to fire and rarely had interior firewalls or other fire safety features, few nineteenth-century North Carolina examples survive.70

By the time Chatham Manufacturing Company constructed new mills in Elkin in 1893 and Winston in
1907, most industrial buildings were of “slow-burn” masonry construction, with brick walls, heavy-
timber framing, low-pitched gable or flat roofs, and large windows. Brick interior walls and galvanized-sheet-metal-clad, solid-core-wood doors, known as kalamein doors, separated the mill
sections where fires might start or spread rapidly. Chatham Manufacturing Company’s Winston-
Salem plant retains kalamein doors between most spaces, including the engine and boiler rooms that
project from the main block. These heavy doors would automatically close in the case of a fire, as the
heat would melt a soft metal link in the door’s counterweight assembly and the door would slide shut on the sloped metal track.

The no-longer-extant, eighty-foot-tall, brick chimney was freestanding (it was located north of the
boiler house), further reducing fire risk. The 1917 Sanborn map shows that the complex included fire
safety features such as a 160,000-gallon water reservoir, water towers, a sprinkler system, chemical fire extinguishers, and large quantities of water pails.71

Although industrial buildings such as the Chatham Manufacturing Company mill were designed to be
functional and fireproof rather than aesthetic masterpieces, their massive size and substantial
construction symbolized economic progress. The main mill’s seven-to-one common bond brick walls, very low-pitched gable roof, segmental-arched window and door openings, and large, eight-over-eight,
double-hung, wood sash surmounted by eight-light transoms are representative of industrial
architecture from that period. Architectural historians have documented that the few extant Winston-
Salem textile mills constructed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are similar in
appearance.
The 1907 factory in the Chatham Manufacturing Company complex is one of Winston-Salem’s oldest
extant textile mills. Arista Cotton Mill (1836, 1880) is the city’s only surviving nineteenth-century
textile manufacturing complex. Wachovia Knitting Mills, which became Indera Mills, erected a new
factory in 1904, and James G. Hanes commissioned the construction of a sawtooth-roofed building, which was the first textile factory built for the Hanes family, at the Shamrock Mills complex in 1911.

Comparable Winston-Salem Textile Mills

The Arista Cotton Mill complex at the southwest corner of Brookstown Avenue and Factory Row (originally South Trade Street) consists of two principal buildings at the complex’s east and west ends
and a series of auxiliary buildings. The west building—a three-story brick edifice executed in five-to-
70 Brent D. Glass, The Textile Industry in North Carolina, 16-17; Laura A. W. Phillips, “Alamance Mill Village Historic District,” National Register of Historic Places Nomination, 2007. 71 Brent D. Glass, The Textile Industry in North Carolina, 38; 1917 Sanborn Map.

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Heather Fearnbach, October 2010
one common bond with a monitor roof and segmental-arched window and door openings—is the
original home of the Salem Manufacturing Company, constructed in 1836 by members of the Moravian congregation of Salem, who operated the mill until 1854. Subsequent owners include former governor John Motley Morehead, Rufus Patterson (Morehead’s son-in-law), Robert Gray and
Peter Wilson, and brothers Francis H. Fries and Henry W. Fries.72

Francis Fries initially worked at the Salem Cotton Mill, but erected a woolen mill in 1840 and partnered with Henry in 1846 to establish F. and H. Fries Company, the entity that expanded the Salem Manufacturing Company complex by erecting the east building, Arista Mill, in 1880. The three-story
building, which cost about $125,000 for the structure and equipment, features large, segmental-arched
window and door openings and bracketed eaves. The mill initially employed about 150 workers and
was equipped with 3312 spindles, but within five years the number of spindles doubled and 180 looms were added for the manufacture of chambray cloth for work clothing. Arista Mill, like Chatham Manufacturing Company, installed electric lights in 1890s. The complex includes a two-story
triangular brick transforming station constructed by the Fries Manufacturing and Power Company in
1898.73

Arista Mill operated through the mid 1920s. By 1942, the Brown and Williamson Tobacco Corporation utilized the complex, and by the late 1970s Lentz Transfer and Storage Company used the
buildings as warehouse space. The industrial buildings were renovated in 1980 to serve as the
Brookstown Inn.74

