In 1915, Li Ziyun, a former opium merchant who turned to industry after donating one hundred thousand silver dollars to the 1911 Wuchang Uprising, co-founded the Hankow No. 1 Spinning Co., Ltd. alongside shareholders Cheng Dongchen and Cheng Folan. Located at No. 76 Linjiang Avenue in Wuchang, this administrative headquarters managed the largest Chinese-owned textile mill in Central China.

The building is a physical map of regional trade. British architects Liddell & Co. designed the structure, while local builders Hankow Yee Sang and Yongmaolong assembled it. Workers laid rough red bricks from Honghu's Wu Xing He factory, secured cold steel from the Hanyang Iron Works, and raised heavy timber floated down the Yangtze River from Changde. The Western Renaissance facade features a two-story open veranda supported by classical Ionic columns, topped by a multi-tiered Gothic and New Baroque clock tower.

Human stories are etched into the architecture. Li Ziyun, believing in traditional feng shui, aligned the building to face the mouth of the Han River to draw in wealth.He established a tradition of giving female workers three feet of red cloth upon childbirth, a practice that survived for decades. During the Japanese occupation, workers quietly resisted by leaving machine bushings unlubricated, causing the equipment to burn out from friction. They also kept supervisors out of the warehouses by fabricating stories of a yellow weasel spirit.

The mill underwent joint state-private ownership in 1951. Chairman Mao Zedong walked these floors during an inspection on September 11, 1958. In 1970, the state renamed the facility the Wuhan No. 6 Cotton Mill. Following bankruptcy in 1999, developers demolished most of the factory complex for residential housing. They preserved the historic office building and clock tower.

In 2005, lightning struck the tower, silencing the clock. Ten years later, a restoration project installed a customized electronic clock system, returning the hourly chimes to the riverfront. Today, the building houses the BigHouse Contemporary Art Center, hosting exhibitions and design events. The structure stands as a quiet observer of Wuhan's transition from heavy industry to contemporary culture.