American Enka Company Architectural Drawings, PC.7011

The American Enka Company Architectural Drawings consist of approximately 2,000 drawings of industrial buildings, mill village homes, the clubuouse, offices, and other associated structures.

The American Enka Company was established by the Dutch firm Nederlandse Kunstzijdefabrik - the Netherlands Artificial Silk Company. Fred Loring Seely, who had made Dutch connections after visiting the Indonesian island of Java, encouraged company executives to locate their American plant in western North Carolina. Seely, son-in-law and business associate of E. W. Grove, believed that the region needed industry, other than the burgeoning tourist trade, in order to prosper. He spent time in Holland touting western North Carolina's natural resources and availability of labor.

The plant, begun in 1928 and opened in July 1929, was built on a 2,000-acre site in the Hominy Valley west of Asheville. The location was adjacent to Southern Railroad's Murphy Branch - a rail line that connected Asheville with Murphy in the western-most tip of the state. It would become the largest rayon manufacturing center in the world. A nylon plant was built in the 1950s. By the 1970s, American Enka Company employed over 10,000 people in 10 factories around the country.

A centerpiece of the American Enka Company's operation was a brick clock tower with ENKA displayed prominently on each of its four sides. The name ENKA came from the Dutch company's (Nederlandse Kunstzijdefabrik) initials N and K - EN-KA phonetically in Dutch.

The company provided employees services such as a library, gym, bowling alley, and two cafeterias. The mill community was supported by a mill village that contained houses of varying sizes and ornamentation for executives, managers, and employees. A lake, church, hospital, post office, and community store were other village amenities.

Badische Corporation purchased American Enka in 1985. The merge created BASF Corporation Fibers Division. BASF sold the plant to Colbond, Inc. in 2000, and by 2007 it had ceased rayon production. In 2001, BASF donated 37 acres of land for an Enka campus of Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College. The following year, Biltmore Farms purchased a portion of the BASF property for a planned development, Biltmore Lake. Enka Intermediate School, which opened in 2016, features a clock tower similar to the factory clock tower and was constructed with 200 bricks from the original structure.

Collection Contents

American Enka Company

Textile factories

Mill Villages

Mill Houses

Architectural drawings

Donated by Colbond, Inc in 2016