As green as it gets: trees don't make it like they used to, so this new business recycles old wood, turning factory floors into fine furniture.

• Author: Martin, Edward
• Position: PICTURE THIS

Noise and cotton lint filled the air, but beauty lay beneath workers' feet when Corriher Mill opened in Landis in 1913. The floors bore the striped fiddleback grain that develops only in old-growth maples bent and strained by the wind. Most such trees are gone now, but some of the wood is being given new life by Turning House Millworks LLC here and its sister company, Turning House Furniture LLC in Bassett, Va.

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Founder and CEO Spencer Morten III calls his companies "the ultimate environmental success story." They transform wood from doomed old mills, warehouses and similar buildings into $2,000 tables, $3,000 bookcases and other pieces sold through Neiman Marcus Direct, the Internet arm of the Dallas-based luxury retailer.

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Morten, whose great-grandfather founded Bassett Furniture Co., launched the companies in January. They use buildings 75 to 150 years old, though the wood often was several hundred years old when cut. "We think there are 1,300 buildings along the Eastern Seaboard that have no historic value but provide a treasure trove of wood--black gum, black walnut, species that haven't been seen for a long time," spokeswoman Anne Ware says.

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The Turning House Millworks sawmill, which employs 15, is...