From Spinning Room to Living Room: The History of Drayton Mills
Every loft at Drayton Mills has a story older than the people who live in it. The maple floor under your kitchen island carried spinning frames. The window that lights your living room was sized to light a work floor. This is a short history of the building, and of why it was restored instead of replaced.
1902: Spartanburg’s cotton boom
Drayton Mills began in 1902, one of the many textile mills that made Spartanburg County a center of the Southern cotton industry. The three-story brick spinning mill went up first. A cotton warehouse followed in 1918, the Tudor Revival company store and office in 1919, and the two-story weaving building in 1928. The Spinning and Weaving buildings still carry those names, and so do our community rooms. The mill pond and the twin water towers were working infrastructure. Today the towers are the landmark residents give visitors to find the campus.
Nearly a century of thread
For generations the mill ran spinning and weaving operations through booms, the Depression, two world wars and the post-war textile peak. Like most Upstate mills, Drayton eventually went quiet. It closed in 1994 and sat vacant for two decades.
Protected, then restored
In October 2012 the Drayton Mill complex was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Beginning in 2014, TMS Development led a certified historic rehabilitation of the campus. That meant preserving the building rather than covering it up: original maple floors sanded and sealed, heart-pine timber and brick left exposed, 17-foot ceilings kept open, and the oversized mill windows restored to National Park Service standards.
Because the original column grid and window bays decided where walls could go, the result was 289 residences in 68 unique floor plans, with no two lofts alike. The former warehouses and company store became the Drayton Mills Marketplace, which brought restaurants, fitness, healthcare and an event venue back to the campus.
A nationally awarded restoration
The work has been recognized at every level:
- National: Novogradac Historic Rehabilitation Award, Non-Residential Major Community Impact (2017), for the Drayton Mills Marketplace.
- State: the 2018 Governor’s Honor Award for historic preservation, presented by Gov. Henry McMaster with the S.C. Department of Archives and History and Preservation South Carolina.
- Federal efficiency: ENERGY STAR® certification. The century-old mill performs in the top 25% of comparable buildings nationwide.
- Local: Spartanburg voters named Drayton Mills the Best Apartment Complex in the Herald-Journal’s Best of the Best every year from 2017 through 2024, and again in the 2026 Community’s Choice Awards. That is nine wins.
Living in it
The best part of the story is that it isn’t a museum. People cook dinner under the timber, run The Dan from their front door, and swim laps in the 60-foot pool beneath the water towers. Read more on our history page, then come see it. You can be a part of history, literally.