- And shuttles took visitors to the old Ford Piquette Avenue plant in Detroit. Piquette was Ford Motor Company's second auto factory. Built in 1904, the three-story brick structure, with wooden oak floors, resembles an old New England mill (narrow, with windows taking up much of the wall space to provide natural light and ventilation). This was the plant where Henry Ford and his lieutenants invented the Model T, which later allowed the automaker to create its Highland Park factory, where the continuous moving assembly line became a fixture in the auto industry along with the five-dollar-a-day wage that raised the life of factory workers into middle class status.
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| In the past 90 years since Henry Ford sold it off, the Piquette factory has only been slightly modified, and some areas are basically untouched. (Photo: Joseph Cabadas, Canadian Auto Press) |
Ford had sold off Piquette after opening Highland Park in January 1910, and the building went through several owners, including the defunct Studebaker car manufacturer. The main building was only lightly modified during the next 90 years, often being used for warehouse space. The third floor, where the Model T was conceived in a special walled off room, is the least touched, retaining the original flooring, and some of the original paint and signage. The building, for example, is split into four sections by firewalls and special metal doors were made to close automatically if a fire ever broke out. Ford designed the factory this way after fires destroyed Ransom E. Olds' Oldsmobile factory in Detroit in 1901. The fire doors on the third floor carry the words "Absolutely No Smoking" (Henry Ford abhorred smoking).