Community launches PRATT campaign to preserve Daniel Pratt Historic District

Autauga County Heritage Association unveiled a five-year capital campaign called The PRATT at a public launch reception held August 11, 2025, at The Mill at Prattville Clubhouse on the Mill Pond. Attendance exceeded 150 community and civic leaders, and ACHA leaders announced plans for a new museum and archival library, a STEM education center, and an event venue in downtown Prattville. ACHA Board President Don Edgeworth said, “The PRATT will be an entertaining and educational facility providing access to Prattville’s unique and exciting industrial history. It will serve to inspire all Alabamians by telling the unlikely story of how Alabama’s first industrial village was designed and built by a New England Yankee.”

The Daniel Pratt Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places on August 30, 1984, covers roughly 140 acres bounded by 6th Street to the north, Northington Street to the east, 1st Street to the south, and Bridge and Court streets to the west. Architectural styles in the district include Greek Revival, Italianate, and Bungalow, and the area spans about 15 blocks. Public records describe either 154 buildings in the 140-acre district or, in other inventories, more than 200 properties built between 1840 and 1930; the discrepancy in property counts remains unresolved in public descriptions.

The PRATT campaign frames those preservation ambitions around Daniel Pratt’s industrial legacy. Prattville was founded by Daniel Pratt in 1839 after he established a cotton gin factory along Autauga Creek in 1833. By the 1850s the Prattville Gin Factory was selling gins to international markets such as Great Britain and Russia, and local historian Ann Boutwell observed, “He was Alabama’s first large industrialist, and he is credited with bringing the industrial revolution from the North to the South. He influenced every aspect of our society and culture.”

Preservation efforts in Prattville have deep roots. The Pratt mansion’s demolition, recorded in sources as either 1960 or 1961, helped spur the Prattville Study Club and the founding of ACHA in 1974. Evelyn Striplin was elected ACHA’s first president in 1976 from among 309 charter members. The Prattaugan Museum and Heritage Center now occupies the McWilliams-Smith-Rice House, built in 1849, and houses archives including a twentieth-century newspaper collection, Civil War exhibits on the Prattville Dragoons, and a World War II exhibit documenting bomb production in the Gin Shop by local women.

Adaptive reuse and municipal revitalization are central to the campaign’s economic pitch. The Mill converted former gin factory buildings, originally built between 1848 and 1957, into luxury apartments while preserving industrial features such as exposed brick, wood beams, original tracks and wheels, and the freight elevator in the 1852 building. As Ashley Stoddart of Envolve Communities said of the conversion, “We also kept the industrial feel in the apartments, with exposed original tracks, wheels that powered the factory and the original freight elevator in the 1852 building.” The Historic Prattville Redevelopment Authority, created by the state legislature in 1988, has supported downtown revitalization through Heritage Park, seasonal planters, historical markers, and the recent purchase of the Daniel Pratt Cotton Gin Factory for preservation and adaptive reuse.

ACHA said it has visited “dozens of individuals, businesses, and organizations” for financial pledges and that “quite a few in our community remain to be visited,” according to outreach leaders Porter and Day. The PRATT’s five-year timetable will require private and civic funding; donors and organizations interested in pledges can contact ACHA Board President Don Edgeworth at 334.546.7461 or via email at director@autaugahistory.org.