Laboratory Historic District

Laboratory Historic District is a compact rural group of mill-related resources on the South Fork River, about two miles south of Lincolnton. Its centerpiece is the brick Laboratory Cotton Mill, built in 1887 by Daniel E. Rhyne and his brother-in-law James A. Abernethy Sr. on a site that earlier held the Lincoln Cotton Factory and, from 1863, a Confederate laboratory producing medicines for the army. Also included are the mill's dam and race system, a stone reservoir, the ca. 1844 brick Hoke-Rhyne House and Rhyne's 1894 frame house with its ornate Victorian porch. The mill reintroduced cotton manufacturing to Lincoln County's economy in the late nineteenth century and operated until the late 1990s. The mill village that once surrounded it was demolished or moved after 1953, so these surviving buildings and structures, with their wooded hillside setting, preserve the industrial and domestic landscape of Rhyne's long career. Nine of the twenty-two resources contribute to the district's character.