Long before automobiles filled America’s roads, a long brick factory rose quietly along Piquette Avenue, beside the rattling tracks of the Milwaukee Junction rail line. Built in 1904, the Ford Piquette Avenue Plant was designed by the Detroit firm Field, Hinchman & Smith in the style of sturdy New England textile mills - three stories tall, timber-framed, and stretching more than 400 feet in length. It was modern for its time, even boasting an advanced fire-suppression system: firewalls, metal fire doors, exterior fire escapes, and a rooftop tank holding 25,000 gallons of water feeding one of the earliest automatic sprinkler systems in the nation.

This was Ford Motor Company’s first purpose-built factory. Before Piquette, Henry Ford’s young company had rented space on Mack Avenue. Now, with investors’ approval of $76,500 for the new plant, Ford had a home of his own — and it stood in the heart of Detroit’s most promising industrial neighborhood.

Milwaukee Junction was already alive with innovation. Rail lines crisscrossed the district, making it a natural distribution hub. Nearby, manufacturers like Cadillac, Packard, Brush, Hupp, Regal, and Anderson Electric were all experimenting with the future of transportation. Carriage makers were reinventing themselves as auto body builders, and metal shops were learning to stamp and shape steel for machines that had never existed before.

Inside the Piquette plant, history took shape.

Between its brick walls, Ford workers assembled the Models B, C, F, K, N, R, and S - but something bigger was brewing. Hidden behind closed doors, in a guarded “experimental room,” a small team worked in secrecy. By 1908, that work became the Ford Model T - a car designed not just for the wealthy, but for ordinary families. The first 12,000 Model Ts were built here and sent out across the country by rail, rolling quietly into history.

At the center of it all was Henry Ford, still far from the legend he would become. He had already failed twice in earlier ventures. He had no cash in the new company - only ideas, experience, and determination. In the summer of 1904, as the building rose, Ford turned 41 years old. He lived just a few blocks away with his wife Clara and their son Edsel, often walking or bicycling to work. Young Edsel, only 14, visited the plant after school, sketching cars and peering into the secret room where the future was taking shape.

By 1910, success had outgrown the building. Ford Motor Company moved operations to the new Highland Park Plant, and the Piquette building was sold to Studebaker, which continued producing automobiles there until 1933. Over time, other companies, including Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing (3M) and Cadillac Overall, filled the aging factory.

For decades, the building stood as a silent witness to Detroit’s industrial age, until it was saved from obscurity. In 2000, it was purchased by the Model-T Automotive Heritage Complex, Inc., restored, and reopened as a museum. Today, the Ford Piquette Avenue Plant is recognized as one of the most important automotive heritage sites in the world, the place where Henry Ford’s boldest idea became a machine that changed the world.

The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on Feb. 22, 2002.