Ford Piquette Avenue Plant National Register of Historic Places Listing

Henry Ford started here. He didn't build his empire in some sprawling, modern mega-factory. Instead, he commissioned this three-story brick building on the corner of Piquette Avenue and Beaubien Street in 1904. Workers hauled heavy iron parts across thick maple floors, dodging sparks and breathing in coal smoke. This was the cradle of the Model T. Up on the third floor, behind a locked door in a secret, cramped room, Henry Ford and his close team spent months sketching out the design on chalkboards. They built the first 12,000 Model Ts here. Each car cost $850. By 1910, they had completely outgrown the space.

Before Piquette, crews of two or three men assembled a single car from start to finish. It was agonizingly slow. To fix this, engineers started testing rudimentary assembly lines. They rigged up gravity slides. They dragged chassis across the grease-slicked wood floors with heavy ropes. The massive, fully realized moving assembly line eventually debuted at Highland Park, but the messy, trial-and-error work happened right here. The building itself was a marvel. Its Victorian-era design featured massive windows to let in sunlight, saving on gas lamps. It survived. Those automatic fire doors actually saved the structure when nearby factories burned to the ground. It is now a museum.