The Gin Plex

Located on the West side of Autauga Creek the complex includes two structures surviving from the original antebellum establishment,and three others that were built between 1896 and around 1925. There are also other sites of buildings now destroyed. Sash, Door, and Blind Factory. This is the oldest surviving structure of the entire complex. It was built around 1848 and contains three stories over a full ground floor. Constructed of brick with corbeled cornices, the building is approximately 220 by 30 feet wide. The easternmost end-section is canted to follow the contour of the creek line and to accommodate a subterranean flume beneath the building. It has twelve-over-twelve wooden sashing throughout and has a gabled roof. The corbie-stepped parapet walls denote the five-bay first section of the structure, which was erected circa 1848; a fifteen-bay extension was added soon afterward. Still visible on the water side of the building is a pair of arched openings denoting the location of a 60 horsepower water-powered wheel which originally drove the machinery is this and the adjoining building. In 1857 the structure also housed a grist mill, machine shop and carriage and wagon factory. Daniel Pratt Cotton Gin Factory. Abutting SW end of 1848 building this structure is three stories and made of brick with drip-corbel cornices. It is L-shaped, approximately 250 by 50 feet overall, with roof terminated by hip at one end and gable at the other (abutting 1848 building). Ridge of the roof is surmounted at right-angle turn by square belfry with oval apertures. Sashing is twelve-over-twelve on the first and second floors and twelve-over-eight on the thrid floor. Brick jack rches are slightly sunken to receive thin plaster coat simulating ashlr lintel. Still surviving on the east wall are three raised wooden letters from the sign that once spelled out Daniel Pratt Gin Manufactury. Daniel Pratt Gin company (later addition). Built in 1898, this is the last major 19th-century building in the complex. The structure consists of three stories of pressed brick. It is rectangular in shape, twenty-five bays long with intervening piers and a gabled roof. The sashing is eight-over-eight. The east end of the edifice is distinguished by a doorway enclosed by a massive syrian arch with corbeled intrados. Legend DANIEL PRATT GIN CO. is worked out in raised terra cotta lettering above the door (see right photo above). Continental Gin company Warehouse. Completed in 1912 this building's four stories is rectangular in shape with seventeen bays. It has segmentally arched windows and a shallow gabled roof. The interior is essentially open with a double row of chamfered supports on each flor. This building was constructed on the site of the combination church and store erected in 1853 by Daniel Pratt (Sometimes referred to as the Upper Room, i.e, the Methodist Church.