This is the way it was done in the good old days in Detroit: bodies built in one plant, then trucked down Conner or Jefferson or whatever street it is to the assembly plant. Here’s a load of Hudsons being hauled by a Federal truck.
And here it is again, passing a parked Dodge truck hauling transmissions or such. Was the Dodge driver taking a break at the Sport Center Bar?
Trivia note. the Hudson body plant is now being torn down.
I was looking around the neighborhood using Google Street Views, and I found this charming little brick house (see picture) on Corbett Ave. just off Conner St. Looks fine in 2009, but then it’s abandoned by 2011, stripped of its leader pipes by 2013, and gone by 2019. Don’t the owners and the people who live there care about the fine houses they possess? This has been going on in Detroit for decades now–I find it really disheartening!
You can also check out the house opposite 3643 Lincoln St. Occupied and looking pretty good in 2009; boarded-up and abandoned in 2018, looking worse in 2019. Who knows if it’s still there?
It is depressing. On Corbett St. there are some very well kept houses next to totally dilapidated wrecks. You can imagine that for the owners of good properties, vandalism, crime and high insurance costs sometimes overwhelm them. You reach a tipping point and the whole street collapses. At any given moment, may be hard to tell what direction things will go. It’s not for nothing that real estate is all about location. Yet there are many beautiful houses in Detroit.
3643 Lincoln house still occupied in 2013 with (I assume) owner or resident sitting on porch. Still looks good in 2015. But I have plenty of experience with houses that look great on the outside but are a wreck inside or structurally.
Those houses are extraordinary.
I was curious about that house on Corbett, so I looked up its occupancy in some of the US Census reports. Looks like even when these Hudson pictures were taken, this neighborhood had likely seen better days.
This house was a boarding house in both the 1940 and 1950 Censuses (that’s as far back as I went). In 1950, 19 people lived in that house, including four families with children and two couples without children. Not surprisingly, most of the people worked in the auto industry.
Back in 1940, the house occupied by just 8 people — the couple who owned the house, plus six lodgers (all men; five of them worked in the auto industry).
Looks like that property was last sold in 2006 for $50,000 – it was listed as a 7-unit apartment building, and had been for sale for quite a long time, indicating there wasn’t too much interest.
Fascinating bit of history. It looks like it was turned into a duplex, at least, with the two front doors.Or was it like that from the start?
I don’t know if it had two front doors from the start, but I did find a picture of the house from the 1940s, and the front facade had both doors.
The problem with a lot of houses in Detroit is they are owned by absentee landlords who are only interested in making money off them. Scrimp on maintenance. Sometimes not even paying the property tax on them.
The Mayor a few terms ago, Dave Bing, made what I thought was a pretty reasonable suggestion: rather than trying to maintain all the streets and other infrastructure for blocks where there are only one or two inhabited houses left, consolidate the residents into denser neighborhoods and abandon large swaths of the city’s footprint. The proposal went nowhere.
It’s not just Detroit. Corporate landlords and institutional investors are buying resale houses by the thousands the last few years, particularly in older and/or less wealthy suburban areas. There are signs posted everywhere around here and tons of junk mail proclaiming “we buy houses! sell NOW!” These companies with names like American Homes 4 Rent, Invitation Homes, or FirstKey quickly turn entire neighborhoods into mostly rentals, owned by distant corporate landlords who don’t maintain their properties and crowd out would-be homeowners who want to live there.
Lincoln St. house in 2009:
Wow!! Just now?
Wow!! Just now?
I looked it up. The impending demolition was announced in June of last year. Supposed to be completed that summer. I don’t know what the status is right now. After AMC closed it, Cadillac used it for a stamping plant until the 80s, when D-Ham aka “Poletown” was built to replace the Clark St, Cadillac plant and it’s remote body plant.
The Packard plant’s days may be done too. When Fernando Palazuelo bought it in a tax auction, he started putting money into it: bring in heavy equipment to remove the east wall that was falling into Concord St, clear rubble from behind the administration building and clearing all the debris out of the admin building. But his big money backers quit on him. He tried to make a go of it on his own. In 18 and 19, officially sanctioned, guided tours were offered. I kept meaning to take that tour, but then the plague intervened, the bridge over E Grand collapsed, and work stopped on the project. Palazuelo is now years in arrears on taxes. The city has ordered him to tear it down, or the city will take matters into it’s own hands.
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2022/04/06/judge-demolish-packard-plant-immediately-backup-plan-set-up-if-owner-fails/9484048002/
I have doubts either Palazuelo or Detroit can demolish and clean up the entire 40 acre Packard site in 90 days. These were amongst the earliest industrial buildings built with reinforced concrete. I’m sure there’s no asbestos or toxic waste that needs to be cleared up first before you can legally obtain demolition permits.
Why did the city evict all the businesses that operated in the former Packard plant in 1999? The buildings were still in decent shape then.
Why did the city evict all the businesses that operated in the former Packard plant in 1999? The buildings were still in decent shape then.
