EDITOR’S NOTE: With the sale of the former Western Electric plant in east Burlington, we asked Walter Boyd to provide a history of the site for our readers.
From the time Lafayette Mills opened on Webb Avenue in 1882 until shortly after the end of World War I, Burlington’s economy was dominated by the production of cotton yarn and fabric, but by 1920 the local textile industry was in the doldrums. Most of the mills were still using late 19th century equipment and techniques and hadn’t embraced new technology or artificial fabrics necessary to keep them competitive. The postwar depression and the drop in demand for cotton fabrics pushed Burlington’s antiquated cotton mills to the edge of financial ruin, prompting several members of the Chamber of Commerce to begin a search for someone who could breathe new life into them.
In 1923 they settled on James Spencer Love, a young textile executive from Gastonia, and lured him to Burlington with a $250,000 loan.
Love immediately organized a textile corporation called Burlington Industries and on July 29, 1924, the fledging company began operations at a new facility in East Burlington known as the Pioneer Plant. Despite Love’s expertise, the company struggled at first, but he soon switched to fabrics made from a semi-artificial fabric called rayon and business began to boom.
In 1927, a Chicago financier named Albert Mussey Johnson decided to capitalize on the huge demand for rayon fabric and settled on Burlington as the place in which to base his new manufacturing operation. He acquired a 200-acre tract of land at what is now 204 North Graham-Hopedale Road, about one mile north of what were then Burlington’s city limits, and began construction of a facility to be known as A.M. Johnson Rayon Mills, Inc. The first brick was laid Jan. 3, 1928, and plant was ready to begin production by the end of the year.
The outlook was so promising that in mid-1929 Johnson announced plans to expand it to five times its present size.
Unfortunately, just as production was getting into full swing, the Great Depression sent the nation’s economy into a nosedive. While Burlington Industries managed to hold on, Johnson had overextended himself by spending so much on expansion and was forced to close his new mill in early 1930. After reorganization, it reopened as Carolina Rayon Mills later in 1930, but it did no better under its new name than its old one and closed for good in 1931.
Johnson refused to lease the property and instead sold it to National Management Corp. For several years there was hope that it would be reopened as a rayon plant again, but in April 1936 the machinery was sold by the plant’s new owner, Hercules Life Insurance Co., which had bought the assets of the defunct National Management Corp. In the fall of 1938 the buildings were occupied by Southern Foods Corp., an enterprise co-founded by Ralph Scott of Melville Dairy. It manufactured Tem-Taste mayonnaise and Tasti-Spread margarine, among other items, but was out of business within about a year. In 1939 and 1940 the buildings were the site of the Burlington Municipal Fair.
In February 1942, shortly after the United States entered World War II, the federal government acquired the property and turned it over to Fairchild Engine & Aircraft Co. to manufacture the AT-21, an all-wood training aircraft for bomber crews. By the time it first flew in 1943 the AT-21 was no longer needed since there were sufficient all-metal bombers to use for training purposes. Moreover, the AT-21 proved to be a poorly designed and hard-to-fly aircraft. After a fatal crash in Delaware on Oct. 18, 1944, production was suspended. Shortly thereafter, the defense products division of Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. took over the Fairchild facility and began manufacturing 90-mm guns and 57-mm shells until August 14, 1945, the day Japan surrendered.
Western Electric, the manufacturing division of American Telephone & Telegraph Co. (AT&T), moved into the facility in April 1946 and began making telephone equipment. Within 10 years approximately 3,500 people were employed at the complex.
In 1956, Burlington’s Western Electric plant began making components for the Nike guided missile. After the 1972 strategic arms limitation treaty (SALT) talks severely restricted anti-missile systems, work at the Tar Heel Missile Plant, as the facility came to be called, fell off dramatically. AT&T announced it would be closed on March 19, 1991. The U. S. government eventually sold the property as surplus, but the buildings have remained empty since that time.
Walter Boyd is a historian who lives in Burlington.