You may not know the name Packard, but your parents will. They built the most luxurious cars of the first half of the 20th century. This factory has been abandoned for years, but still bears the Packard name.
The Packard Motor Car Company, which built Detroit's first, and for many years most prestigious, luxury cars, produced over 1.5 million vehicles on this site from 1903 to 1954. The factory complex, designed by Albert Kahn, included the city's first use of reinforced concrete for industrial construction. At its opening, it was considered the most modern automobile manufacturing facility in the world. In it skilled craftsmen practiced over eighty trades. (above taken from the missing Michigan Historical Marker that used to be here)
From the autoweek.com site: http://www.autoweek.com/article/20080826/FREE/808269993
It's sort of a door to the past, and it appears to have a very bright future. The 1907 limestone façade on Detroit's famous but now crumbling Packard plant sold for $161,000 at an auction earlier this month and appears headed to America's Packard Museum in Dayton, Ohio.
Work to remove the bricks from the structure began August 25, and it was expected to take a couple days to completely dismantle the façade. It's anticipated the façade will be moved to the museum, where it will be the centerpiece of an expansion there.
Auction and museum officials declined to reveal the name of the donor, but the façade drew considerable interest at an RM Auctions, staged in conjunction with the Meadow Brook Concours d'Elegance on August 2. Original estimates said the façade would net $50,000 to $100,000.
The uniqueness of the façade likely drove up the price, said RM Auctions spokesman Terry Lobzun. "Packard is a very strong marque, certainly a blue-chip investment," he said.
The stately entrance is thought to have been the most prominent door at the Packard plant, which was designed by noted architect Albert Kahn. The door greeted visitors to the main part of the sprawling 3.5-million-square-foot complex, which consists of multiple buildings. When it opened more than a century ago, it was among the most state-of-the-art facilities in the world and helped set the template for modern manufacturing.
The plant closed more than 50 years ago following the demise of Packard. The building sits vacant on a mostly empty block in a desolate part of Detroit's east side. Most of the windows in the four-story structure are broken, the walls are marked with graffiti and trees have overgrown a portion of the building.
During a recent visit, scaffolding was up in front of the façade, and someone who appeared to be a security guard kept watch over the suddenly valuable façade from across the street.
The façade's new life likely will be as the entryway of the planned museum expansion. The museum is on the site of a 1917 Packard dealership, and the 16,000-square-foot addition is to house a library devoted to the defunct automaker. The expansion will cost $3 million to $4 million, and a ground-breaking is expected in 2009, with an opening in 2010. A 100-seat auditorium also is under consideration, said Bob Signom, founder and curator of the museum, which displays more than 50 vintage Packards, as well as Duesenbergs, Cadillacs, Lincolns and other early luxury cars.
