| Cole Manufacturing Complex
Central Ave.
1911
Dr. William H. Huffman
June, 1985
The Cole Manufacturing Company complex off Central Avenue in
Charlotte was built in 1911 according to plans drawn by one of the
city's best architects,
C. C. Hook. From its struggling early days starting in 1900, the
company grew to be one of the leading manufacturers of agricultural
equipment in the world, and its manufacturing facility represents the
spirit of entrepreneurship that was an integral part of New South
industrialization in the region. The Cole Manufacturing Company was
first incorporated on October 12, 1900,
to manufacture and sell combination planters, cotton planters, corn
planters, pea planters, and seed planters of other kinds...; to
manufacture agricultural implements, appliances and conveniences; to
conduct a foundry for making iron and brass castings and castings of
all kinds...
Subscribers of the original stock included some of the leading
mercantile names in the city at the time: textile mill owners and
merchants W. B. Holt, J. S. Spencer, B. D. Heath, John M. Scott, and
Henry McAden; hardware merchant J. H. Weddington; and the Belk Brothers
concern. Also included at the head of the list were the four Cole
brothers, E.A.,E.M.,E.W.,and B.O.Cole. 1
The Coles were born in Chatham County, and later brought up on a farm
in Moore County near Carthage. It was there that the brothers,
particularly B. M. Cole, began to make seed planters for neighbors about
1885, and thus began a small business. 2 On July 17, 1900,
the Cole brothers obtained a U. S. patent for "Coles' Combination
Planter," and it must have been about that time that they came to
Charlotte to look for investors to back the manufacturing of their
invention. 3 In the original incorporation documents, the
brothers transferred their joint rights to the patent, patterns and
sample planters to the company in return for thirty shares each of
common stock, which had a par value of fifty dollars. 4
Cole Manufacturing began operations in a wood building just to the
north of where the Seaboard Air Line Railroad tracks crossed Central
Avenue, and for the first few years struggled with the difficulties of
lack of capital and marketing an unknown and novel product. 5
Within six years, however, business had improved to the point where the
company bought a little over fourteen acres from the Oakhurst Land
Company (the developer of that part of
Elizabeth, headed by textile magnate B. D. Heath, one of the
original Cole investors) on the south side of Central Avenue with the
idea of expanding into newer, larger and modern facilities. 6
about 1910, Charlotte architect C. C. Hook was retained to design the
new plant. 7
Charles Christian Hook (1864- 1938), was one of the city's finest
architects. A graduate of Washington University in St. Louis, he taught
in the public schools in Charlotte for three years before beginning his
architectural career as a designer of houses for the new
streetcar suburb of
Dilworth in 1893. From time to time he was in partnership with
others in the City (Frank Sawyer, 1902- 1907; Willard Rogers, 1912-1916;
and with his son, W. W. Hook, 1924- 1938). Hook's work included some of
the city's important landmarks, such as the old
Charlotte City Hall, the
Charlotte Women's Club, the
J. B. Duke mansion on Hermitage Road, the
Belk mansion on Hawthorne Lane, and the Belk Trade Street facade of
1927. Among his outstanding state-wide credits are the west wing of the
state capital in Raleigh, the Richmond County Courthouse, Phillips Hall
in Chapel Hill and the State Hospital in Morganton. 8
The new manufacturing complex was completed in 1911, and the company
now had the capacity and equipment to compete on a wider scale. The new
facility had separate buildings for: a foundry; grinding shed;
assembly/warehouse; assembly/machine shop; woodworking/print room and a
bath room for employees. 9 Under the direction of Eugene
Macon Cole (1865- 1944), the president, and Eusebius A. Cole (1870-
1943), the secretary-treasurer, the business achieved many years of
success. 10 According to a government official, E. M. Cole
"did more in the improvement of machinery for planting seed than had
been done in all preceding centuries." 11 By the 1940s, it
was estimated that three-fourths of the cotton, corn, and peanut crops
in the South were planted with Cole machines, 12 and by 1961,
over two million seed planters, fertilizer spreaders and grain drills
had been manufactured and delivered in this country and abroad. 13
In 1953, E. A. Cole's daughter, Jean Cole Hatcher, took over as head
of the company until her retirement in 1972. At her death in 1980, Cole
manufacturing was described in a newspaper article as "one of the
world's largest manufacturers of seed planting, fertilizing and farm
machine equipment." 14 Shortly thereafter, however,the
company went into a serious decline with the agriculture industry in
general, and it quit business in November, 1982. 15 What remains of the
Cole Manufacturing Company's 1911 complex, however, is the most
interesting group of manufacturing buildings that are not related to
textiles in the city, and the site of one of the state' most successful
enterprises of New South industrialization.
NOTES
1 Mecklenburg County Record of Corporations, Book 1, p.
191.
2 Charlotte Observer, June 27, 1944, Section 2, p.
1.
3 See note 1.
4 Ibid.
5 See note 2.
6 Mecklenburg County Deed Book 216, p. 30, 6 September
1906.
7 Information supplied by Thomas Hanchett. Charlotte
Mecklenburg Historic Properties Commission.
8 Information on file at Charlotte Mecklenburg Historic
Properties Commission.
9 Sanborn Insurance Map. 1911, p. 77.
10 See note 2; Charlotte Observer. February 10, 1943.
Section 2, p. 1.
