The facility has a complex structural history and some 30 buildings, including those planned by the Kahn firm. Originally the A. M. Johnson Rayon Mills (1928), the old rayon manufacturing facility was acquired for military production in February, 1942, and was upgraded and expanded by Kahn’s firm to manufacture airplanes for the United States war effort. It served that purpose from May 1943 through September 1944 and then to manufacture ordnance until 1945. The 1942-1943 Fairchild Engine buildings retain original elements representative of Kahn’s work. One of them retains its sawtooth roof monitors and structural steel trusses, and others feature other exposed structural steel elements. After the war, the complex was further expanded and upgraded to serve Western Electric. For details see Heather Fearnbach, Western Electric Company-Tarheel Army Missile Plant National Register of Historic Places nomination, 2015.