History of the Cotton Mill in Starkville
(article for Elevation, the journal of the Mississippi Heritage Trust)
In 1965, my grandfather Will Rogers, Jr., who was director of Mississippi State University’s Physical Plant Department from 1946 to 1975, helped save Starkville’s historic cotton mill and supervised the renovation of the building to house his department there. Although he was not the son of the famous humorist of the same name, he did jokingly refer to himself as MSU’s professor of commodes and lavatories.
The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975 and continued to serve as headquarters for campus maintenance until 2012. It has had a close association with the university since it opened in 1902 as the John M. Stone Cotton Mill, named for the longest serving governor in Mississippi history. After he left office in 1896, Governor Stone was named president of Mississippi Agricultural and Mechanical College, which had been established in Starkville during his first administration in 1878. The former governor persuaded the legislature to build a Textile School in 1900 on campus to support the growing number of mills across the state.
The history of the cotton mill is intertwined with the history of the Textile School. Today’s Industrial Education Building at MSU, also known as the “Twin Towers Building,” was built in 1900 to house the Textile School. It is the oldest building on campus.
The close proximity of this school with modern textile technology prompted the construction in 1902 of the cotton mill, the first large industry in Starkville. The mill was built as a prototype of rural industrialization to process locally grown cotton. Further cementing the relationship with the college, the first director of the Textile School, Arthur Whittam, resigned his position there to become president of the John M. Stone Cotton Mill. The mill’s founding board of directors included J.C. Hardy and R.C. King, the college’s president and secretary, respectively. (Governor Stone had died in 1900).
The Textile School experienced hard times and closed in 1914, but the cotton mill itself flourished after it was bought by James Sanders in 1916. According to Narvell Strickland in “A History of Mississippi Cotton Mills and Mill Villages,” Sanders renamed the building the J. W. Sanders Cotton Mill and changed the operation to the production of chambray in a variety of colors. The mill’s annual production of “Starkville Chambray,” as it became known, reached one and a half million yards, one of the largest providers in the United States. The fabric was produced in fourteen colors and shipped around the world to make dresses and shirts.
After the death of his father in 1937, Robert Sanders took Sanders Industries, the company that oversaw the Starkville mill and others, to new heights. He launched a publicity campaign called “What Mississippi Makes, Makes Mississippi.” The mill began producing clothing and assorted items made from the Starkville Chambray. World War II brought an economic boom. At the end of the war, the cotton mill was producing 160,000 yards of fabric per week, running twenty-four hours a day on three eight-hour shifts. The mill had become an economic hub with its own community of houses surrounding the area, complete with a church, hospital, school, grocery, and even a fire station in the tower.
When Robert Sanders died in 1954, Sanders Industries sold the Starkville mill. The new owners struggled to keep the mill open, and it closed in 1962. Three years later, my grandfather, whose office was ironically in the Twin Towers Building that had originally housed the Textile School, helped persuade MSU to purchase and renovate the cotton mill for the expanding Physical Plant Department. The university renamed it the E.E. Cooley Building for a superintendent of utilities who had served for forty-six years.
This transition from abandoned cotton mill to university maintenance department was considered at the time an outstanding example of creative preservation through adaptive use. The same could be said for the renovation in 2015 as the building entered its third life as a first-class conference center. Fittingly, the close relationship between the building and the university still remains, and somewhere I think my grandfather is smiling.
Brother Rogers is associate director of the John C. Stennis Center for Public Service in Starkville.
The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975 and continued to serve as headquarters for campus maintenance until 2012. It has had a close association with the university since it opened in 1902 as the John M. Stone Cotton Mill, named for the longest serving governor in Mississippi history. After he left office in 1896, Governor Stone was named president of Mississippi Agricultural and Mechanical College, which had been established in Starkville during his first administration in 1878. The former governor persuaded the legislature to build a Textile School in 1900 on campus to support the growing number of mills across the state.
The history of the cotton mill is intertwined with the history of the Textile School. Today’s Industrial Education Building at MSU, also known as the “Twin Towers Building,” was built in 1900 to house the Textile School. It is the oldest building on campus.
The close proximity of this school with modern textile technology prompted the construction in 1902 of the cotton mill, the first large industry in Starkville. The mill was built as a prototype of rural industrialization to process locally grown cotton. Further cementing the relationship with the college, the first director of the Textile School, Arthur Whittam, resigned his position there to become president of the John M. Stone Cotton Mill. The mill’s founding board of directors included J.C. Hardy and R.C. King, the college’s president and secretary, respectively. (Governor Stone had died in 1900).
The Textile School experienced hard times and closed in 1914, but the cotton mill itself flourished after it was bought by James Sanders in 1916. According to Narvell Strickland in “A History of Mississippi Cotton Mills and Mill Villages,” Sanders renamed the building the J. W. Sanders Cotton Mill and changed the operation to the production of chambray in a variety of colors. The mill’s annual production of “Starkville Chambray,” as it became known, reached one and a half million yards, one of the largest providers in the United States. The fabric was produced in fourteen colors and shipped around the world to make dresses and shirts.
After the death of his father in 1937, Robert Sanders took Sanders Industries, the company that oversaw the Starkville mill and others, to new heights. He launched a publicity campaign called “What Mississippi Makes, Makes Mississippi.” The mill began producing clothing and assorted items made from the Starkville Chambray. World War II brought an economic boom. At the end of the war, the cotton mill was producing 160,000 yards of fabric per week, running twenty-four hours a day on three eight-hour shifts. The mill had become an economic hub with its own community of houses surrounding the area, complete with a church, hospital, school, grocery, and even a fire station in the tower.
When Robert Sanders died in 1954, Sanders Industries sold the Starkville mill. The new owners struggled to keep the mill open, and it closed in 1962. Three years later, my grandfather, whose office was ironically in the Twin Towers Building that had originally housed the Textile School, helped persuade MSU to purchase and renovate the cotton mill for the expanding Physical Plant Department. The university renamed it the E.E. Cooley Building for a superintendent of utilities who had served for forty-six years.
This transition from abandoned cotton mill to university maintenance department was considered at the time an outstanding example of creative preservation through adaptive use. The same could be said for the renovation in 2015 as the building entered its third life as a first-class conference center. Fittingly, the close relationship between the building and the university still remains, and somewhere I think my grandfather is smiling.
Brother Rogers is associate director of the John C. Stennis Center for Public Service in Starkville.