Ford Retired Execs to Mark Historic Piquette Plant

DETROIT, May 23 -- The Ford Retired Engineering Executives (F.R.E.E.) organization will help celebrate Ford Motor Company's centennial by mounting a memorial plaque at the historic Piquette Avenue Plant in mid-town at 10 a.m. Tuesday, May 27, 2003.

The 400-strong Ford retiree group, chaired by former chief engineer Howard Freers, has donated the marker and several members will be on hand to fasten it to the building.

The three-story Piquette Plant, constructed in 1904-1905 at the northwest corner of Piquette Avenue and Beaubien Street, was the first plant owned by Ford Motor Company. Previously the infant carmaker rented a small facility on Mack Avenue.

The Piquette Plant has been known as "the home of the Model T" because it was here that the famous "universal car" that "put the world on wheels" was designed and first produced late in 1908.

Demand for the Model T was so great and the company so successful that Ford had to build its huge Highland Park Plant and abandon the almost-new Piquette facility in 1910. Still, early versions of the moving assembly line for which Highland Park became famous in 1913 were first experimented with at Piquette.

An estimated 50,000 Fords were assembled at Piquette in its five years of full operation. In contrast, some 70,000 were built at Highland Park in its first full year of production, 1911.

Remarkably, today the top two floors and the exterior of the Piquette structure remain much as they were nearly a century ago. The building was rescued by a group of automotive historians who raised money to buy and restore Piquette as The Model T Automotive Heritage Complex, Inc., or T-Plex for short, a non-profit corporation.

  Wording of the memorial plaque reads:

                      THE FORD PIQUETTE AVENUE PLANT
                                1904-1910
                          HAS BEEN PLACED ON THE
                   NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES
                           BY THE UNITED STATES
                        DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
                                   2002
                               FORD RETIRED
                      ENGINEERING EXECUTIVES (FREE)
                      ERECTED THIS PLAQUE JUNE 2003