Monday, January 30, 2012

Ford's Cincinnati Assembly Plant


Until Saturday, I'd never heard of this:
By 1915, the growing demand for Model Ts prompted Ford to begin setting up a string of assembly plants throughout the country, including one in a new six-story building at 660 Lincoln Ave. in Walnut Hills.
The 202,000 square-foot building, which later became a Sears, Roebuck warehouse, also still stands alongside Interstate 71. A.J. Kresman, a Cincinnati Realtor working with investors trying to redevelop the vacant structure as a combination office-warehouse site, said the building has concrete floors up to 24 inches thick, which allowed Ford to park assembled cars on the roof.
The Nevins book said Ford was the first Detroit automaker with enough sales to support assembly operations outside of Detroit.
"By shipping parts in a knocked-down state, (Ford) was able to load the components of 26 Model Ts into an ordinary freight car, instead of the three or four complete cars that could otherwise be sent," according to Nevins.
That also allowed Ford to get a lower freight rate from the railroads. According to Ford Motor archives, the Lincoln Avenue plant employed an average of 334 between 1919 and 1940, when it was sold. During that period, it assembled 616,153 cars and generated total sales of $168.6 million, according to the archives.
Ford also operated a parts plant on Fifth Street in Hamilton from about 1921 until 1950, recalls Al Morris, 83, who went to work at the plant in 1940 in one of its tool cribs.
You learn something new every day.  Apparently, this building is currently a part of the Cincinnati Childrens' Hospital campus.

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