The textile manufacturing complex that became Indera Mills was another significant component of the industrial area that developed in the late nineteenth century between Winston and Salem. Henry W.
Fries acquired the E. A. Vogler Store building at 612-614 Main Street in 1871 and began operating
Twin City Knitting Mills at that location by the late nineteenth century. Henry partnered with his
brother Francis’s sons, including Colonel Francis H. Fries, in this endeavor. Twin City Knitting Mills evolved into Maline Mills by 1902. In 1905, Maline Mills consolidated with the Wachovia Knitting Company, which had erected a new factory west of Arista Mills in 1904. Colonel Fries and his
nephew W. L. Siewers diversified their production in 1914 and founded Indera Mills, producing knit
slips and knee and elbow warmers in a small section of the Maline Mills complex. In 1926, as Maline
Mills’ product demand continued to diminish, Indera Mills occupied the entire plant, where they remained in operation until 1998.75

Indera Mills stands at the southwestern corner of Wachovia and South Marshall Streets. The complex
encompasses four industrial buildings: a large, two-story, brick main mill with a low-pitched gable
roof (circa 1904 with a 1916 addition) at the site’s northeast corner; a small, one-story, brick boiler room (circa 1904) west of the main mill; and two long, flat-roofed, brick buildings (erected between
1907 and 1912) at the site’s southwest corner. In 1916, the Winston-Salem architecture firm Northup
and O’Brien designed the two-story addition on the main mill’s south end, replicating the original
building’s five-to-one-common bond brick construction, segmental-arched window openings with
72 Gwynne S. Taylor and Brent D. Glass, “Salem Manufacturing Company and Arista Cotton Mill (Fries Mill
Complex),” National Register of Historic Places nomination, 1977; Michael O. Hartley and Martha B. Hartley, “Arista
Cotton Mill Complex,” Town of Salem Survey, 1999. 73 Ibid. 74 Ibid.; Fire Insurance Association of Hartford, Connecticut, “Arista Mill,” map issued 1942. 75 Sherry Joines Wyatt, “Indera Mills/Maline Mills,” National Register of Historic Places nomination, 1998;
Michael O. Hartley and Martha B. Hartley, “Indera Mills,” Town of Salem Survey, 1999.

Chatham Manufacturing Company/Western Electric Complex 25
Heather Fearnbach, October 2010
large multi-light sash and transoms, a low roof pitch, and exposed rafter ends. Indera Mills occupied
the buildings until 1998.76

Brothers Pleasant Henderson Hanes and John Wesley Hanes were Winston’s leading tobacco
manufacturers in the late nineteenth century, but in 1900 they sold their business to Richard J.
Reynolds and used the proceeds to invest in the textile industry. John W. Hanes organized Shamrock
Hosiery Mills (which later became Hanes Hosiery) on Marshall Street in 1901, and P. H. Hanes established a knitting company on Stratford Road, which initially produced cotton-ribbed men’s
underwear, in 1902. In 1911, James G. Hanes (John Wesley Hanes’s son) commissioned the
construction of a one-story, brick, sawtooth-roofed building at the Shamrock Hosiery Mills complex.
The distinctive roof, which was common in the northeastern United States and England but rarely
utilized in North Carolina, consists of a sloped south face and an almost-vertical north face that contains bands of six-foot-tall windows that illuminate the interior. Arched eight-light windows pierce
the gable ends and two large arched windows with paired multi-light sash and transoms provide
additional light to each of the seven sections on the east elevation. Identical windows continue across
the south elevation. The hosiery operation moved to a larger mill on West 14th Street in 1926 and the
Marshall Street building was later converted into an arts facility known as the Sawtooth Center.77

Until 2009, the complex included two circa 1920s commercial buildings north of the Sawtooth
Building with cast-stone and patterned brick decoration and a circa 1980 hyphen with four bays of
tinted plate glass windows that connected the commercial buildings. The facility was completely
renovated and a series of additions erected in 2009-2010 as part of its rebirth as the Milton Rhodes Center for the Arts, which opened on September 10, 2010.

