{"nrhp_refnum":"01001074","name":"Mor-Val Hosiery Mill","other_names":["Morris Mill"],"category":"building","location":{"address":"N. Main and E. First Sts.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Denton","county":"Davidson County","state":"NC","lat":35.634612908000065,"lon":-80.11324950499994,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"2001-10-05","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Industry","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A one-story brick hosiery mill with a manufacturing room and a smaller office wing, on a tract of less than one acre at the southeast corner of N. Main and E. First streets in Denton, Davidson County, North Carolina. It was built in 1936 by Autie Morris and Norman Valentine Johnson, with local contractor Carly Cranford.","why_significant":"The nomination argues the mill is locally significant as the only hosiery mill in the area that survives with architectural integrity to show the industrial building type common to small Piedmont mills in the first half of the twentieth century. It also ties the mill to the small hosiery mills that supported Denton's economy during the Depression.","narrative":"Built in 1936 on a half-acre corner lot in Denton, this one-story brick hosiery mill has a fifty-foot-square manufacturing room with large steel industrial windows and a smaller office wing to the south. Autie Morris and Norman Valentine Johnson, both from prominent Denton families, hired local contractor Carly Cranford to erect it during the Depression. The partners produced seamless knit hosiery, mainly men's argyle socks, and during World War II the mill made knee-high wool socks for the army. Enlargements were completed by 1941, and the building kept its mid-twentieth-century appearance. Its importance lies in its survival: among the small Denton and Davidson County hosiery mills of the 1930s, it is the only one that still conveys the common industrial form of the period. The mill operated until about 1965 and has been vacant since 1986.","period_of_significance":"1936-1951","architect_builder":"Cranford, Carly (contractor)","architectural_style":null,"criteria":["A","C"],"status_note":"Mill no longer operates and has stood vacant since the death of Kermit Morris in 1986; the building remains architecturally intact from its manufacturing period.","vacant_flag":true,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-haiku-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.1-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 17:11:40.96883-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/65/7199/47719965/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_NC/01001074.pdf"},"photo":null,"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/47719965","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mor-Val_Hosiery_Mill","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q18391157"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/north-carolina/davidson-county/mor-val-hosiery-mill-01001074/"}