Main, Charles Thomas

MAIN, Charles Thomas (1856-1943), known primarily as an engineer and an expert in the design of cotton mills and factories in the United States and Canada. In 1916 he designed the extensive knitting factory complex for Mercury Mills Ltd., Cumberland Avenue at Gage Street South, HAMILTON, ONT. (C.R., xxx, 22 March 1916, 45). Begun in 1916, and costing $250,000, this large brick building was completed in 1917, and employed over 1,100 workers. An illustration of the building appeared in an advertisement in The Contract Record, xxxv, 14 Sept. 1921, 59, advert. The entire complex was demolished in 1983.
Main was born at Marblehead, Mass. on 16 February 1856 and graduated from the School of Engineering at M.I.T. in Boston in 1876. He trained as a draftsman in 1879-81, and later became engineering superintendent of the Lower Pacific Mills in Lawrence, Mass. He formed a partnership with Francis W. Dean in 1892, then started his own firm in 1907, becoming an acknowledged expert in mill building design and construction. By 1909 Main had expanded his Boston office and was offering services both as an engineer and architect (William T. Comstock, The Architects’ Directory for the United States & Canada, 1909, 65). Among the dozens of cotton mill buildings designed by Main are the Warrenton Woolen Mill at Torrington, Conn. (1908), and Building No. 1 of the Hilliard Woolen Mills at Manchester, Conn. (1925). Main died at Winchester, Mass. on 6 March 1943 (obit. New York Times [New York], 7 March 1943, 38; biog. Cyclopedia of American Biography, 1947, xxxiii, 190-91, with port.)