Ford Factories at Mack Avenue, Piquette and Highland Park Plant

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• published: 12 May 2016
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Ford's first factory, the Mack Avenue Plant, was an old wagon manufacturing shop owned by Albert Strelow, who agreed to remodel the building, a one-story frame structure 50' wide and 250' long, and rent it to the Ford Motor Company for $75 a month. Ford began moving into the Mack Avenue Plant in April 1903, but did not begin assembling cars there until June, after the incorporation of the Ford Motor Company. The firm was officially launched with stock officially valued at $28,000, but the original investors put in only $19,500 at the start. Ford began with a labor force of only a dozen workers, who merely assembled components purchased from outside suppliers. Dodge Brothers (John and Horace Dodge) built the "running gear," which consisted of the chassis, engine, transmission, drive shaft, and both axles. Ford bought tires, wheels, and bodies from three other firms. Ford was an assembler of cars, but not a manufacturer at this point. While other contemporary automobile manufacturers also bought many components from outside suppliers, pioneers such as Henry Leland at the Cadillac Motor Car Company manufactured their own engines and transmissions. Ford outgrew the Mack plant and built a new factory at Piquette avenue. The Ford Piquette Avenue Plant is a museum and former factory located at 461 Piquette Avenue in Detroit, Michigan, within the Piquette Avenue Industrial Historic District in Milwaukee Junction. It was the second home of Ford Motor Company automobile production and is best known as the birthplace of the Ford Model T. It is the oldest automotive factory building in the world open to the general public.[4] The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002,[1] designated as a Michigan State Historic Site in 2003,[2] and designated as a National Historic Landmark in 2006 The Highland Park Ford Plant is a former factory located at 91 Manchester Avenue (at Woodward Avenue) in Highland Park, Michigan. The second production facility for the Model T automobile, it became a National Historic Landmark in 1978. he Highland Park Ford Plant was a production plant for Ford Motor Company in the city of Highland Park, Michigan, which is surrounded by Detroit. The Highland Park Ford Plant was designed by Albert Kahn Associates in 1908 and was opened in 1910. Ford automotive production had previously taken place at the facility known as the Ford Piquette Avenue Plant. The complex included offices, factories, a power plant and a foundry.[3] Over 120 acres in size the Highland Park Plant was the largest manufacturing facility in the world at the time of its opening. Because of its spacious design, it set the precedent for many factories and production plants built thereafter. On 7 October 1913, the Highland Park Ford Plant became the first automobile production facility in the world to implement the moving assembly line.[4] The new assembly line improved production time of the Model T from 728 to 93 minutes.[5] The Highland Parks assembly line lowered the price of the Model T from $700 in 1910 to $350 in 1917 making it an affordable automobile for most Americans.[6] Ford offered nearly three times the wages paid at other unskilled manufacturing plants.[7] In the late 1920s Ford moved automobile assembly to the River Rouge Plant complex in nearby Dearborn. Automotive trim manufacturing and tractor assembly continued at the Highland Park plant. The 1690 M4A3 Sherman tanks built by Ford from June, 1942 to September, 1943 were assembled in this factory as well. As of 2011, it had been used by Ford Motor Company to store documents and for artifact storage for the Henry Ford Museum. A portion is also occupied by a Forman Mills clothing warehouse that opened in 2006. S451