Enterprise Cotton Mills Building
National Register Listing
Street Address:
U.S. 21, Orangeburg, SC (Orangeburg County)
Alternate Name:
Zeus Industrial Products
NRHP Nomination
Record Number:
S10817738017
Description and Narrative:
(Zeus Industrial Products) The Enterprise Cotton Mills Building is significant for its association with several textile companies that played major roles in Orangeburg’s economy in the first half of the twentieth century. The mill was organized in the city in 1896. There was much local support for the construction of the mill that would provide a home market for the agricultural products of the county. The firm of W.B. Smith Whaley and Company, engineers and architects of Columbia, was retained to design the building and it was constructed in 1896-1897. Whaley’s firm was nationally prominent as a designer and developer of textile mills. The firm did work across the southeastern United States in the period from 1890 to 1902. Later work included mills in Massachusetts, Oklahoma and China. Around 1900 the building was occupied by the Orangeburg Manufacturing Company that employed around 200 workers by 1907. In 1917 the Santee Cotton Mills began operating in the building, employing around 450 workers over two shifts by 1935. From ca. 1944 to 1976 the building housed the South Carolina Cotton Mills. The building is a four-story, brick building, seventeen bays long and seven bays wide, with a five-story tower on the east side. A two-story brick engine room and a one-story brick boiler room, parts of the original construction, are located at the east side. There are numerous other smaller additions on the east elevation. Listed in the National Register September 20, 1985.
Period of Significance:
1896 – 1897
Level of Significance:
Local
Area of Significance:
Industry;Architecture
National Register Determination:
listed
Date of Certification:
September 20 1985
