Development in store for Spartanburg’s iconic Montgomery Building

[ ABOVE: Rendering provided by McMillan Pazdan Smith ]

One of Spartanburg’s most iconic buildings, the historic 10-story Montgomery Building on North Church Street, is poised to once again be the hub of activity in downtown Spartanburg.

Approximately 92 apartments are planned, with 9,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Commercial space will occupy the first two floors, and floors two through 10 will be residential, with one- and two-bedroom apartments ranging in size from 422 to 1,374 square feet.

Built in 1924 by the Montgomery Family, one of the leading families of textile entrepreneurs in the area, the building is considered to be the only remaining example its specific type of construction left in the state, according to Phillip Stone, an archivist and historian at Wofford College who serves on the city’s Board of Architectural Design and Historic Review.

When it opened, the Montgomery Building was the tallest building in Spartanburg, eclipsing the Andrews Building on Morgan Square by two stories. It held that distinction until the early 1950s, and was the city’s tallest commercial building until the late 1980s. (The two taller buildings were apartment buildings.)

One of the building’s first significant tenants was Lockwood Greene, the engineering company that built many of the area’s textile mills and designed the Montgomery Building. A number of local textile companies moved their offices into the new building, including the Pacolet Manufacturing Company, which was one of the Montgomery family’s companies. Local textile powerhouses Inman Mills, Arcadia Mills and the Deering-Milliken Mills all occupied space at some point in the Montgomery Building, as did the South Carolina Cotton Manufacturers Association.

In 1926, shortly after it opened, its tenants also included physicians, attorneys, real estate agents and a number of life insurance companies.

Even in the mid-1960s, the building remained relatively full, with the same complement of insurance agents, physicians, dentists and real estate agents. Many of the city’s leading attorneys (one of whom was the mayor in that decade) had their offices in the building.

By the 1970s, the city saw a growing number of vacant buildings and storefronts around downtown. The Montgomery Building suffered to some extent along with downtown. The building’s Carolina Theater, which took up much of the lower floors, closed.

By 1980, the building still had a few loyal tenants. A sandwich shop, barbershop and a few random offices occupied the ground floor, along with WFBC TV Channel 4, the Greenville NBC affiliate, which had moved its Spartanburg office into the building. By 1992, much of the building was vacant, with offices clustered on the first, fourth and fifth floors. Channel 4 remained on the ground floor, and The Paper, a local weekly newspaper, had offices on the 5th floor.

As late as the early 2000s, the Palmetto Conservation Foundation and the Hub City Writers Project had space in the building.

The Montgomery Building remains the third tallest downtown. Renovations are expected to begin third quarter 2016 and be completed second or third quarter 2018.

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