Industrial Development in Winston-Salem during the 1940s and 1950s

The National Carbon Company and Western Electric additions to the former Chatham Manufacturing Company plant, erected from 1944 through the early 1950s, manifest the ongoing use of heavy-timber
frame construction in industrial buildings as well as the steel and concrete structural systems frequently
utilized during this period. The United States Government’s ownership of the complex and the
defense-related production of the companies who leased it allowed for the complex’s expansion when
construction materials and labor were in short supply during World War II and the Korean War.
Although few buildings of any type were erected in Forsyth County in the early 1940s, new
construction escalated at a rate comparable to that of the 1920s by the end of the decade. Winston-
Salem served as the corporate headquarters of established companies including R. J. Reynolds
Tobacco, Wachovia, and Hanes Hosiery, as well as newcomers such as Western Electric; McLean Trucking, which moved to Winston-Salem in 1943; and Piedmont Airlines, founded in 1948.
Altogether, they employed thousands of people and erected many new commercial and industrial
edifices throughout Winston-Salem.78

76 Ibid. 77 Bishir and Southern, A Guide to the Historic Architecture of Piedmont North Carolina, 367, 384; James Howell Smith, Industry and Commerce, 9, 13-15. Adelaide L. Fries, et. al., Forsyth: A County on the March (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1949), 175-176. 78 Frank V. Tursi, Winston-Salem: A History, 244-245, 264; Catherine Bishir and Michael Southern, A Guide to the Historic Architecture of Piedmont North Carolina, 370; Larry Edward Tise, Building and Architecture, 46.

Chatham Manufacturing Company/Western Electric Complex 26
Heather Fearnbach, October 2010
Development slowed slightly when building materials such as steel were again diverted to military
support during the Korean War (1950-1953), but local manufacturers benefited from increased product demand and expanded operations, resulting in the creation of approximately seven thousand industrial jobs in Winston-Salem between 1950 and 1955. Hanes Dye and Finishing Company, founded by
Ralph P. Hanes in 1926, improved their facility on the east side of Chatham Road opposite Western
Electric’s complex in 1953. Western Electric occupied their new Lexington Road plant and office
building in late 1954. R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company introduced its first filtered cigarettes—Winstons and Salems—in 1954 and 1956 and began constructing their state-of-the-art Whitaker Park Plant in northwest Winston-Salem in 1958. Small businesses also grew during this period, as
entrepreneurs launched forty-five new industrial ventures in Winston-Salem during the 1950s.79

79 Adelaide L. Fries, et. al., Forsyth: The History of a County on the March, 233, 343; Bill East, “6,000,000 in
New Construction is Scheduled in Forsyth for 1955,” Winston-Salem Sentinel, January 3, 1955, page 1B and 4B.

Chatham Manufacturing Company/Western Electric Complex 27
Heather Fearnbach, October 2010
Section 9. Bibliography
“Agency History,” Eveready Company Papers Finding Aid, Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center Library, Fremont, Illiniois. http://www.rbhayes.org/hayes/mssfind/285/eveready.htm#Scope
and Content.

“Biographical Sketch.” Thurmond Chatham Papers, 1776-1956, Private Collection 1139, North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh.

Bishir, Catherine W., and Michael T. Southern. A Guide to the Historic Architecture of Piedmont
North Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.
Black Mountain College Correspondence. “Chatham Manufacturing Company.” North Carolina State
Archives, Raleigh.

Brown, Henry A., Jr. Telephone conversation with Heather Fearnbach, September 21, 2010.
Brown, Henry A., Jr. and Mike Hollman. Interview with Heather Fearnbach, September 29, 2010.

Brownlee, Fambrough L. Winston-Salem: A Pictorial History. Norfolk, Virginia: Donning Company,
1997.
Canipe, Ruby Bray, ed. Early Elkin-Jonesville History and Geneaology. Jonesville, North Carolina:
Tarheel Graphics, 1981.

“Chatham Blanket Shop Ad.” Thurmond Chatham Papers, 1776-1956, North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh.

Chatham Manufacturing Company, “From Wool to Blankets: Season 1921,” Elkin and Winston-
Salem, N. C., Thurmond Chatham Papers, 1776-1956, North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh.
Chatham Manufacturing Company. “Introducing the Chatham ‘Gaucho’.” Thurmond Chatham Papers,
1776-1956, North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh.

