Picker House and Dye House

At Glencoe, bales of raw cotton first went to the Picker House, where men unpacked the cotton, removed twigs, leaves, bugs, and other debris, and fed it into a breaker lapper that beat and drew out the fibers to clean them and form loosely matted cotton 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. Men in the dye room at the north end lowered wooden racks of raw cotton into two huge metal boilers of hot dyes, and in the dry room at the southern end they placed the racks of dyed cotton into a large centrifugal dryer that whirled the fiber to remove moisture. A steam engine and later electricity powered the operation, and records show that between 1902 and 1910 workers dyed from 6,000 to 10,000 pounds of cotton per week.

North Carolina · United States