Famous people's places / Detroit – Elmwood Park
Ford Mack Avenue Plant
Closed – archive entry · 1904
The rented wagon shop where Henry Ford and Alexander Malcomson assembled the first Ford cars in 1903, burned down in 1941; a replica now stands at Greenfield Village.
01 / The story of this place
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When Henry Ford and coal dealer Alexander Y. Malcomson founded the Ford Motor Company in 1903, they didn't build a grand factory, they rented a one-story former wagon shop on Mack Avenue. A small crew there hand-assembled Ford's early cars, mostly the Model A, from parts bought from outside suppliers, finishing around a dozen cars a day and shipping out roughly seventeen hundred vehicles before the company outgrew the space and moved to the Piquette Avenue Plant in 1904. The original Mack Avenue building later burned down in a 1941 fire. Henry Ford, already devoted to preserving his own history at Greenfield Village, had his architect Edward J. Cutler build a scaled-down replica of the plant there in 1945, and that stand-in is what visitors see today, not the real building.
- Ford's first rented factory, used from 1903 to 1904
- About 1,700 early Fords were hand-built here
- The original building burned down in 1941
- A replica was built at Greenfield Village in 1945
Famous Detroiters
Famous people tied to this place 2
Lexicon entries for the people who lived, worked, performed or liked to spend time here.
- Henry Ford 1863–1947 · automaker, industrialist, founder of Ford Motor Company
Founded
Ford Motor Company's first plant, a rented wagon shop where the first Model A was assembled in 1903; it burned in 1941, and a replica stands in Greenfield Village.
- Alexander Y. Malcomson 1865–1923 · coal dealer, first financial backer of Ford Motor Company
Founded
Ford Motor Company's first plant, a rented wagon shop where 1,708 early Fords were assembled; it burned in 1941, and a replica stands in Greenfield Village.
Sources & fact check · Checked: 2026-09-25
An independently written bilingual guide. This collection is not an attendance-based ranking.
03 / Events
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