Circa 1830- Lenoir Cotton Mill Warehouse
The Lenoir Cotton Mill Warehouse was built around 1830.
Location: 150 Bussell Ferry Road, Lenoir City.
The website commons.wikimedia.org has a good picture of the Lenoir Cotton Mill Warehouse and says that it was built around 1830 as a storehouse for the Lenoir Cotton Mill a short distance away. In 2004, a company called Dover Development restored the warehouse and turned it into a private residence. Their website has a page about the history of the warehouse and about the restoration project. In December 2015, I was taking some pictures of the outside of the house, and the homeowners graciously invited my wife, my daughter and me to come have a look inside. They let me take some pictures of the downstairs inside, too. Unfortunately, the picture below with the stairs and the Christmas tree was out of focus, and I didn't realized it until after we had left. But since I probably won't have a chance to get that shot again, and because I wanted to show the support beam, I have included the picture.
The support beam runs the full length of the house, right down the middle, holding up the second floor. It is original to the warehouse. The marks where this log was hand-planed are still visible, and you would be able to see that if the picture was not out-of-focus. The homeowners told us that this support beam came from a species of pine tree that is now extinct! There are two t-shaped posts holding up the support beam. According to the homeowner, one of these posts is original to the warehouse (the one in the focused picture below, with the kitchen visible), and the other is a replica made exactly the same way when the warehouse was renovated into a home (visible in the out-of-focus picture). They also said that the floors are original, as well. The framed drawing below was on an easel inside the house. It shows the house back when it was used as the cotton warehouse for the Lenoir Cotton Mill. I don't know how old that drawing is, or what year it's supposed to represent. The homeowners just said that it was given to them by "someone at the historical society." I assume that they mean someone from the East Tennessee Historical Society, but they weren't that specific, so I'm not 100% sure.