the Charlotte cotton compress

The Charlotte Cotton Compress

An 1897 Webb Compress Erected by Southern Railway

[This short article first appeared in the newsletter of Preservation North Carolina, and is just a stub for a more in-depth treatment of the Charlotte compress, which has now been re-erected at Denton FarmPark.]

During six blisteringly hot weeks of 1993 an unusual rescue operation took place in north Charlotte. One hundred thirty-five tons of nineteenth-century wood and cast iron were painstakingly disassembled, hoisted onto flatbeds, and trucked to Davidson County by the staff of the Denton Farm Park working with members of the Southeast Antique Machinery Society. The 1899 Charlotte Cotton Compress, an historically invaluable artifact of southern industry and industrialization had been in imminent danger of destruction by the expansion of Norfolk Southern Railway's North Brevard Street containerized freight terminal. By July 1995, the Charlotte Cotton Compress will be restored to operating condition as as the premier exhibit of the FarmPark's 25th anniversary season.

Months of exposure to the elements would have been disastrous to ordinary machinery, but not to this monstrous device. Amid the ruins of its warehouse, the thirty-five-foot tall, one hundred thirty-five ton press resembled nothing so much as an upended steam locomotive. Eighteen-inch thick timber legs held aloft a complicated scissor mechanism designed to squeeze a 500-pound bale of cotton down to approximately one-half its original size. Twenty-foot-long iron tie rods a foot in diameter steadied the upper platform, with ten-foot long tie-rods bracing a fifteen-foot tall steam cylinder. A massive quantity of steam injected into the cylinder forced a piston eight feet in diameter on a ten-foot upstroke, pulling the scissor legs up to pivot around huge cams. Counterweights then rolled up and over to maximize the force exerted on the cotton bale, squashed between a 46,000 pound cast iron platen and a 67,000 pound table.

Why go to all this trouble? It appears that compresses were children of the Civil War. Almost every rural cotton gin of that time had a press which would bale the processed cotton for wagon trips to the nearest rail station. These animal- or steam-powered screw presses produced standardized 500-pound bales of cotton, each approximately six feet long, four feet wide, and four feet thick. When the war began and the union blockade of southern ports took hold, blockade runners became the economic lifeline of the South. These swift, slim "greyhounds of the sea" possessed limited cargo capacity, yet economic necessity required that they ship every bale of cotton the hold and deck could carry.

It is claimed that Wilmington cotton merchant Alexander Sprunt invented the first steam-powered cotton compress with the idea of squeezing more and more cotton bales into the limited holds of blockade runners. Sprunt's son recalled that

"A steamer carrying 1,000 bales of cotton sometimes realized a profit of a quarter of a million dollars on the inward and outward run within two weeks. Cotton could be purchased in the Confederacy for three cents per pound in gold, and sold in England for the equivalent of forty-five cents to one dollar a pound... The Confederate States steamer R.E. Lee, under Captain Wilkinson, ran the blockade at Wilmington twenty-one times and carried abroad nearly seven thousand bales of cotton, worth at that time about two million dollars in gold."

Wilmington's wartime compress was located across the Cape Fear River at the Confederate docks on Eagle Island (the present site of the U.S.S. North Carolina). A fire during the night of April 29, 1864 ravaged the docks, with property losses "of about $4,800,000, but this does not include the injury to a quarter of a mile of warfing, mainly ruined, nor the loss of the sheds and buildings belonging to the Confederate Government,...nor the injury to the cotton-press.... We are happy, indeed, to learn that the cotton-press itself is expected to be in operation again in a short time."

What worked in the hold of a ship could also work in the box of a railroad car. After the war compresses began to appear not only in southern port cities, but in the major inland railway crossroads. Even Alexander Sprunt built his new "Champion" compress, not on Eagle Island, but at the "Cotton Exchange" complex near the Seaboard Coastline rail terminal. As Charlotte built its first compress in the early 1870s, similar devices were appearing all over the South: Charleston and Columbia, Savannah and Atlanta, Mobile and Birmingham. As smaller, equally powerful hydraulic presses came into service after World War II, the old steam compresses were demolished. By 1993 the neglected Charlotte Compress was the last one known outside Mississippi, Lousiana and Texas.

Urban historian Thomas Hanchett says that cotton compresses were "markers of urbanization...." This was certainly true in Charlotte, where the first compress was actually a public works project. In the early 1870s the city government undertook to build and operate a compress on a rail siding at the northwest corner of Third and A Streets (A Street, which no longer exists, ran north and south along the railroad tracks just east of Tryon Street.) "Superintendent of the Cotton Platform," "Cotton Weigher" and "Cotton Inspector" remained municipal officials until about 1920.

In 1892 a second compress is indicated on a Charlotte map, near the Highland Park Manufacturing Company on North A Street at the corner of 17th. Neither the builder, owner or operator of this second machine is presently lnown, although the 1897 city directory lists it as the "McFadden Compress." According to news reports, this machine was destroyed by fire in early 1899, and completely rebuilt during the summer of that year.

The builder of the new compress is not identified, nor does the machine itself bear any identifying makers marks. However, both the 1915 and 1920 city directories identify this as the "Southern Railway Cotton Compress," and its location directly across the tracks from the engine roundhouse argue for a connection between the Compress and Southern. It could possibly even have been built in one of the company's shops.

In 1920 it was purchased by the Charlotte Compress and Bonded Warehouse Company. From 1933 to 1958 it was owned and operated by Southeastern Compress and Warehouse Company of Atlanta (later known as Dixie Bonded Warehouses). It was the property of the Harper-Crawford Bag Company from 1958 until its repurchase by Norfolk-Southern for expansion of the freight yard.

Interested Charlotte residents brought the Compress to the attention of the staff of the Denton Farm Park in July, 1993, after efforts to preserve the machine on site or elsewhere in Charlotte had failed. The Southeast Antique Machinery Society, a non-profit corporation organized during the 1993 show, adopted the preservation of the compress as its first project. With the financial assistance of Cogentrix, a Charlotte-based energy company, the Society was able to purchase the Compress from the wrecking crew at its scrap metal value. Thereafter, as the remaining buildings on the site were demolished on all sides, the race was on to move the machine. Formerly known as the Southeast Old Thresher's Reunion, the Denton park hosts each July 4th week the largest gathering of antique agricultural and mechanical machinery enthusiasts in the eastern United States. It was decided to dissassemble and move the entire device to the park, where it will be reconstructed and exhibited in working condition.

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