Highland Park Plant, Ford Motor Company

About this property

The Highland Park Ford Plant is a historic former Ford Motor Company factory located at 91 Manchester Street (at Woodward Avenue) in Highland Park, Michigan. It was Ford's third factory and the second American Model T production facility, but the factory gained notoriety as the first factory in history to assemble automobiles on a moving assembly line. The Highland Park Ford Plant became a National Historic Landmark in 1978. Highland Park was designed by Albert Kahn Associates in 1908 and was opened in 1910. Ford automotive production had previously taken place at the Ford Piquette Avenue Plant, where the first Model Ts were built. The Highland Park Ford Plant was approximately 4 miles (6.4 km) northwest of the original Dodge Brothers factory who were subcontractors for Ford, producing precision engine and chassis components for the Model T. It was also approximately 1 mile (1.6 km) northwest of the former Brush-Maxwell plant, which later became Highland Park Chrysler Plant the headquarters for the Chrysler Corporation. The complex included offices, factories, a power plant and a foundry as part of Ford's strategy of integrating the supply chain. About 102 acres in size the Highland Park Plant was the largest manufacturing facility in the world at the time of its opening. Because of its spacious design, it set the precedent for many factories and production plants built thereafter. Using division of labor, rigorous cost-cutting and process optimization, the factory went through an experience curve to reduce price and increase volume. On October 7, 1913, the Highland Park Ford Plant became the first automobile production facility in the world to implement the moving assembly line. The new assembly line improved production time of the Model T from 728 to 93 minutes. The Highland Park assembly line lowered the price of the Model T from $700 (equivalent to $24,187 in 2025) in 1910 to $350 (equivalent to $8,795 in 2025) in 1917, making it an affordable automobile for most Americans. On January 5, 1914, Ford announced that factory wages would be raised from a daily rate of $2.34 (equivalent to $75 in 2025) to $5.00 (equivalent to $161 in 2025), and that daily shifts would be reduced from nine hours to eight. After the increase in pay, Ford claimed that the turnover rate of 31.9 percent in 1913 decreased to 1.4 percent in 1915. Ford offered nearly three times the wages paid at other unskilled manufacturing plants. In the late 1920s, the open Model T went out of fashion and Ford moved automobile assembly to the River Rouge Plant complex in nearby Dearborn to focus on improving quality with the Model A. Automotive trim manufacturing and Fordson tractor assembly continued at the Highland Park plant. The 1,690 M4A3 Sherman tanks built by Ford from June, 1942 to September, 1943 were assembled in this factory, as well.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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