Lakeside Mills Historic District

Lakeside Mills is a former cotton mill village on the northern outskirts of Burlington, North Carolina. Built in 1892-93, it includes a long, low brick mill of slow-burn heavy-timber construction with an 85-foot smokestack, several small ancillary buildings, sixteen frame houses and a store. The mill was designed by textile technologist Lafayette Holt for brothers Walter L., Edwin C. and Samuel M. Holt, members of the family that drove Burlington's growth as a textile center. The company made chambray cloth for work shirts and later cheviots and checks. It never expanded much, so few houses were added and the village kept its original layout, green space and semi-rural character. Although many houses have altered porches, siding and chimneys, all retain their original forms. The district is regarded as the least altered of Burlington's late nineteenth-century mill complexes and as an unusually well-preserved example of its type. The mill later served a hosiery company and then as a warehouse.