Picker House and Dye House

At Glencoe, raw cotton first entered production in the Picker House, where men unpacked bales, removed twigs, leaves, bugs, and other debris, and fed the cotton into a breaker lapper that beat and drew out the fibers, cleaned them, and formed them into loosely matted sheets called laps about three to four feet wide; to reduce the risk of fire from cotton dust and debris, this building stood apart from the mill. In the brick Dye House, workers dyed and dried cotton for Glencoe's trademark plaid and striped fabrics under a skilled dye-master who mixed coloring agents by secret formulas, while men in the north-end dye room lowered wooden racks of raw cotton into two huge metal boilers of hot dyes and men in the south-end dry room placed the dyed cotton into a large centrifugal dryer that whirled out moisture. A steam engine, and later electricity, powered the operation, and records show that from 1902 to 1910 workers dyed from 6,000 to 10,000 pounds of cotton per week.

North Carolina · United States