{"nrhp_refnum":"02000443","name":"Grimes Brothers Mill","other_names":["Lexington Roller Mill","Excelsior Mill"],"category":"building","location":{"address":"2 North State St.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Lexington","county":"Davidson County","state":"NC","lat":35.82545270800006,"lon":-80.25438570899996,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"2002-05-02","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Industry"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A four-story-plus-basement painted brick industrial building, the surviving brick addition of a former flour mill, at the northwest corner of North State and West Center streets in Lexington, Davidson County, North Carolina. The brick section was erected by about 1885, added to an original 1879 frame mill that no longer stands.","why_significant":"The building is associated with the introduction of the roller process to flour milling in North Carolina. The nomination states the Grimes brothers' mill was the first roller-process mill in the state and the only surviving roller mill from that era in Davidson County. Its significance is locally recognized for its role in the late-nineteenth-century development of the regional flour milling industry.","narrative":"Lexington's brick flour mill was built around 1885 as a four-story addition to a frame mill begun in 1879 by brothers John D. and Thomas J. Grimes. The building's painted brick facade has corbeled and dentiled cornice, quoined pilasters and segmental-arched hood molds in the Italianate manner. Inside, timber posts, bolsters and beams survive on the basement, third and fourth floors, along with grain chutes and storage bins. The brothers installed rollers soon after founding the mill, and the nomination states this made it the first roller-process mill in North Carolina. Roller milling produced finer, more uniform flour at higher prices, and it displaced older buhrstone grist mills across the region. The mill operated into the mid-twentieth century, and the brick building is now the only part of the complex left in Davidson County.","period_of_significance":"ca. 1885-1945","architect_builder":null,"architectural_style":"Italianate","criteria":["A"],"status_note":"Converted to bank use in the early 1960s; a December 1999 fire damaged the north addition; the building is described as vacant, with the bank additions removed in 2001.","vacant_flag":true,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-haiku-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.1-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 17:11:41.915542-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/63/7199/47719963/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_NC/02000443.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/02000443/7afba78288-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/02000443/7afba78288-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 3.0","author":"PMLynchPhoto","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Grimes_Mill.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">PMLynchPhoto</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:Grimes_Mill.jpg"},"district":{"nrhp_refnum":"07000350","name":"Lexington Residential Historic District","url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/districts/north-carolina/lexington-residential-historic-district-07000350/"},"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/47719963","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimes_Brothers_Mill","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q18346247"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/north-carolina/davidson-county/grimes-brothers-mill-02000443/"}