American Tobacco (redevelopment and factory)

The American Tobacco factory complex, remodeled into a multi-purpose campus in the 2000s, developed from 1874 until the 1950s [check]. During the Civil War, John Ruffin Green owned a smoking-tobacco "manufactory" and warehouse, with a log cabin for factory hands, on a large lot at the southwest corner of Pettigrew and present Carr streets.

After Green died in 1868, his partner W.T. Blackwell took over the company and its signature Bull Durham brand. Under Blackwell and his partners the company grew rapidly, building a new brick factory (now the Old Bull Building) at Green's original site. With the firm's success, the factory complex expanded south. In 1899, the Blackwell company was absorbed by James B. Duke's American Tobacco Co.. After the Supreme Court broke up Duke's company in 1911, the former Blackwell plant became property of a new American Tobacco Co.--one of five tobacco companies among which Duke's firm was spread in the anti-trust settlement.
Streets
Carr StreetBlackwell StreetJackie Robinson DrivePettigrew Street