“Chatham Manufacturing Company To Move Plant in Winston-Salem Here; Plan $500,000 Building.” Elkin Tribune, March 23, 1939.

“Chatham Receives $1,500,000 Order From Government.” Elkin Tribune, April 1, 1937.

Copenhaver, Harris. “An Industrial Survey of Winston-Salem, North Carolina.” University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Master’s thesis, 1917.

Davis, Chester. “Western Electric and Winston-Salem…How an Industry Found a Home.” Winston-
Salem Journal and Sentinel, April 29, 1956.
East, Bill. “6,000,000 in New Construction is Scheduled in Forsyth for 1955.” Winston-Salem Sentinel,
January 3, 1955.

Chatham Manufacturing Company/Western Electric Complex 28
Heather Fearnbach, October 2010
Edmonds, Tom. “Discovering new uses for old buildings.” Triad Business, November 13-20, 1989,
page 8. “Electronics Industry Brought New Ideas, Methods to Winston-Salem.” Winston-Salem Journal and
Sentinel, April 10, 1966, page L12.
Elkin, 1889-1989: A Centennial History. Elkin: Town of Elkin, 1989. Ellison, Harold. “Western Electric Revitalizes Tired City.” Winston-Salem Journal, September 21,
1958.

“Employees Boast of Long Service.” Elkin Tribune, February 8, 1940. Fire Insurance Association of Hartford, Connecticut. “Arista Mill.” Map issued in 1942.

Forsyth County Register of Deeds, Deed Book 81, page 378; Book 82, page 256; Book 83, pages 89,
128, and 192. Fries, Adelaide L., et. al. Forsyth: The History of a County on the March. Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1976.

Glass, Brent D. The Textile Industry in North Carolina: A History. Raleigh: Division of Archives and History, North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, 1992.
Green, Pam. “First Industry Was Cotton Mill.” North Carolina Collection Clipping File Through 1975,
Reel 28, pp. 454-455. Wilson Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.
Harper, Marilyn M., et. al. World War II and the American Home Front. Washington, D. C.: The National Historic Landmarks Program, October 2007.

“Harris Heads Finish Plant.” Elkin Tribune, February 8, 1940.
Hartley, Michael O. and Martha B. Hartley. “Arista Cotton Mill Complex.” Town of Salem Survey, 1999.

________. “Indera Mills.” Town of Salem Survey, 1999.
Hunter, Marjorie. “Chatham: Versatile, Personable, Determined.” Winston-Salem Journal, May 20, 1956.

Lawrence, Major A. R., compiler. Winston-Salem, North Carolina: Booklet No. IV. Winston-Salem:
Industrial Commission of Winston-Salem, Inc., 1930. “Manufacture of Auto Upholstery Growing Business at Chatham.” Elkin Tribune, February 8, 1940.

Maultsby, Ralph C. “Aggressive Merchandising Has Contributed to Success of Chatham Blankets.” Textile World, August 17, 1929.

Chatham Manufacturing Company/Western Electric Complex 29
Heather Fearnbach, October 2010

Miller, Ernest H., compiler. Winston City Directory. Asheville, North Carolina: Piedmont Directory Company, 1910.
________. Winston-Salem City Directory. Asheville, North Carolina: Piedmont Directory Company
1921.
“Mill News.” Textile Bulletin, November 1 and November 15, 1940 and January 1, 1941. Wilson Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.

National Carbon Company, Inc. “Building Alterations, 2nd and 3rd Floors.” January 14, 1943.
________. “Equipment Plan for NC-2, First Floor Layout.” March 9, 1943.
________. “General Arrangement and Details, Snack Bar and Roof Garden, Building No. 6.”
March 26, 1945.
________. “Paint Manufacturing and Paint Storage Building.” April 17, 1945.
________. “Winston-Salem Plant Expansion, 2 Story Addition to Warehouse.” May 15, 1944.

