McCrary Mill No. 2 view.
McCrary Mill No. 2 view
Showing McCrary Mill No. 2 section
Parks Hosiery Mill on left; McCrary Mill No. 2 on right
McCrary Mill No. 2
Parks Hosiery Mill
Parks Hosiery Mill
Parks Hosiery Mill
Parks Hosiery Mill in foreground; McCrary Mill No. 2 in background
Prior to restoration, showing 1950s window modifications
Prior to restoration
Read the Landmark Designation Report
NOTE: Information about the McCrary Mill No. 2/Parks Hosiery Mill is included in a larger Landmark Designation Nomination report for the Acme-McCrary factory complex in downtown Asheboro. Information about the McCrary/Parks mills can be found on pages 16-24 of the report.
Read the Landmark Designation Resolution
The Acme-McCrary Hosiery Mill plant located adjacent to the downtown commercial center is Asheboro’s largest and most intact historic industrial complex, comprising six buildings and a smokestack erected from 1909 through 1962 on 7.32 acres on West Salisbury Street’s south side north of Sunset Avenue. The entity’s contribution to the local economy began when seventeen Asheboro businessmen created Acme Hosiery Company in 1907. The concern incorporated as Acme Hosiery Mills on December 15, 1908, struggled until brothers-in-law and hardware and farm machinery purveyors D. B. McCrary and T. H. Redding partnered with banker W. J. Armfield Jr. to assume the company’s ownership in 1909. Their management transformed the cotton sock-knitting mill into the successful enterprise that it remains today.
To ensure an ample supply of high-quality cotton yarn, McCrary, Redding, and Armfield established Sapona Cotton Mills on March 20, 1916, and acquired and soon improved the existing Cedar Falls Manufacturing Company complex to serve that purpose. McCrary and Armfield remained Acme Hosiery and Sapona Cotton Mills’ chief executives following T. H. Redding’s 1918 death. Around 1927, the entrepreneurs created McCrary Hosiery Mills, a silk and rayon hosiery manufacturing concern housed in the three-story 1924 addition on the Acme plant’s south end. Acme Hosiery Mills and McCrary Hosiery Mills continued to expand operations in Asheboro and Cedar Falls, and further increased capacity in 1938 through the construction of a Ramseur factory that remained a separate corporate entity until merging with McCrary Hosiery Mills in 1948. Acme and McCrary hosiery mills consolidated on April 1, 1961, to form Acme-McCrary Corporation.
In March 1931, McCrary Hosiery Mills acquired the neighboring two-story, heavy-timber frame, brick Parks Hosiery Mill west of the railroad on North Church Street’s east side. McCrary Hosiery Mills expanded into the facility, constructed the connected two-story brick Mill No. 2 to the north in 1937, setting the stage for the company to become one of thirty-two hosiery mills in the United States authorized to weave DuPont’s new nylon fiber after its 1938 introduction. McCrary Hosiery Mills remained Asheboro’s largest full-fashioned hosiery business that year, with between seven and eight hundred employees.
In September 2021, company sold the 0.85-acre parcel at 170 Church Street containing Parks Hosiery Mill - McCrary Hosiery Mill No. 2 to Church Street Loft Apartments, LLC. Church Street Loft Apartments, LLC’s rehabilitation of this building to create fifty efficiency, one-,and two-bedroom apartments in compliance with the Secretary of the Interior’s standards is expected to be finished should be finished by summer 2023.
Related Sites:
Acme-McCrary & Sapona Recreation Center
Cedar Falls Manufacturing Company
