During the heyday of Dan River Mills, the textile company that was once Danville’s economic engine, employees clocked out of their shifts at the massive White Mill factory and embarked on the short commute home, just across Memorial Drive.
Their neighbors were other mill employees — mechanics, electricians and laborers — as well as teachers, tradesmen and tobacco industry workers. It was an ethnically diverse, working class, residential area of the city that was called Mechanicsville in the late 1800s.
The neighborhood’s history predates Dan River Mills, which opened in 1882, said local historian Jonathan Hackworth, and the area evolved over time to become the first official mill village for the factory’s employees.
Though the textile giant is gone, the Mechanicsville neighborhood remains. And unlike the adjacent River District, which has seen significant investment and revitalization in the past decade, Mechanicsville hasn’t received much attention over the years.
“You can tell just by looking at downtown, the cutoff [for revitalization efforts] was right at Union Street,” said Samantha Bagbey, economic development project manager for the city.
But there is now a master plan to expand the River District’s revitalization success to Mechanicsville. The goal is to see the River District’s success ripple outward to adjacent neighborhoods, like Mechanicsville and North Danville across the Dan River.
“It’s kind of a Phase 2 of the River District work,” Bagbey said.
Plan Mechanicsville began in late 2024 and is now nearly complete. Community feedback informed the plan, shaping a vision for Mechanicsville’s revitalization.
That vision includes improving walkability, adding affordable housing and celebrating the neighborhood’s rich history — especially landmarks like High Street Baptist Church, which was the primary meeting place for protesters during Danville’s 1963 civil rights movement and was visited by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The plan identifies specific historic buildings that could be renovated, areas that are suitable for housing and potential roles in this process for the private and public sectors.
Bagbey said she hopes the work will increase civic pride among residents, spread the wealth of the River District’s success and balance growth with history.
“I’ve heard so many times that, ‘We’re so close to the River District, but we don’t look like the River District,’” she said. “I hope a key point of success is that people feel like they’re part of things and feel like they’re being heard.”
Mechanicsville then and now
The oldest mention of the name “Mechanicsville” that the historian Hackworth has found was in a newspaper article in 1879, he said.
Before that, in the late 1700s and early 1800s, the area was open field and wooded areas, Hackworth said. Though it might not have been called Mechanicsville yet, it was home to staging areas and encampments during the construction of the Dan River Canal. That’s where many of the enslaved people who built the canal would’ve been “kept and worked and watched,” he said.
During the Civil War, there were fortifications along what later became Union Street, Hackworth said.
“After the Civil War, some housing was popping up, and a lot of it probably would’ve been African American housing developments,” he said. “But it didn’t last an extended period of time, because in the 1880s, all the textile mills were developed.”
Morotock Manufacturing Co., a former textile mill that is now being rehabilitated into an apartment building, built housing in Mechanicsville for its workers, and it became the first mill village in the city, he said.
“As with Riverside Cotton Mills further down river, most of your housing went to white workers,” Hackworth said. “The backside of the hill became a lot of your African American housing units.”
Like a traditional mill village, it had support services like a barbershop, saloons and workman’s clothing stores.
“What’s interesting about Mechanicsville is, for a short time we actually had a multicultural district there,” Hackworth said. “For Riverside Cotton Mills, there wasn’t anybody locally or regionally that could deal with concrete the way they needed to, so they brought 200 workers from Italy and plopped them into Mechanicsville.”
Perhaps not surprisingly, the Italian workers weren’t fond of Danville’s cuisine.
“They hated the food, and they talked about it endlessly in the newspapers during the time,” Hackworth said. “The mill found people that could cook the food they wanted, and they built canteens around the property. So for a time around 1920, we had a Little Italy of sorts.”
Around that same time, the city annexed the Mechanicsville neighborhood, Hackworth said.
When the 1960s rolled around, High Street Baptist Church became the central meeting point for protesters in the city’s civil rights movement. King visited Danville four times during the summer of 1963 and spoke at the church on several occasions.
As the mills struggled in the late 20th century, the city’s urban core began to decline, according to the master plan.
Today, the city has outlined a perimeter of the neighborhood for its revitalization effort that spans about 40 acres, roughly eight city blocks. The borders of the area are Poplar Street, Memorial Drive, High Street and Ridge Street, with Floyd Street running through the middle.
Plan Mechanicsville priorities
Part of the goal for revitalizing Mechanicsville is to preserve the area’s history through building rehabilitation and signage, Bagbey said. Historic importance emerged as a strong priority for residents during the city’s community engagement sessions, she said.
Some of these efforts are already underway, with the adaptive reuse project at the Morotock building and a historic marker recognizing the Hippodrome Theatre, the city’s first built specifically for Black audiences. The marker, which Hackworth applied for, was installed in August.
Much of the neighborhood is already encompassed by a designated historic district, and residents want to see a continued “awareness of Mechanicsville’s economic and cultural contributions” by preserving historic buildings and protecting culturally significant sites, the master plan states.
The master plan mentions the Ritz Theater, which was the city’s second theater specifically for Black audiences, preceded only by the Hippodrome, Hackworth said.
The building is currently privately owned and is being used for storage, according to the master plan. The plan lays out potential future uses for the building, including a community theater, a cultural arts venue or a combination theater and museum.
Aside from historic preservation, another priority that rose to the top through community engagement was smart and sustainable growth, Bagbey said.
“The residents wanted to make sure that the growth respected their boundaries. The last thing anyone wants to do is come in and make people feel like they’re being kicked out,” she said. “We’re ensuring that whatever development happens over there is keeping the current residents in mind.”
Bagbey said this can be tricky when you’re talking about building new housing — which Mechanicsville needs, since the newest housing in the area was built in the 1930s.
“There’s not a lot of good inventory over there, just due to age,” Bagbey said. “New housing is definitely needed, and our housing department is fantastic in helping developers figure out how to do that, keeping the residents in mind.”
There could be programming put in place to help current residents upfit their housing or to help developers lower costs to be able to build affordable housing, she said. The goal is to avoid pushing people out of the area, Bagbey said.
A third priority is improving walkability and pedestrian safety in Mechanicsville. Though it’s so close to downtown, residents who participated in the community engagement sessions said it feels much safer to walk through the River District than in Mechanicsville, Bagbey said.
Right now, there are gaps between sidewalks that need to be connected and many intersections without crosswalks. The master plan recommends closing those gaps, creating more crosswalks and adding street lights and safer walking areas for recreation, like green spaces.
What’s next?
The draft master plan is now complete and waiting for approval from the city, Bagbey said. Once it’s approved, its framework and recommendations will be official.
Still, there’s no concrete timeline for “finishing” revitalization in Mechanicsville, and because of that, no exact financial goal for the work.
Like the plan that was implemented in the River District about 15 years ago, Plan Mechanicsville will be “an ever-evolving, ever continuing project,” Bagbey said.
“Master plans are beautiful because they’re a guideline, but we’re also shooting for the moon,” she said. “We’re highlighting the best and highest use for these spaces and moving from there.”
The plan includes recommendations for where public and private sector investors, developers and other stakeholders can play a part. But it’s incumbent on those people to participate, she said.
“There are some places that are owned by private people, and if they don’t want to do anything with it, it’s not going to happen,” Bagbey said.
Still, excitement for the work is building in the city, especially among the more than 300 residents who participated in community feedback, she said.
