Page 19 - Greensboro, NC-GSO 2040 Comprehensive Plan

Hotels and restaurants sprang up near the depot to serve passengers making
connections to destinations all over the eastern seaboard, and the term “Gate
City” was coined. Sawmills, foundries, and furniture factories were just some of the
industries that opened along the railroad tracks as Greensboro’s economy began
to flourish. Today Greensboro is still known as the Gate City and is a logistics hub
with a transportation network that rivals many larger cities.

Greensboro was a small town for most of the nineteenth century, but with the
rise of textile manufacturing near the end of the century, the population began to
grow dramatically. By 1920 Greensboro was a city of nearly 20,000 and the third
largest in the state, surpassing older cities such as Wilmington and Salisbury.

Economic Growth
Almost from the beginning, Greensboro’s economy was tied to cotton. The first
steam powered cotton mill in North Carolina opened in Greensboro in 1834.
In 1893, attracted to Greensboro by its advantageous rail service and low-cost
labor, the Cone brothers moved their Cone Export and Commission Company
from New York. In 1895, they opened Proximity Mill, named for its proximity to
the cotton fields. Revolution Mill opened in 1899 and became the world’s largest
flannel producer. White Oak, built between 1902 and 1905, was the largest cotton
mill in the south and produced more denim than any other mill in the world. In
the northeast part of the city, the Cones built hundreds of homes for their workers
in villages surrounding their mills.

By 1940, Greensboro was home to some of the world’s leading textile
manufacturers including Cone Mills, Burlington Mills, Blue Bell, and Mock Judson
Voehringer, and the city’s population had grown to 60,000. One of the city’s
largest hotels was named “King Cotton” and the Latham Park neighborhood was
named for a prominent cotton broker.

Tobacco also played a major role in the City’s economy. At one time there were
14 cigar makers, and it was second only to Tampa in cigar production. By the late
1900s, Greensboro was a major marketplace for tobacco grown throughout the
region. The Lorillard Tobacco Company built a massive cigarette plant east of
downtown and was the country’s oldest continuously operating tobacco company
until it was purchased by ITG Brands in 2014. Textiles and tobacco provided jobs
for thousands of Greensboro residents for most of the twentieth century. The
steep decline of textile manufacturing, and to a lesser extent tobacco, during the
last decades of the century disrupted and changed the local economy.

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