Greenwood Mill Village Historic District
National Register Listing
Street Address:
Roughly bounded by West Cambridge Avenue, Hampton Avenue, Mill Avenue, Kitson Street, Maxwell Avenue, and N. Mathis Street, Greenwood, SC (Greenwood County)
Alternate Name:
Kitson Mill Village
NRHP Nomination Form
Record Number:
S10817724025
Description and Narrative:
The Greenwood Mill Village Historic District consists primarily of over 300 houses built or purchased by Greenwood Cotton Mill for its employees. In addition to the workers’ houses, the 222-acre district contains 176 garages built by the mill in the 1920s at the workers’ houses, three churches, two commercial buildings, a cafeteria of the now-demolished mill village school, Hillcrest Cemetery, a World War II monument, and the remaining buildings of the Greenwood Cotton Mill complex. The mill itself was demolished and the site remediated between 2007 and 2018, but the site still contains several warehouses, the main office building, and a small gatehouse. The buildings in the district represent various architectural styles from the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, including Queen Anne and Craftsman. Established in 1889, the Greenwood Cotton Mill was the first textile mill in Greenwood. It was instrumental in the city’s transformation from a small agricultural village to a hub of textile manufacturing with four textile mills by 1910. Although the mill is gone, the village continues to represent Greenwood Mill’s industrial history through the remaining buildings of the Greenwood Cotton Mill complex and the residential, institutional, and commercial buildings that form the surrounding mill village. The district is also significant for its architecture. While the mill built its earliest houses using typical wood-frame worker housing designs of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, later more architecturally elaborate houses built in the 1920s and 1930s and a post-World War II renovation campaign started in 1945 gave the village its present distinctive appearance. Nearly all the worker housing in the mill village features red brick veneer, cracked quarry tile porch flooring, and an unusually high level of architectural elaboration. These features, along with the varied housing typologies, complex roof forms, terra cotta and asbestos shingle roofs, and the variety of porch support designs in the district set it apart from most other mill villages in South Carolina. Only three other mill villages in the state feature brick worker housing, including two other mill villages in Greenwood and another in the nearby town of Ninety-Six, all formerly owned by Greenwood Mills. The Greenwood Mill Village remains exceptionally intact, with the vast majority of houses retaining integrity from the postwar renovation. Greenwood Mills sold its mill village housing to its employees in 1962. Listed in the National Register May 21, 2026.
Period of Significance:
1889 – 1962
Level of Significance:
State;Local
Area of Significance:
Architecture;Industry
National Register Determination:
listed
Date of Certification:
2026-05-21
Date of Boundary Increase:
No Boundary Increase
Location:
Greenwood;Greenwood County
