7-9-2024 Detroit (Motor City), MI

We just came back from a foreign country, Canada, don’tchaknow, ay?  So of course, we law-abiding USA citizens who paid a bundle to travel on a cruise ship had to pile into a bus and trundle off to the immigration office with our passports to verify our legitimacy in our own country.  This is the second time we’ve had to do this and there’ll be a third.  There were 20 cops standing around by our ship.  They should show half this concern at our southern border.

 

How does that go?  “If this is Detroit, it must be Tuesday.”  (That means I have 4 pairs of undies left, which is the other way I can tell.)  Our excursion today included a tour of the city but I have a strange feeling the bus steered away from the seedier parts of Detroit, which might explain why we traveled on the same street, Woodward, four times.  This sector is hard at work in the business of clean-up and restoration and some of the old brick buildings are quite beautiful! 

 

Wayne State University was established in 1868 and named after General Anthony Wayne, who was an American soldier and one of the USA’s Founding Fathers.  WSU has a beautiful old campus and many of the old Victorian homes in the area now house frats and sororities. 

This is the inside of "Detroit's
largest art object," 
The Fisher Bldg.

You've heard the expression, "Body by
Fisher?"  These were the guys, developers
of the first closed automobile.

 

Another old beautiful building is the Second Baptist Church of Detroit.  The basement of the church served as a station for the Underground Railroad.  In order to keep the operation a secret, the helpers adopted the language of the railroad, calling themselves, “conductors,” and runaways were called “passengers,” or “baggage.”  Detroit provided passage to the runaways to escape to Canada (which is right across the river) and the city became known as the “Doorway to Freedom.”

Last stop before freedom in Canada,
the Underground RR occupied
the basement.

 

The next part of today’s tour was a visit to the Ford Piquette Plant.  Henry Ford built his first factory in Detroit in 1903 where the Model A was built.  He only built 1,700 cars there and then decided that that factory was too small.  He decided to buy another patch of land on which he built the Piquette Plant.  There, the rest of the Models were built, the Models B, C, F, K, N, R, S and T.  The Piquette Plant is known as the birth place of the Model T, which revolutionized travel by automobile for the masses.  There is a famous little tale about Ol’ Henry.  He said, “You can have whatever color Ford you want, as long as it’s black.”  That is only partially true.  Henry Ford was a forward-thinking guy and created the first, “moving assembly line,” which sped up the production of Ford vehicles.  When the Model T was being built, one-at-a-time at the Piquette Plant, you might say they were custom, and the Model T came in many colors.  But when the assembly line was created, the idea of many colors disappeared.  Black was the name of the game on the assembly line.  Only a couple of cars were built at a time on each floor of the Piquette Building and altogether, 12,000 Model Ts were assembled here and shipped. 

Model T, a car for the masses
(Henry's version of the VW Beetle?)

Henry's first floor office

1909 Model T

 

Part of the museum collection, 
an early 1900s Cadillac which sold
then for about $3,000

Henry's workshop on the second floor.
Note his drafting (chalk) board in the back
and his Mom's rocking chair.  Three drive 
belts to run the lathe.

There is a time clock in the factory where the workers clocked in.  If you were on time for work, it printed out in black.  If you were late, it printed out in red.  This may be fable or true, but the time cards would read out in red, “late,” “late,” “late,” “late,” “fired.”  Of course, there was no a/c in the building and it was unmercifully hot, even for us, but workers were happy being paid above the going rate  and pumped out 2,194 Model Ns that were shipped around the country.  Henry’s office was on the second floor next to the workshop.  His design drafting board was a chalkboard.  The Model K was a big expensive luxury car and Henry wasn’t too fond of it.  His dream was a smaller, less expensive car that would sell in large quantity.  His little team of mostly 20-year-old designers came up with the Model T and was just the ticket.  It was small, lightweight, cheap, easy to drive and seated 5.  By October of 1908, the little plant was pumping out 200 cars/month.  Henry was one the pioneers of the moving assembly line and it did not work in this small building.  It was once again time to expand and Ford sold the Piquette Plant to Studebaker, which used the facility until 1933.

Time clock