Lenoir Cotton Mill

The Lenoir Cotton Mill was a 19th-century cotton mill located in the U.S. city of Lenoir City, Tennessee. One of the earliest examples of industrial architecture in Tennessee, the mill operated variously from its construction around 1830 until the 1950s. The mill was documented by the Historic American Buildings Survey and placed on the National Register of Historic Places in the 1970s. Efforts to restore the mill began in 1980, but before the restoration could be completed, the mill was destroyed by arson in 1991. The Lenoir Cotton Mill was one of several enterprises established by early settler and entrepreneur William Ballard Lenoir (1775–1852). Lenoir moved to the area in 1810 after his father, General William Lenoir, deeded to him the tract of land comprising what is now Lenoir City. The younger Lenoir established the Lenoir Manufacturing Company in 1817, which engaged in multiple agricultural and industrial enterprises throughout the 19th century. The cotton mill was completed in the early 1830s and gradually expanded in subsequent decades. During the U.S. Civil War, Union soldiers destroyed parts of the estate of the Confederate-leaning Lenoir family, but spared the mill due to William Ballard Lenoir's son Benjamin's Mason affiliations. After the Lenoir family sold the mill in the 1890s, it operated variously as a hosiery mill and later as a flour mill.