Same thing that happens with a lot of houses in Detroit, while the tenants in the plant were paying their rent, the owner was not paying his property tax. Of course, the owner sued, when the city seized the place for back taxes. The tenants didn’t know what to do, with the status of the place tied up in litigation, so a lot of them simply left. Palazuelo bought the place when the previous owner finally exhausted all his litigation options, after, what, 15 years.
I agree that the 90 day demolition deadline was unrealistic. The city is probably just going through the motions in the expectation that Palazuelo will not get it done. If they offered a reasonable time frame, say 2 years, they could not do anything until that 2 years had lapsed. With the 90 day deadline, they can move forward sooner.
As for bringing down those Albert Kahn buildings, they were really hard to tear down, with a wrecking ball, years ago. When the Studebaker plants came down in the early 2000s, they used hydraulic jaws to break up the concrete.
When a Kahn building is exposed to the weather, with no maintenance, demolition gets a lot easier. Over the years of exposure to weather, water gets into the cracks in the concrete, freezes, and opens the cracks wider. Repeat that cycle over several years, and the building starts to fall down. This is Packard building 92, at the south end of the complex. Formerly where axles, transmissions and suspension parts were machined and assembled. It sat on a parcel that was still owned by the city, so the city tore it down a few years ago. This pic is how the building looked, before the city started demolition.
I’ve seen that photo and always assumed that was one of the areas they tried unsuccessfully demolish years ago. I’d always read that despite the deterioration, vandalism, and theft of metal parts, the basic structure was still sound.
Amazing how many news features about the Packard plant incorrectly cite either 1956 or 1958 when cars were still built there.
I do hope a small representative portion of the building, maybe the administrative office area, is preserved and restored. But all those lofty plans for the whole place someday being restored into some mixed-use development like the one below that were floated around I think we can kiss goodbye.
Now I read there are plans to renovate the Fisher 21 building ( https://www.archpaper.com/2022/03/detroits-blighted-fisher-body-plant-21-will-be-transformed-into-sprawling-residential-complex/ ). Anyone think this will ever happen?
I’ve seen that photo and always assumed that was one of the areas they tried unsuccessfully demolish years ago.
Nope. 92 collapsed on it’s own. I had been following the deterioration on Google sat view over the years, progressively greater roof area collapsed, progressive floor and wall collapse. When the city first tried to seize it for taxes, they did tear down two smaller buildings, the two that ran parallel and to the east of the tracks, north of E Grand.
Now I read there are plans to renovate the Fisher 21 building
All it takes is lots and lots of money. The Michigan Central train station in Detroit had been abandoned for decades. A few years ago, Ford Motor bought it and they are pouring a bundle into it. According to this article, total cost of this project, coming from Ford, other private companies, and government subsidies and handouts, totals $950M. https://www.freep.com/story/money/business/2022/02/04/michigan-train-station-rehabilitation-ford/6664257001/
But the Fisher Body 21 building, like most of the Packard plant, seems to be too far gone to restore at this point. Michigan Central seemed to be in better (if still bad) shape.
Another similar rig and its load of Hudson bodies in the background as well.
If you look in the left background of the second picture, looks like a second Federal truck is brining up the rear with another batch of car bodies. Part of the daily convoy to feed final assembly.
Today, everything is Just-In-Time with industrial parks filled with suppliers keeping final assembly at full pace.
No headaches like today scrambling for integrated chips!!
Driver of the Dodge, parked in the bus stop, no doubt briefly in the bar just to use the Public Telephone.
I’m not getting a full sense of perspective, but it seems like an extraordinarily wide load.
I wonder how slowly this rig was going……
Nice pictures, please keep them coming .
-Nate
Could someone say, what is the Dodge transporting?
Shortly after the pic, I’d wager a “Sports Bar patron”.
I’m surprised to see the bodies hauled with the trunk lids open – wouldn’t they flap up and down with the wind and strain the hinges? I suppose the lock/latching hardware hasn’t been installed yet.
The second pic includes some of the most elegant streetlamps I’ve ever seen.
In the first picture, looks like at least one rim and two tires missing from the rear-most axle on the truck (tractor). It is a pretty light load.
I think you are seeing one of the solid metal wheels on the landing gear of the trailer. As I recall, they were about as large as good-sized brake drums, and sometimes were mounted in pairs on each side of the landing gear legs. Now, trailers have flat pads or feet on the landing gear legs. Unlikely they would have used a twin-screw tractor on a short haul light load like this, anyway.
Reminds me of when GM built Cadillac bodies at a Fisher Body plant in Detroit and trucked them to Clark St. for final assembly.
I worked at Clark and Summit Street between 1974 and 1978 and saw many Cadillac’s on those trucks.
If you look at that house , across the street from the bar, the town I grew up in was full of those. See a few that have been “slightly modernized”. Most either falling down or gone.
Someone mentioned them above; the streetlights in pic#2 are way cool!
For an interesting read try the book Detroit Hustle by Amy Haimerl. It describes the tribulations of trying to revive the fine old homes in many now abandoned neighborhoods.
Over dimension load of Hudsons and no marker flags or pilot, never get away with that now
Hudson made some oddly styled stepvans, only in 1941. Several of them are in the factory storage lot on the left. Perhaps converted to passenger vans for hauling workers or visitors around?