When the Allen Manufacturing Company chose Franklin, Tennessee, as the location of its cutting-edge new stove factory in the late 1920s, it represented a boon for a tiny farming town 20 miles south of Nashville. The company’s legacy today might be the Allen wrench, but back then, they were the top national manufacturer of wood-fired, enameled cast iron stoves, the envy of every homemaker.
Construction began on the 310,000 square-foot collection of brick buildings spanning 20 acres in October 1929, with significant local investment in stocks and bonds. That same month, however, the crash of the New York Stock Exchange touched off what would turn into a decade-long Great Depression.
The state-of-the-art facility employed about 150 people when it opened in the spring of 1930, producing its first Princess Range stove that summer. In a time when jobs were scarce, Allen played a critical role, employing about 300 at its peak and shipping out rail cars full of stoves and parlor furnaces each day for a couple of years. By 1932, though, Allen Manufacturing was bankrupt. A local man, O.L. Dortch, acquired the facility for pennies on the dollar, and Dortch Stove Works became a top producer of stoves in America for the next 20 years before the company merged with Magic Chef and started producing more modern stamped-steel, gas-powered stoves.
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Walk in to The Factory at Franklin today, and you can see signs of the evolution that has taken place over the past century. It became a mattress factory in the 1960s, which continued until that business was shuttered in 1991. It sat vacant for years and was nearly demolished before being saved by local preservationist Calvin LeHew, who started a renaissance that current owner Holladay Properties has taken to another level.
In the Grand Hall for instance, amidst the soaring Skylight Bar and a number of beloved restaurants and shops, light pours through the clerestory windows that would open to release heat from the molten metal parts rolling in on conveyors from the foundry. There are the concrete foundations that once supported massive molds and stamps for heavy metal stove components. Throughout the sprawling facility are the remnants of assembly lines, chain-driven works, the pipes and stacks and industrial elements of yesteryear. You can sense what it might have been like when 400 men and women were making dozens of stoves a day from raw iron, and packing rail cars outside to send to homes across the nation.
Holladay Properties Historian Carris Campbell earned a masters degree in sustainable cultural heritage with a thesis on the impacts of post-industrial reuse on the identity of Franklin, Tennessee — in other words, she understands The Factory and its significance as well as anyone alive today.
Her walking tour, Franklin and The Factory: Molding the 20th Century, is a deep dive into the 20-acre campus. As you weave in and out of the buildings, she reveals details and points out elements that bring the story alive. Take the Jamison Bedding era, for instance. Yes, they made mattresses, but then you visualize the amount of fresh-cut lumber arriving by train to be processed and kiln dried to their precise specifications. Or cars packed full with raw cotton that would ultimately become the stuffing and upholstery. She shows where and how those processes happened, in a way that makes you appreciate the incredible products that people and machines have been able to contribute to America through the decades.
But perhaps as important as its industrial heyday is what’s happening now, and how it was made possible by the foresight of local leaders willing to ensure that the old factory could survive long enough to be preserved. At one point in the late 1990s, The Factory was nearly imploded by a film crew for the movie Backdraft.
Today, it is a thriving ecosystem of dozens of shops, restaurants, galleries and maker spaces. It’s home to Studio Tenn and the Turner Theater, and plays host to numerous events and performances throughout the campus, inside and out. Campbell’s tour demonstrates what had to happen through the eras to arrive at the 2025 version of The Factory at Franklin—soon to include a boutique hotel as part of the larger Factory District within easy walking distance of downtown Franklin.
Whether you’re a local or a visitor, this tour will give you a deeper appreciation for Franklin’s place in American history, and an admiration for adaptive reuse of old buildings that could have so easily been replaced by a strip mall. Click here to schedule your visit.
