McKinney Cotton Mill Historic District

Mill Town, in southeastern McKinney, grew up around a cotton textile mill that opened on November 1, 1910. The district covers about 30 acres and holds the two-story brick mill, three warehouses, a two-story boarding house and roughly 70 contributing structures, mostly one-story frame workers' houses set close to the street in uniform rows. The first 17 cottages went up with the mill in 1910, and more followed in 1926 during a $200,000 expansion by contractor J. E. Cooper. Local business leaders, led by J. Perry Burrus, financed the mill, which grew to 376 looms by 1917 and employed more than 520 people. A 1948 tornado damaged it, and it closed in 1969, when a furniture maker took over the plant. The district is listed because few Texas textile mills were built, and almost no other mill-and-housing complex survives as intact. Many houses are dilapidated, and some lots stand empty.