Erin Kronell

Aaron Martin
Honors 1000 (500.509)
Essay #2
November 18th, 2015

Where are we going?

The Piquette Ford Plant, located in Detroit, a city which became an industrial
powerhouse at the turn of the nineteenth century -- this was where people as Detroiters,
Americans, or simply people of urban form resonated, resonated with the resources,
opportunities, ideas, and ingenuity necessary to put the world on wheels.1 More simply put, the
Piquette Ford Plant may be considered the beginning of a world where efficiency is key,
beginning with mass production, and in this case the mass production of automobiles.2
The Piquette Ford Plant is an intriguing historical landmark because it was a place
where ideas were generated, and is where the idea for the Model T originates; the Model T was
a car that would afford the luxury of driving to everyone.3 The Piquette Ford Plant was built in
1904 and was the very first plant of the Ford Motor Company. Here, ideas concerning mass
production and efficiency were born. For example, Henry Ford and C. Harold Wills formulated
the concept of the Model T, focusing on designing a car affordable and operable to all, as well
as designing a way to produce such a car in large numbers at low costs. As Ford and Wills
produced these ideas, Joseph Galamb put the plans down on paper with drawings on his
drafting board.4
1 The Detroit Historical Museum presented information on Detroit as an industrial powerhouse, in terms
of the access to resources, capital, and innovative entrepreneurs.
2 In-Group Collaboration
3The Model-T is described in detail in the Piquette Ford Plant Historical Video.
4 In the corner space of the Piquette Ford Plant, built in 1904, Henry Ford and his companions called this
space the secret room where they would gather from 6am to midnight for nine months straight, coming
up with ideas regarding efficiency and marketing to all. Krebs 1.

The Piquette Ford Plant is important considering its history and the primary principles
that were established there in regards to efficiency and mass production, yet it is also important
in terms of where it guides people today. In other words, it is an urban form that represents
where we were, and also where are we going. To clarify, the Piquette Ford Plant initially hired
30 workers, and by the year 1910 there were 1,160.5 Part of the reason the number of workers
increased so sharply was Fords high-wage policy, which means Ford paid higher wages in
order to increase levels of production, which was not a terrible idea.6 As numbers of workers
increased, numbers of cars being produced climbed rapidly as well; in 1907 a record of 110 cars
were produced in only 10 hours.7 The Ford Motor Company was clearly making its way to
bigger and better things, and to put things into better perspective, the Piquette Ford Plant can
be viewed as a catalyst for mass production.8 The plant, as mentioned before, began
production in the year 1904, and only lasted until around 1933. The Piquette Ford Plant was a
temporary work space perhaps good in the way the idea of utilizing the assembly line for mass
production began, yet bad due to the fact that it was simply sizably inadequate for implementing
such a process. Therefore, in 1933, Ford expanded and moved production over to Highland
Park, a facility much larger than the Piquette Plant where the assembly line production of
automobiles could progress.9
The Piquette Ford Plant serves as a strong model in terms of guiding the world towards
pure efficiency and mass production, however, it proposes problems as well. The major
problem that resulted from the way of work created in the Piquette Ford Plant was that unskilled
workers were obtaining jobs on the line, simultaneously removing the skilled trades it took to
craft a car. This made the production of automobiles no longer a practiced art, and more of a set
5 See Piquette Ford Plant Historical Video.
6 Taylor 2.
7 The use of the assembly line concept allowed the Ford Motor Company to lead auto-production of the
early 20th century. Krebs 1.
8 In-Group Collaboration
9 Refer to the historical picture of Highland Park.

of simple tasks anyone could do with quick and easy training.10 The bad in this is that assembly
line work can be considered dehumanizing in the way each individual worker is solely
responsible for one seemingly meaningless task that he must repeat constantly for hours at a
time, even though all of these tasks put together by each individual worker produce cars quickly
and efficiently.11 While the individual work has become simpler, the silver lining is that this type
of meaningless work created the middle class. The middle class attracted people to Detroit,
which means all sorts of people including immigrants, and this promoted diversity in the
workplace, which is still very relevant today.12 To summarize, before the Piquette Ford Plant, we
had a skillful trade in the production of automobiles which embodied where we once were as a
people. After the Piquette Ford Plant began production, we utilized the assembly line form of
production which is representative of where we are headed as a people. The struggle between
the two, our past and our future, really just entails the question of who we want to be. Do we
want to be people of history and art, or do we aim to be a designer people who breathe
efficiency?13
The Piquette Ford Plant remains today on 461 Piquette Avenue in Detroit as a historical
museum that embodies the original ideas of Ford and the assembly line, which marked the
beginning of a path towards worldwide efficiency. By worldwide efficiency, I mean that the
assembly line did not strictly adhere to automotive production; in 1944 Ford used the concept of
mass production by the assembly line to produce B-24 bombers.14 Anyways, in 1998, several
donations from members of the Henry Ford Heritage Association allowed them to purchase the
plant and proceed in rebuilding/remodeling the plant to become a national historical landmark.15
More recently, in 2008, T-Plex, a nonprofit ran by Wayne State University professor Jerald
10 In-Group Collaboration
11 Describing assembly line work similar to Charlie Chaplins task of screwing bolts in Modern Times.
12 Detroit Historical Museum visit.
13 Dean Herron refers to the future versus the past in Lecture Video 8.
14 Martelle 140
15 See Piquette Ford Plant Historical Video.

Mitchell, used $293,000 from the Department of Transportation in order to restore the plant to its
original English factory style design.16 What the Piquette Ford Plant as a historical landmark
says about us is that we care about where we are going (towards a world of efficiency), just as
much as we care about preserving the history of where we were, and where we came from,
because we cannot erase the past.17

Works Cited

Dean Herron. "Lecture Video 8." Honors 1000 Lecture. Detroit. Lecture.
16 The article from the Detroit Free Press describes this restoration investment in greater detail.
17 The very last line of The Great Gatsby implies that we cannot erase the past because it is a part of
who we are and where we are going. Gatsby 182.

Detroit Historical Museum. 4 Nov. 2015. Visit. 5401 Woodward Avenue, Detroit.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. "9." The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 1986. 182. Print.
Ford Motor Co., Highland Park. N.d. WSU Virtual Motor City Collection, Detroit. WSU Virtual
Motor City Collection (Detroit News): 7622 7622. Web. 17 Nov. 2015.
Free Press Staff. "Ford Piquette Plant, Model T's Centennial." Detroit Free Press [Detroit] 26
Apr. 2008: n. pag. Print.
In-Group Collaboration. 11 Nov. 2015. Wayne State University, Detroit.
Krebs, Michelle. "Tin Lizzie Is Born." Automotive News. Proquest Research Library, 6 June
2003. Web.
Martelle, Scott. "The War Years." Detroit: A Biography. Chicago, IL: Chicago Review, 2012.
140. Print.
Modern Times. Dir. Charlie Chaplin. Perf. Charlie Chaplin. 1936. Film.
Piquette Ford Plant Historical Video. Dir. John Gibson. N.d. DVD.
Taylor, Jason E. "Did Henry Ford Mean to Pay Efficiency Wages?" Journal of Labor Research.
Academic OneFile, n.d. Web.

Ford Motor Co.; plants; Highland Park