Ford Piquette Avenue Plant

The Ford Piquette Avenue Plant is a former factory located within the Milwaukee Junction area of Detroit, Michigan, in the United States. Built in 1904, it was the second center of automobile production for the Ford Motor Company, after the Ford Mack Avenue Plant. At the Piquette Avenue Plant, the company created and first produced the Ford Model T, the car credited with initiating the mass use of automobiles in the United States. Prior to the Model T, several other car models were assembled at the factory. Early experiments using a moving assembly line to make cars were also conducted there. It was also the first factory where more than 100 cars were assembled in one day. While it was headquartered at the Piquette Avenue Plant, Ford Motor Company became the biggest U.S.-based automaker, and it would remain so until the mid-1920s. The factory was used by the company until 1910, when its car production activity was relocated to the new, bigger Highland Park Ford Plant.

Studebaker bought the factory in 1911, using it to assemble cars until 1933. The building was sold in 1936, going through a series of owners for the rest of the 20th century before becoming a museum in 2001. The Piquette Avenue Plant is the oldest purpose-built automotive factory building open to the public. The museum, which was visited by over 31,000 people in 2018, has exhibits that primarily focus on the beginning of the United States automotive industry. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2002, became a Michigan State Historic Site in 2003, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2006.

History

Ford period

Henry Ford, Detroit coal merchant Alexander Y. Malcomson, and a group of investors formed the Ford Motor Company on June 16, 1903, to assemble automobiles. The company's first car model, the original Ford Model A, began to be assembled that same month at the Ford Mack Avenue Plant, a rented wagon manufacturing shop in Detroit, Michigan. The company quickly outgrew this facility and, on April 10, 1904, bought a parcel of land off of Piquette Avenue in Detroit to accommodate a larger factory. The land was located in the Milwaukee Junction area, whose name is derived from a railroad junction within it. The Ford Piquette Avenue Plant's construction started on May 10, 1904. The company moved into its new factory the following October.

The Detroit-based architectural firm Field, Hinchman & Smith designed the Piquette Avenue Plant. It is an example of late Victorian-style architecture and was modeled after New England textile mills. Designing factories based on this type of mill was common practice in the United States at the time. The building is three stories high, wide, and long. Its load-bearing exterior brick walls contain 355 windows, and its maple floors, supported by square oak beams and posts, cover . The Piquette Avenue Plant contains two elevator-stairwell combinations, one located on its northwest corner and the other located on its southwest side. Recalling a fire in March 1901 that destroyed the Olds Motor Works factory in Detroit, Henry Ford and the architects included a fire sprinkler system in the building's design, a rare feature for industrial buildings of the period. This and several other original safety features in the factory, such as its firewalls, fire doors, and fire escapes, are still present. Water for the sprinkler system was supplied by a wooden water tank located on the building's roof. A brick powerhouse, measuring wide by long, was the original electricity provider for the factory, and was located near its northwest corner. The water tank and powerhouse no longer exist.

From October 1904 to the end of 1909, Ford Motor Company assembled car models B, C, F, K, N, R, S, and T at the Piquette Avenue Plant. Ford models B and C were the first car models produced at the factory starting in late 1904, and production of the Ford Model F began the following February. The vast majority of factory tasks were done by men, except for magneto assembly, which was done by women. Hand tools were used for the assembly work at fixed stations, and the completed components would be brought by hand to the chassis for final assembly. Completed cars were shipped to the company's distributors and dealers by rail using a spur line behind the building, which connected to a Michigan Central Railroad main line. Due to variations in demand and car model changeover, the number of employees varied constantly, ranging from as low as 300 to as high as 700. The company did not recognize labor unions at the factory. Ford Motor Company was a member of the Employers’ Association of Detroit, an organization that prevented most of the city's factories from unionizing until the 1930s.

In 1905, Ford Motor Company was the fourth-largest car producer in the United States, behind Cadillac, Rambler, and Oldsmobile. In the company's early years, most major components in its cars were manufactured by outside companies, including the "running gear" (the chassis, engine, transmission, drive shaft, and axles), which was supplied by the Dodge Brothers Company. That began to change in early 1906, when the Ford Manufacturing Company, a new, separate company created by Henry Ford and some Ford Motor Company stockholders, started to make engines and transmissions for the upcoming Ford Model N. The Ford Manufacturing Company was located at the Bellevue Avenue Plant, a leased factory off of Bellevue Avenue in Detroit. The Bellevue Avenue Plant was used until 1908, by which time almost all manufacturing of major components for Ford Motor Company cars was taking place at the Piquette Avenue Plant. Model N production began at the Piquette Avenue Plant in July 1906. That same month, Henry Ford bought the Ford Motor Company shares owned by fellow company co-founder Alexander Malcomson. While Malcomson was with the company, he and Henry Ford disagreed over the type of car that the company should produce. Malcomson preferred expensive cars, like the Ford Model K; Henry Ford favored inexpensive cars, like the Model N. Once Malcomson was no longer part of the company, Henry Ford, now with uncontested control, focused the company's efforts towards making cheap cars exclusively. The success of the Model N made Ford Motor Company the largest automaker in the United States by the end of 1906, a distinction that it would hold for twenty years.

In January 1907, in a room located on the Piquette Avenue Plant's third floor in the northeast corner, the design process began for the Ford Model T, the car credited with starting the mass use of cars in the United States. Much of the design and experimental work for the new car was done by Henry Ford, draftsman Joseph Galamb, engineer Childe Harold Wills, and machinist