Ford Piquette Avenue Plant

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. 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. This and several other original safety features in the factory, such as its firewalls, fire doors, and fire escapes, are still present. 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 first production Model T was completed at the Piquette Avenue Plant on September 27, 1908. Over 15 million Model T's would eventually be built, and the first 14,000 made in the United States were assembled at the Piquette Avenue Plant. In 1920, Studebaker built a four-story, reinforced concrete building, known as the Studebaker Detroit Service Building, immediately west of the Piquette Avenue Plant. In 1936, Studebaker sold the Piquette Avenue Plant to the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company (3M), a producer of rubber auto parts and non-adhesive paper tape. ==Model T Automotive Heritage Complex==

telescope on the right.|alt=An office with a carpet covering a tile floor, a desk and table covered with papers, a birdwatching telescope, and a vault embedded in the wall. Information about the office is printed on signs in the foreground. The Ford Piquette Avenue Plant was sold to the Model T Automotive Heritage Complex in April 2000. Model T Automotive Heritage Complex is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that has run the building as a museum since July 27, 2001. The Piquette Avenue Plant is the oldest purpose-built automotive factory building open to the public. The museum, located north of Midtown Detroit at 461 Piquette Avenue, attracted 31,018 visitors in 2018. It contains over 40 early automobiles built by Ford Motor Company and other Detroit-area car makers, as well as recreations of Henry Ford's office and the room where the Ford Model T was designed. One of the cars on display is Model T Serial No. 220, which was built at the factory in December 1908, and is one of the oldest surviving examples of that car model. The museum's regular operating days are Wednesdays through Sundays. The building has also been a contributing property for the surrounding Piquette Avenue Industrial Historic District since 2004. The factory's front façade was fully restored to its 1904 appearance and revealed to the public on September 27, 2008, the 100th anniversary of the completion of the first production Model T. On August 11, 2011, Model T Automotive Heritage Complex membership chairman Tom Genova was honored with a ROSE Award from the Detroit Metro Convention & Visitors Bureau in the Volunteers category. On May 18, 2012, the Model T Automotive Heritage Complex won a NAAMY Award from the National Association of Automobile Museums in the Films and Videos category for Division I (museums with budgets less than $300,000). On November 10, 2015, the Window Restoration Team at the Piquette Avenue Plant received a MotorCities National Heritage Area Award of Excellence in the Preservation category. Around 2016, the National Park Service considered adding the Piquette Avenue Plant to a list of places in the United States eligible for UNESCO World Heritage Site status. It was ultimately not added, because it did not have enough of its original factory equipment, and because of recommendations that its nomination be expanded to include other Detroit-area Ford Motor Company sites, such as the Highland Park Ford Plant and the Ford River Rouge Complex. ==See also==