________. “Winston-Salem Plant Expansion Part 2, 4 Story Addition to Mfg. Bldg.” June 24, 1944.
________. “Winston-Salem Plant Expansion Part 2, 3 Story Addition to Warehouse.” May 1 and 15,
1944.
North Carolina Yearbook. Raleigh: News and Observer, 1915-1939.
Owen, Jackie. “WE Field Engineers: Godfathers of Defense.” Winston-Salem Journal and Sentinel,
July 6, 1958.

Pepper, Thomas. “Electronics—New Industry, People.” Winston-Salem Journal, April 10, 1966.
“Paragraph 1111 – Blankets and Similar Articles.” 1938. Thurmond Chatham Papers, 1776-1956,
North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh.

Phillips, Laura A. W. “Alamance Mill Village Historic District.” National Register of Historic Places Nomination, 2007.

Phillips, Laura A. W. Simple Treasures: The Architectural Legacy of Surry County. Winston-Salem:
Winston Printing Company, 1987.
Phillips, Laura A. W. and Gwynne S. Taylor. “Downtown Winston-Salem Historic District.” National
Register of Historic Places nomination draft, 1989.

Powell, William S., ed. Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, Volume 1, A-C. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1979.

Chatham Manufacturing Company/Western Electric Complex 30
Heather Fearnbach, October 2010

“Richard Thurman [sic] Chatham,” North Carolina Biographical Dictionary. New York: Somerset Publishers, Inc., 1993.
Sanborn Map Company. “Winston-Salem, North Carolina.” Maps issued in 1907, 1912, 1917, and
updated in 1942.
Shelton, Lillian Britt Phillips. “Modestly Grand:” The Wake Forest President’s House, Built by Ralph and Dewitt Hanes, 1929. Master’s Thesis, Wake Forest University, May 2006.

Smith, James Howell. Winston-Salem in History, Volume 8: Industry and Commerce, 1896-1975.
Winston-Salem: Historic Winston-Salem, Inc., 1977. Taylor, Gwynne S., and Brent D. Glass. “Salem Manufacturing Company and Arista Cotton Mill
(Fries Mill Complex).” National Register of Historic Places nomination, 1977

Taylor, Gwynne and Laura Phillips. “West End Historic District.” National Register of Historic Places
nomination, 1986.
Taylor, Gwynne Stephens. From Frontier to Factory: An Architectural History of Forsyth County.
Raleigh: North Carolina Department of Archives and History, 1981.

Tise, Larry Edward. Winston-Salem in History, Volume 9: Building and Architecture. Winston-Salem: Historic Winston, 1976.
Tursi, Frank V. Winston-Salem: A History. Winston-Salem: John F. Blair, Publisher, 1994.

“Went With Company in Year 1906.” Elkin Tribune, February 8, 1940.
Western Electric Company. “Western Electric History.”
http://www.porticus.org/bell/westernelectric_history.html.

Western Electric Company, Inc., North Carolina Works, Factory Planning and Plant Engineering. “Floor Level Layout.” Chatham Road Plant, 1962.

________. “Isometric view revised of the Chatham Road Plant.” March 1953.

Wicker, Tom. “Congressmen Mourn Death of Chatham.” Winston-Salem Journal, February 7, 1957.
Winston-Salem Chamber of Commerce. Winston-Salem: Half-Century of Progress, 1885-1935.
Winston-Salem: Winston-Salem Chamber of Commerce, 1935.

Wyatt, Sherry Joines. “Indera Mills/Maline Mills.” National Register of Historic Places nomination, 1998.

Section 10. Geographical Data
Verbal Boundary Description The boundaries of the Chatham Manufacturing Company/Western Electric Complex are indicated by
the bold line on the enclosed map. Scale 1” = 200’
Boundary Justification The Chatham Manufacturing Company/Western Electric Complex encompasses approximately six
acres—the triangular 5.96-acre parcel containing the industrial buildings and the adjacent three-tenths-
of-an-acre parcel containing the 1937 Chatham Manufacturing Company office. The property is bounded by the Southern Railway tracks to the south and west, Peters Creek to the north, and Chatham Road to the east. The area immediately outside the boundary is characterized by modern commercial
development.
Section 11. Additional Documentation
Photo Catalog Photographs by Heather Fearnbach, 3334 Nottingham Road, Winston-Salem, NC, in August and
September 2010. Digital images located at the North Carolina SHPO.