Construction began on this Lancaster building in 1865 for use as a saw, bark, spoke, and bending mill, and it changed hands and functions repeatedly over the following century. The Lancaster Cork Company started producing cork stoppers and bottle liners here in 1875, and Thomas Armstrong, an Irish immigrant’s son who’d started out hand-carving cork stoppers himself, bought the company in 1895 and folded it into what became Armstrong Cork Company, later Armstrong World Industries.
By 1929 the company had consolidated its cork operations here, making Lancaster what was then called the cork capital of the world, producing everything from shoe soles to bottle caps. Kerr Glass Manufacturing took over the site in the 1960s to make glass bottles and caps. The Baldwin family bought the complex in 2004 and converted it into a mixed-use development, opening Cork Factory Hotel in 2009 alongside apartments and a restaurant.