We were driving in from the east side of Union and about a half mile out this tall brick tower was visible in front of us like it belonged to some giant university campus and for a second, we wondered if we had stumbled into a set of carillons or some kind of bell tower quad situation because they look way too formal and intentional to just be leftovers from an old mill. But that's exactly what they are. Before all of this emptiness, there was Monarch Mill, a full textile operation that opened in the early 1900s and ran for decades. One of those places where half the town either worked or had a relative who did, and the whole complex stretched across this site with long production floors, warehouses and a powerhouse humming away. Most of it came down in the mid 2000s when the buildings were too far gone to save and the cost to stabilize them was more than anyone wanted to take on. The main mill was demolished around 2006 or 2007 and what you see now are the two stair and elevator towers that were built so solid that they outlived everything attached to them. They stayed up partly because they were structurally sound and partly because removing them would have meant dealing with utilities and foundations that were more trouble than they were worth, and partly because once the rest of the mill was gone, these towers had already become landmarks in their own weird way. Up close, you can still see the ghost lines where the factory walls once connected. The brick has that worn industrial texture that tells you thousands of people passed through here over the decades. From the road, they look like something grand and academic. But standing underneath them, you realize that they are just the last two sentinels of a place that shaped Union for almost a century. Now they just sit here holding the memory of everything that used to surround them. The towers do look like something you could maybe walk into, like there might be a staircase spiraling up to a bell chamber or an observation deck. Once you get close, you see that every opening is bricked in or plated over and the doors are welded shut. There is no public access, no occasional open house and no historical society tours. Nothing like that. What you see from the road is what you get - visual landmarks only like two giant bookends with the books missing. There is no dedicated website, no interpretive sign, no QR code. There's nothing to tell you what you're looking at. [Review 483 of 2026 - 1412 in South Carolina - 25666 overall] read more

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