{"nrhp_refnum":"00001208","name":"Renfro Mill","other_names":["R. Roberts Leaf Tobacco House"],"category":"building","location":{"address":"Jct. of Willow and Oak Sts.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Mount Airy","county":"Surry County","state":"NC","lat":36.501423604000024,"lon":-80.60975137599996,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"2000-10-12","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Industry","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A large brick industrial building of about 100,000 square feet at the northeast corner of Willow and Oak streets in Mount Airy, North Carolina. It began in the early 1890s as the R. Roberts Leaf Tobacco House and was enlarged in 1946-47 and later.","why_significant":"It is an excellent surviving example of the late-nineteenth-century tobacco leaf house type common in Piedmont North Carolina. It also shows how a tobacco building was adapted to apparel manufacturing, as the home of Renfro Hosiery Mills, which introduced sock manufacturing to Mount Airy in 1921.","narrative":"Renfro Mill is a four-and-a-half-story brick industrial complex at Willow and Oak streets in Mount Airy, just west of the Main Street commercial center. Its oldest section was built in the early 1890s as the R. Roberts Leaf Tobacco House, with common-bond brick, segmental-arched windows, stepped-parapet gable ends and decorative brickwork. After tobacco companies declined, the building passed to textile use, and in 1921 the newly formed Renfro Hosiery Mills began making socks there, the first real hosiery operation in town. In 1946-47 the plant was more than doubled in size with additions for knitting, winding, boarding, dyeing and a boiler room, consolidating production under one roof. Renfro later became the nation's largest sock manufacturer, and the Willow Street plant closed in 1997. The building was donated to the Mount Airy Museum of Regional History in 1998. It was listed for its architecture as a tobacco-industry building type and for its role in local industry, with a period of significance of ca. 1893 to 1947.","period_of_significance":"ca. 1893-1947","architect_builder":null,"architectural_style":"Late Victorian","criteria":["A","C"],"status_note":"Described as in good condition but vacant for several years after the plant closed in 1997; plans call for conversion to housing for the elderly.","vacant_flag":true,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:57:54.317865-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/36/7223/47722336/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_NC/00001208.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/00001208/a235beeeab-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/00001208/a235beeeab-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 3.0","author":"Dmw002","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Renfro_Mill.JPG\" rel=\"noopener\">Dmw002</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY-SA 3.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Renfro_Mill.JPG"},"district":{"nrhp_refnum":"85002931","name":"Mount Airy Historic District (Additional Documentation)","url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/districts/north-carolina/mount-airy-historic-district-additional-documentation-85002931/"},"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/47722336","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renfro_Mill","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q19945993"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/north-carolina/surry-county/renfro-mill-00001208/"}