"We make it our business to procure suitable boarding houses"

Between 1900 and 1930, the population of Winchester more than doubled as the result of the town's industrial growth. The Virginia Woolen Company and Lewis Jones Knitting Mill made it their practice to ensure board for their employees near the mills.
In 1900, East Piccadilly Street ended at the Old Stone Church (304 East Piccadilly), and National Avenue was farmland. East of the church was a vacant ten acre lot prime for development. Fred L. Glaize, Sr., director of the Virginia Woolen Company, purchased the lot from the Jacob Baker estate in 1903, subdividing it into 49 residential parcels and one large lumber yard.
The Jacob Baker and Virginia City tracts are a time capsule of early twentieth-century housing styles, including late Folk Victorian homes along National Avenue, boxy American Foursquares on East Piccadilly Street, and modest Colonial Revival single family and townhouses in Virginia City. Nearly all of these homes contained at least one person who worked at the textile mills.
In September 1919 the Virginia Woolen Company purchased a second ten acre tract east of the National Cemetery from Dr. George Heist. The board was to "work out a plan by which our employees may be assisted in the purchase of lots off of this larger lot and the building of houses thereon, to the end that our labor supply
may be maintained contented and sufficient." This development, known as "Virginia City," consisted of 54 lots with a central elliptical park.
(captions)
Lewis Jones Mill advertising company willingness to find housing for workers. Shenandoah Herald newspaper, 1901.
American Foursquare at 380 E. Piccadilly, 1942 (Former home of Woolen Mill employee Ed Johnston), Courtesy of Stewart Bell, Jr. Archives, Handley Regional Library, Winchester, VA
Adapted from map by Wilbur S. Johnston in Weaving a Common Thread

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