11 See note 2.
12 Ibid.
13 LeGette Blythe and Charles Brockman, Hornets' Nest:
The Story of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County (Charlotte: Public
Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, 1961), p. 275.
14 Charlotte News. July 2, 1980, p. 2B.
15 See note 7.
Architectural Description
By Thomas W. Hanchett
The Cole Manufacturing Company is a well-preserved early example of
non-textile-related industrial architecture in Charlotte. The complex
was designed by leading Charlotte architect C. C. Hook for a successful
maker of agricultural implements, and it opened about 1910. The
buildings are noteworthy for their handsome corbeled brick exteriors and
for their concrete structural systems, a very early use of that new
material. Today five buildings of Hook's original six-building complex
may still be seen.
The complex, as viewed in 1946
As one enters the Cole property along the Seaboard Railway tracks off
of Central Avenue, the first building to be seen is the largest one of
the complex. This is the Assembly/Warehouse Building. It is a long
rectangle with its long side parallel to the railroad. The structure is
two stories tall, five bays wide, and nineteen bays long. Each bay
consists of a two-story round-arched window opening with heavy corbeling
outlining the
arch, and an oversized stone
keystone accenting the top. The architect used a rhythmic
alternation of opening sizes to add variety to the exterior: on the long
sides of the building every fifth arch is a little taller and wider than
its neighbors, while on the short sides the middle one of the openings
gets the same treatment. Above each of the oversized arches the wall of
the building extends upward beyond the roof line to form a small parapet
decorated with a raised panel of corbeled brick. Corbeled brick also
forms a belt course around the building at the second-story level and at
the base of the window openings. Today the Assembly/Warehouse Building
exterior remains in good original condition except for the bricking-in
of most of the window openings, and the addition of a wooden-roofed
loading shed on the west side facing the railroad.
Inside the Assembly/Warehouse Building, the front bays of the first
floor are occupied by the former Cole Manufacturing offices. This warren
of small rooms is finished in imitation-wood paneling that appears to
date from the 1950s or 1960s. To the rear of the office area is the open
work floor. It is simply a single large space broken only by two rows of
columns, and by a concrete-block elevator enclosure that does not look
to be original to the building. The concrete columns are square and have
no bases or capitals. They support transverse beams that hold the
concrete second floor. Wooden mold board marks are visible on all
concrete surfaces. At the southeast corner of the space two sets of wide
cast-metal wheels hang from the ceiling, a last remnant of the belt
drives that brought power from the nearby engine house to the machinery
here. A concrete ramp, now partially destroyed, leads from the center of
the east side of the building up to the second floor. Upstairs there is
a single workspace with more columns. The concrete roof has one small
skylight over the ramp.
Immediately east of the Assembly/Warehouse Building is the similar
but slightly smaller Machine Shop/Assembly Building. Also two stories
tall, it five bays wide and eleven bays long, and is set at right angles
to the first structure. Here the architect used the same "vocabulary" of
arches and corbeling, but varied the rhythm so that the long sides of
the building have a tall central opening flanked five rather than four
normal openings. Windows have been bricked in and a large metal-framed
loading shed nearly as large as the original building has been added to
the south side. Inside there is a single large workspace on each floor,
with a central enclosed elevator of recent vintage and a wooden
stairway. The structural system with its concrete floors and ceilings
supported by concrete beams and two rows of concrete columns is
identical to the main building.
The square, hip-roofed foundry building that once stood south of the
Machine Shop/Assembly Building has been demolished, though its concrete
floor may still be seem. East of it the one-story Grinding Building
survives in a somewhat altered form. It was originally nine bays long
and only one bay deep under its hip roof. The long side featured three
arched doorways alternated with a total of six smaller arched window
openings. Heavy corbeling forms three belt courses; one above the window
line, one at the bases of the arches, and one at the bottoms of the
windows. Today the building has lost its northern-most bay. Two of the
entrances have been widened, harming the original brickwork, and all
other openings have been bricked in. Inside the building is divided into
one small room and one big room by a brick bearing wall, as shown on
early maps. The roof is not concrete but rather a wooden truss. Inside
the small room a single cast-iron pulley wheel hangs from the ceiling
beams.
Across the foundry floor is what remains of the original Boiler
House. This one-story,
hip-roofed building stands immediately south of the main
Assembly/Warehouse Building. The Boiler House has lost its tall brick
smokestack and portions of its corbeled arched walls have been replaced
with less-ornate new brickwork. Portions of its corbeled belt course
have crumbled off the walls. A new shower room addition joins it to the
main Assembly/Warehouse.
The fifth of the surviving original buildings has been even more
altered. The Woodworking Shop stood to the north of the Machine
Shop/Assembly Building. It was a one-story structure with arched windows
and corbeled red brick, and a concrete skeleton just like the main
buildings. Today the structure is part of a larger metal and brick
building. The concrete frame and roof remain, but all the walls except
the east one have been removed.
In addition to the brick and metal buildings that have incorporated
the old Woodworking Shop, two other structures have been added to the
complex over the years. To the rear of the Woodworking Shop is a
one-story Paint Shop of corrugated metal. Near it, east of the Machine
Shop/Assembly Building and joined to the Grinding Building, is a large
one-story structure with brick walls and a
flat roof.
Today the Cole Manufacturing buildings still present a strong aura of
the industrial past, despite the changes since 1910. Their heavily
corbeled red brick walls recall ancient Roman design, and as one winds
through the narrow spaces between the buildings one feels like one is
walking through some bygone city. |
