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Sunday, October 18, 2026
Charlotte, NC
Fourth Ward Charlotte
Venue

Camden Cotton Mills

Residential building in the Fourth Ward neighborhood of Charlotte, NC. See linked profile page for full details.

Apartments beside Charlotte's first cotton mill

Camden Cotton Mills is an apartment building at 520 West 5th Street, built in 2002 beside the surviving buildings of Charlotte's first cotton mill. The two 19th-century mill buildings, at 500 and 508 West 5th Street, are county historic landmarks and are office condominiums today.

The building at a glance

Address. 520 West 5th Street, Charlotte, NC 28202. Phone. (704) 850-9648. Leasing hours. Monday–Friday 9 a.m.–6 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m.–5 p.m., Sunday 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Unit types. Studio through 2-bedroom, 1–2 baths. Operator. Camden Property Trust (publicly-traded residential REIT).

Unit features (per Camden's property description)

Floor-to-ceiling windows with skyline views, gourmet kitchens with stainless steel appliances and quartz countertops, industrial finishes, and full-size in-unit washers and dryers.

Amenities

A rooftop terrace with saltwater pool and grilling stations, a community room with full kitchen, a community workspace with Wi-Fi, and a 24-hour fitness center with cardio and free-weight equipment.

The mill next door

The apartments take their name from Charlotte's first cotton mill, founded in 1880 under the name Alpha Cotton Mills by R. M. and D. W. Oates. Limited operations began in December 1880, and by March 1881 the mill had 5,800 of its planned 6,240 spindles running. The owners changed the name to Charlotte Cotton Mills in 1881; incorporation under that name followed in 1883, per the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission record. The original mill complex occupied more than a full city block. Only two nineteenth-century buildings survive, at 500 and 508 West 5th Street. Both are office condominiums today.

The mill's opening marked Charlotte's entry into the Piedmont textile industry. Before Charlotte Cotton Mills operated, cotton grown in Mecklenburg County was shipped north to be spun and woven. The original workforce of about seventy people, mostly women, cleaned, spun, and wove cotton thread into cloth on site. The Charlotte Mecklenburg Story historical archive documents the operation as the founding moment of what would become the city's dominant late-nineteenth-century industry.

Context

The two surviving cotton-mill buildings are a rare physical link between the late-nineteenth-century textile economy that gave Charlotte its first industrial identity and the early-twenty-first-century Uptown residential boom that made Fourth Ward into its current mix. A resident at Camden Cotton Mills lives next door to the buildings where about seventy people, mostly women, made cloth in 1881.

Sources

  • Camden Cotton Mills listings on Apartments.com, Zumper, Zillow, and Trulia, retrieved April 24, 2026. These listings are the source for the current features and amenities.
  • Charlotte Mecklenburg Story (Charlotte Mecklenburg Library), 1880: First Cotton Mill. Archived copy. The library has retired the CMStory site.
  • Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission, Charlotte Cotton Mills designation record, as summarized in published references. The Alpha Cotton Mills origin name, the Oates family ownership, and the 1883 incorporation come from this record.
  • Mecklenburg County property records, 520 W. 5th St. (2002) and the 500 West Fifth Street and Historic Oates Building condominiums. Read October 3, 2026.
  • Mecklenburg County Historic Landmarks, Charlotte Cotton Mill, hl.mecknc.gov. Read October 3, 2026.