Industrial Revolution

Downtown Sanford's fortunes improved with the establishment of the first of several large industries in 1882. That year, John W. Scott, Sr. and John Blackman Makepeace organized the Sanford Sash & Blind Company, considered the county's pioneer manufacturing enterprise. Located in the wedge of land between the Western and R&A lines south of the downtown, the factory produced "Dressed Lumber, Sash, Doors and Blinds, Mouldings, Brackets, Church Pews, etc." from the abundant yellow pine of the Sandhills. In 1888, the plant added a chair factory and a building supplies outlet store, and in 1889 it filled orders for clients in Virginia and Washington, D.C., as well as North Carolina.

Sanford Sash & Blind was followed by the Moffitt Brothers foundry and machine shops, established in 1888. The four Moffitt brothers, natives of Randolph County, initially comprised the entire workforce. At first housed in the former Buffalo Smoking Tobacco Factory in southern Sanford, the firm operated out of an extensive brick facility on Maple Avenue after 1900. In 1907, the Moffitt Iron Works employed fifty workers in the manufacture of sawmill saws, logging and lumber cars, manhole covers, and other iron castings. As employment opportunities at Sanford Sash & Blind, the Moffitt Iron Works, and other industries broadened, Sanford's population nearly doubled, growing from 236 in 1880 to 450 in 1890. More people meant more business, and the number of merchants listing Sanford as their address rose from five in 1883 to nine in 1884 and thirty-one in 1890.

Business optimism inspired the construction of more permanent buildings. In 1887-88, on South Moore Street, John W. Scott, Sr., built the town's first brick commercial block, a "mammoth town hall [with] three stores underneath". Housing starts accelerated during the late 1880s. Residential construction focused on Hawkins Avenue, which eclipsed Chatham Street as the town's most popular residential neighborhood during the decade. By 1888, the Moore Gazette, based in Carthage, the county seat, conceded that Sanford "promises to become the metropolis of the county." A year later, the upstart town no longer needed to rely on Carthage for its news: the St. Clair family - Addie, Cornelia, David, Donald, and P. H. established the Sanford Express (first known as the Central Express), which was published until the 1930s.

Sanford soon became the area’s largest and most prosperous town, the result of steady industrial growth during the 1880s and 1890s. Foremost among the town's new industries was the Sanford Cotton Mills. The sandy-soiled southeastern quadrant of Lee County recently cleared by lumbering activity had attracted cotton farmers from other regions of the state. To take advantage of this new agricultural crop, John W. Scott, Sr., and a group of investors, constructed a sprawling factory in 1899 along the Seaboard tracks several blocks north of the downtown. By 1908, the Sanford Cotton Mills operated 11,000 spindles and four hundred looms and produced 106,000 yards of Father George sheeting a week. Other brands produced at the mill included Pride of the Home, Sanford, and Waterfall. In 1925, the mill employed 175 operatives, a workforce that grew to 250 ten years later, when it was claimed that, the mill supported one-fifth of the population of Sanford. The Sanford Cotton Mills were described as the "magnet" that attracted other industries to Downtown Sanford during the first decades of the twentieth century.

Among Downtown Sanford's new industries was an enterprise with a surprisingly modern corporate structure. In 1907, employees of the Tyson Buggy Factory in Carthage incorporated the Sanford Buggy Company and planned the construction of a two-story factory at 115 Chatham Street. The Sanford Buggy Company was employee-owned and operated, unlike other industries of the period, where a wide gulf often separated owners and workers. The company manufactured buggies and one-horse rockaways, but as automobiles became more popular, its market withered away, and in the 1920s the factory was converted into an automobile showroom and garage.

Prominent builders and country carpenters alike were called upon to construct larger and more varied building types during the decades around 1900. Industrial growth in Sanford and Jonesboro demanded the construction of capacious factory buildings. The county's largest concentration of historic industrial buildings survives on the east side of the railroad tracks in downtown Sanford. The 1905 Moffitt Iron Works and the 1915 Seaboard Milling Company are representative of the district's substantial, multistory brick buildings, which feature corbelled parapets, segmental-arched door and window openings, and traces of billboard-sized painted signage.