As an American, I’ve always been fascinated by my country’s history, and have planned a series of trips themed on different aspects of American history. These include:
Chicago 1893 (shortened version online here)
Mark Twain’s Mississippi River
Grant and Lee: the Final Battles of the Civil War
Voyageurs on the Saint Lawrence
Frontier Wyoming and Colorado
Gold Mines and Copper Mines of Eastern Alaska
A sample itinerary:
A Weekend in Detroit
This is a weekend-length tour of Detroit, focused on the birth of the auto industry. The first half-day – Friday, if it really is a weekend – would use a walk through Downtown Detroit to introduce the auto boom of the early twentieth century and the industrialists and architects who created the modern city. The second day, outlined below, explores the houses and factories where these men lived and worked. The third day, another half-day, would be tailored to the client’s specific interests.
Day 2 Itinerary
Since a car is the only way to get around the Motor City efficiently, this tour assumes that the client is driving a personal or rented vehicle.
As in the other sample tours, all driving directions and practical tips are omitted.
Here, as in the other sample tours, I’ve written only the first paragraph of what could be much longer descriptions. In every itinerary I make, I provide as much (or as little) detail as the customer requests.
The Packard Plant
Today’s tour begins at the Packard Plant, as good a place as any to start thinking about Detroit’s complicated relationship with the automotive industry. Though now notorious as the biggest ruin in a city with more than its share of abandoned buildings, the Packard was initially famous as the first modern auto plant. It was here that concrete-framed construction, which became standard in industrial buildings around the world, was pioneered. And it was here – about a decade before Henry Ford’s Rouge Plant – that auto production was first brought under one roof. These innovations, and the sprawling ruin you now see, resulted from the collaboration of two remarkable men: Henry Joy, the president of the Packard Motor Company; and Albert Kahn, the architect who built industrial Detroit.
Site of Dodge Main
As you drive along Grand Boulevard, you’ll pass the fenced grounds of the GM Detroit/Hamtramck Assembly, currently being retooled to produce electric vehicles. This plant stands on the site of Dodge Main, where Dodge automobiles were assembled until 1980. When construction started on the plant in 1910, the hardworking, hard-drinking Dodge Brothers were still only parts suppliers for Henry Ford’s rapidly-growing company. They began to produce their own cars in 1914, and the rest is history…
Ford Piquette Plant
In 1904, the newly-founded Ford Motor Company moved into this building. Even at the time of its construction, the building was old-fashioned, with the brick walls and wood frame of a nineteenth-century factory building. The innovations that took place inside, however, were groundbreaking. The model T was designed in an office on the third story, and the first experiments that led to the invention of the assembly line took place on the adjoining factory floor. When Ford started production in this building, it was a modestly successful company with a regional reputation. By the time he left, only six years later, his company was the world’s leading auto producer…
Fisher Building
There were seven Fisher brothers, and they were all part of the Fisher Body Company, which began as a manufacturer of carriage bodies, and became General Motor’s coachbuilding division. In the process, all seven Fisher brothers became very wealthy. They built mansions around the city, funded various charitable enterprises, and commissioned Albert Kahn – the architect, you’ll recall, of the Packard Plant – to build them “the world’s finest office building.” This 26-story masterpiece, completed in 1929, is the result. Impressive though the exterior is, the real highlight is the ground floor arcade, where grand chandeliers flash on walls featuring no fewer than 40 types of marble…
Cadillac Place
When it was finished in 1922, this was the second largest office building in the world. It needed that space, since its thousands of rooms were designed to house the rapidly growing workforce of General Motors. By the early twenties, GM was already well on its way to overtaking Ford as the world’s largest automotive manufacturer. This enormous building – designed, like the Fisher Building, by Albert Kahn – advertised both the company’s power and the ambitions of William Durant, its eccentric founder and president…
Henry and Clara Ford House
In 1908, when he moved into this house, Henry Ford’s company was thriving, and he had just started production on the Model T. As the scale of this imposing house shows, he was already wealthy. But he was not yet world famous. Within a few years, as the Model T sold in its millions and the Ford Motor Company became a household name, Ford would leave Detroit behind and move into the palatial Fair Lane Estate outside Dearborn. His house remains much as he left it, surrounded by the mansions of lesser local notables…
Highland Park Ford Plant
After he outgrew the Piquette Plant, Ford moved his operations to this enormous Albert Kahn-designed complex, the birthplace of the assembly line. Though the largest manufacturing facility on Earth when it was opened, the Highland Park plant soon became too small to contain Ford’s galloping expansion, and was replaced by the vast River Rouge plant little more than a decade after its opening. To the end, however, Highland Park remained the home of the Model T. Of the 15,000,000 tin lizzies Ford produced, all but a few thousand were assembled here…
The Henry Ford Museum and Ford Rouge Factory Tour
The Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation has a sprawling and fascinating collection, which includes an excellent exhibit on early automobiles. In combination with the tour of Ford’s modern facility (home of the F-150), this exhibit provides a fitting end to our tour of Detroit’s automotive history.