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Highland Park Ford Plant

0715 PA8139 Highland Park Ford Plant


This movie is part of the collection: Prelinger Archives

Audio/Visual: sound, color

Creative Commons license: Public Domain

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Reviewer: NoiseCollector - - March 16, 2009
Subject: Tear them all down
And build mosques!

Reviewer: dave_florida - - March 16, 2009
Subject: extra info
Thanks for excellent details. I recognize the "man in the cast" as being one of the Ford brothers. Google the Time mag cover from May 18, 1953. I sense he is a young William Clay Ford, eventual owner of the Lions. Obviously, the old men making speeches would be the mayor of Highland Park, Mich Reps, Ford Execs, etc. Try as I might, I cannot recognize any faces (sorry). I grew up in Dearborn: Edsel Ford HS, Henry Ford CC. I have highest regard for the many things Ford did for my hometown.

Reviewer: Eva Vikstrom - - January 26, 2008
Subject: Thanks for the shotlist!
Thanks to Pollux for posting a shotlist of this important movie about the Highland Park Ford Plant. Your information has general interest indeed!

Reviewer: Pollux - - January 26, 2008
Subject: Interesting for me, since I was there.
I can add some background to this film, since it
takes place where I spent much of my childhood:
Highland Park, Michigan. Quite a bit of nostalgia
for me, but not of much general interest. The
film is in four parts, from four different
years

Highland Park was the site of Henry Ford's first
mass production automobile plant, where he
cranked out Model T's for $500.00 or so apiece,
and paid his workers $5.00 a day, good money for
that time. Ford moved out to Dearborn and the
Rouge plant over time.

Part One
--------
00:00 Silent film from 1920's showing the Ford
plant powerhouse with the five smokestacks, from
Woodward Ave.

00:50 A view from along Manchester Ave. looking north.


Part Two
--------
01:20 (Someone needs to get in and fix this
negative image)

This is on Woodward Ave just outside the Ford
office building (which still was standing in
2005) adjacent to the plant.

Judging from the cars (check out that Continental
Mark II) it's mid-1956. I don't know who the Ford
executive with his foot in a cast is; wish there
was a sound track somewhere.

I have to think this is two different locations:
the Ford office building was across the street
from a Sears department store, yet at 02:10
we're looking across Woodward to a J.C. Penney
department store, and a Flagg Bros. shoe store,
which were further south.

02:22 We're back at the Ford offices (with the
Manufacturer's National Bank in the background at
Woodward and Manchester) with some prominent
women of Ford, Highland Park, or both.

02:39 Inside at some sort of ceremony

02:45 Back on Woodward looking across at Sears.

03:12 Unveiling the "Home Of Model T" Michigan
historical marker. Probably what this all is
about. I like that microphone!

Part Three
----------
03:41 It's 1959. I was there! My dad took us down
to watch them knock down the smokestacks on the
powerhouse that we saw in Part One of this
film. We're looking from Manchester Ave, east of
that bank mentioned at 2:22, and probably where
that panning shot at 00:50 was taken.

The first smokestack tumbles. They attached a
cable to the top and just tugged on it hard
enough.

04:11 Up on the roof of a building on Manchester,
with three of Highland Park's finest.

04:33 That kid's only a little older than me.

04:45 Another one bites the dust.

05:04 Hey, aren't you supposed to be directing
traffic or something? What do I pay all these
taxes for?!?!

05:05 Not real sure where this is, probably
Manchester.

05:11 Oh yeah, we're looking west on Manchester
toward Woodward as an old Ford touring car pulls
out with a late-40s Buick Sting Ray behind.

05:21 Come in Number 3, your time is up.

05:33 A '59 Chevy drives by, dating this film.

05:46 Another angle on the smokestacks. We're
looking from the northeast, possibly from the
Detroit Terminal Railroad right of way. Between
each of those stacks was a letter F-O-R-D that
you'd see from Woodward (the other side).

05:55 #1 coming down along with the 'D', like
we saw at 03:41.

06:25 #2 with the 'R'. I don't want to think
about all the asbestos dust being kicked up.

08:13 #3's turn, with the 'O'.

08:29 #4 comes down with the 'F'.

08:40 #5 and we're finished.

Part Four
---------
08:55 We're back in 1956, very likely April 8
to be exact. It's the last day of streetcars
(trams) in Detroit, and we're riding one! Going
north on Woodward at Louise by the Louis Rose
DeSoto dealer, where my dad bought his '55
Firedome. Yeah, it had a Hemi.

08:00 At the Michigan State Fairgrounds at 8 Mile
and Woodward, northern terminus of the Woodward
streetcar line, and the buses that have replaced
it to this day. Several cars pull in to the loop.

09:17 One of the evil GM buses that replaced the
streetcars lurks in the background.

09:24 We're again aboard a car, going down the
center of Woodward in the median.

09:32. You know, the old guy (Mr. Klaan I think
his name was) across the street from us on
Puritan had an old fire truck in his garage. I
got to see it once, and would hear the bell
clanging when his grandkids came to visit.
This could be it. We're on Woodward just north
of the Highland Park city limits at McNichols
(6 Mile) Road standing in the median. Wonder
how many of those old cars have survived?

09:46 Now looking south across 6 Mile, with the
6 Mile Uptown theater on the right. I saw many
a movie there. In the late 60's it became an "art" theater. A friend of mine worked there and
would let me in; I remember seeing "Medium Cool"
and "I Am Curious (Yellow)".

09:51 More prominent Highland Park citizens
posing by a streetcar whose days are numbered
to... one. Adios Detroit, hola Mexico D.F.

10:10 I think the reason this guy has the Mexican
style clothing is the fact that the streetcars
were sold to Mexico City. They lived on another
25 years or so there. One of them survives; it's
owned by the Michigan Transit Museum but not open
to public view.

10:20 Passing by the Chrysler Corporation marching
band. Chrysler headquarters were in Highland Park
as well as Ford. Chrysler stayed until the late
1980's when they moved north to Auburn Hills.

10:26 In downtown Detroit, other end of the
Woodward car line.

11:26 I'm thinking this is Ford Park along
Woodward, but can't say for sure. My father was
a member of the Highland Park Lions Club.

Reviewer: Spuzz - - September 29, 2003
Subject: 10 smokestacks come down!
A silent flick which details activities in the Ford plant. The 2 source films could'nt be more different. One looks to be made in the 20's featuring an overview of the plant. The film then goes to a negative for a few seconds and turns into a positive, and a man standing next to a car. We're startled for a second, thinking we're still in the 1920's footage, but actually, this was made in the late 50's it looks like, a man with crutches unveils a plaque that tells the plant is the birthplace of the Model T. After that, there's nothing to do except to tear it down. And to hammer the point down, we get four different angles of the smoke stack coming down. Sort of bizarre.