Greensboro, NC

Historic Buildings / Industrial Legacy

• Revolution Cotton Mills
  A major textile mill complex built between ~1900 and mid-20th century.
  It's listed on the National Register and has been redeveloped into mixed use — offices, apartments, event/retail spaces — while keeping much of its industrial character.

• Carolina Cadillac Company Building
  Located at 304 E. Market St., this Mission Revival style commercial building dates to 1922.
  It has been known under several names (Adamson Cadillac, etc.), and is recognized for its historic architectural details.

• Carolina Theatre of Greensboro
  Opened in 1927 as “The Showplace of the Carolinas,” this theater is the city’s only remaining historic performance venue of that era.
  Its early years included segregated seating (black patrons relegated to balcony via separate entrance).
  It has been restored and repurposed with programming in arts, dance, film, and live performances.

The Sit-In Movement / International Civil Rights Center & Museum

• On February 1, 1960, four Black students from NC A&T initiated a sit-in at a “whites only” lunch counter in a Greensboro Woolworth store, refusing to leave when denied service. This became a landmark in the Civil Rights Movement.
  The site of that Woolworth building now houses the International Civil Rights Center & Museum, preserving the counter, related artifacts, and telling the broader story of the struggle for equality.

Greensboro’s Textile “Dollar”

In the early 1900s, Greensboro’s Cone Mills (then one of the largest denim producers in the world) issued its own company scrip, sometimes nicknamed the “Cone Dollar.”

• Workers were often paid partly in this local currency, which could be spent at company stores in the mill villages.

• While controversial (because it tied workers to mill-owned businesses), it also created a kind of “parallel economy” within Greensboro’s textile world.

• Denim from Cone Mills in Greensboro famously supplied Levi Strauss & Co. for over 100 years, making Greensboro a hidden cornerstone of American blue jeans history.