Razing of roundhouse, mill leaves some wistful
.jpg "Jim Schlosser")
Sometimes it takes a second blink to realize a building or house along a familiar route has vanished.
That’s not happening along Spring Garden Street in west Greensboro’s Pomona community. It’s a scorched-earth situation.
The huge former Southern Railway roundhouse is gone. So is the mill that was nearby.
They’re replaced by acres of barren land, except for a cluster of new student apartments with more to come.
The mill was built in the late 1890s, and it was operated until his death in 1918 by Thomas Hunter, for whom nearby Hunter School is named.
Much later, the mill became a Western Electric plant making Nike missile parts.
After that, the mill became Cotton Mill Square, a shopping mall. The building stood empty for years after the mall closed.
The roundhouse, shaped in a semicircle with 18 bays, arose in about 1919 to service and turn around steam locomotives.
The roundhouse closed in the 1960s, and a scrape metal operation was there for many years. A turntable in front of the roundhouse was removed, but tracks leading into the service bays remained.
Soot left by belching steam locomotives blackened the high ceiling.
“It was one of three roundhouses left in North Carolina,” says a sad Dr. Gene Lewis, a chiropractor and spokesman for the Greensboro chapter of the National Railroad Historical Society.
The other roundhouses are in Asheville and Spencer.
Lewis says he talked to everyone he could think of, trying to preserve the roundhouse.
But he says elected and government officials didn’t give the roundhouse a high priority. They knew millions would be needed to rehabilitate it for a new use.
Benjamin Briggs, president of Preservation Greensboro, says about the mill and roundhouse demolitions: “People call me and say they can’t believe they’re gone. It’s jarring to see.”
With tax incentives available for restoring old buildings, Briggs says the mill and roundhouse had possibilities for new interior uses while keeping original facades.
Instead of more look-alike student apartments, he says, young people would have loved the old buildings with high ceilings, big windows, brick walls and wood floors.
He cites the success of Wafco Mill, a former flour mill behind Greensboro College on McGee Street. The mill was converted into apartments more than 20 years ago. No two units are alike because of the building’s configuration.
The former Revolution Cotton Mill on Yanceyville Street and the former Wrangler jeans plant at Lee and South Elm streets are other examples of successful adaptive reuse projects.
As for the roundhouse, Briggs saw it as a possible signature structure if the adjacent mill had been converted to apartments or to other uses. The roundhouse would have been ideal for a clubhouse or artist studios.
Reminders of the mill remain: the old company stores stand along Merritt Drive and the mill village houses are behind the stores.
While trains quit using the roundhouse nearly 60 years ago, railroad lovers kept the place active.
They stopped by to photograph a rare relic of railroad’s bygone days.
No more.
Contact Jim Schlosser at 601-9879 or beale1@clearwire.net
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