Woodside Cotton Mill Village Historic District

Woodside Cotton Mill Village Historic District is a protected historic area in Greenville County with around 278 buildings from the early 1900s, including a four-story brick mill building and hundreds of worker homes. The structures spread across the landscape along tree-lined streets arranged in a planned, organized pattern throughout the grounds.

John T. Woodside founded this mill complex in 1902, creating one of the largest connected cotton mill operations in the country at that time. The village grew into a self-contained community built and operated by the company, showing how industrial entrepreneurs built entire settlements around their factories.

The neighborhood layout reveals how people lived according to their role in the mill, with supervisory homes and churches positioned along the main street while worker housing stretched in organized rows behind. This arrangement shows what daily life priorities looked like in early industrial communities.

The main mill building has been converted into private apartments, while most other properties in the area remain privately owned and not open to the public. Visiting means exploring the neighborhood from the outside to see the original layout and architecture of the historic district.

The site originally contained two churches, a baseball field, and community gardens that reveal how this settlement was designed as a complete, self-contained system with leisure and community facilities. These additions show how factory owners attempted to shape and manage workers' daily lives beyond just their time at work.

Location: Greenville County

GPS coordinates: 34.93780,-82.22860

Latest update: December 14, 2025 14:26