Main Street

Main St., stretching today from Highway 29 to Landis, North Carolina (where it becomes named South Main St. in Landis), has long served as the central hub of Kannapolis, and thanks to revitalization efforts, it has the potential to become so again.

 When Cannon Mills began operation in 1908, the only railroad station was a small postal station in the community known as Glass. To deliver mail, trains would simply toss the bag of mail off the train at the little depot, not even bothering to stop.[1] With the construction of Cannon Mills, having a bustling commercial district along the railway was an important goal for the town. As a result, Main St., running parallel to the rail-line quickly grew into a popular commercial center with a Belk’s Department Store, a popular shop known as the Palace of Sweets, the Durham Meat Market, Hot Dog Lunch, City Barber Shop and many other privately owned shops opening service along Main St.

Throughout the history of Kannapolis, Main St. has served as the central gathering hub for community events. Fourth of July parades and Christmas parades were especially popular in Kannapolis, with photos showing crowds packing either side of Main Street to watch the parades, and eager viewers leaning out of business windows to look on.[2] Cannon Mills often sponsored the parades and organized marching bands to march in the parades under the name of the Cannon Mills Band. Having the mill be so involved in the parades was a practical choice for the village, as ensuring worker and resident’s happiness was vital to keeping the village operating smoothly, and thus the mill. Unhappy workers had a plethora of options to work at in the piedmont of North Carolina as Cabarrus and Mecklenburg counties both had numerous mills under various companies.[3]

In 1909, Main St. also served as part of a route for an automobile race that stretched from New York City to Atlanta. Kannapolis was small, the mill only having been in operation for a year, but due partly to the race, and the village’s proximity to the rail-line, Main St. was included in the original route for US Highway 29 from 1927 to 1935.[4] However, despite the designation, and Kannapolis’ status as a bustling mill town, the town lacked a large train station, a small depot blocks away from downtown served as the station for quite a while. Due to poor condition and unknown ownership, a new train station was built in 2004 on Main St. just feet away from the intersection of Main and 1st. [5] Today the station serves two different Amtrak routes as well as offering ample parking for the shops along Main St. With the redevelopment of West Ave. and the large luxury apartment complex due to open in 2021, Main Street looks poised to recapture its days of a bustling central thoroughfare through Kannapolis.

[1] Kannapolis: A Pictorial History, (Charlotte: Jostens, 2008), 5.

[2] Kannapolis: A Pictorial History, 79.

[3] Christopher B. Daly, Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, Mary Murphy Lu Ann Jones, and James Korstad, Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987), 108.

[4] Kannapolis: A Pictorial History, 23.

[5] “Kannapolis Station.” NCDOT Rail Division > Station Improvements > Kannapolis, 2002. https://web.archive.org/web/20021029180014/http://www.bytrain.org:80/istation/ikannapolis.html.