Loray Mill Historic District

Loray Mill, a five-story brick textile mill on the western edge of Gastonia, North Carolina, was built in 1900 and 1901 to designs by the Boston engineering firm Lockwood, Greene and Company. Its Romanesque Revival entrance tower and banks of nine-over-nine windows mark it as the centerpiece of a village of frame mill houses laid out on a grid. When completed it was described as the largest textile mill under one roof in the world, with room for about 1,000 workers. Enlarged in 1921 and 1922, it was converted from cloth sheeting to tire fabric for the automobile industry. The district is significant for its industrial architecture and for the 1929 strike centered on the mill, a major episode in labor history that drew international attention. The mill houses, mostly one- and one-and-a-half-story weatherboarded dwellings, survive with many alterations, and the district retains a high level of historic integrity.