Old Ford Motors factory in Kentucky
Ford Motor Company Louisville Plant - Reynolds Building, Louisville Kentucky
The Ford Motor Company, Louisville plant, built in 1915 and located at 2500 South 3rd Street in Louisville was the Ford Company's exclusive production facility in Louisville from 1915-1925, and served a multi-state area. It was designed by architect Albert Kahn, a master of industrial design. With Ford's backing, Kahn became the nation's foremost architect of mass production industrial architecture during the first quarter of the twentieth century. The Louisville Plant represents Ford and Kahn's 1910-1916 phase of plant design, when the company employed assembly-line production in multi-story, reinforced concrete, gravity-flow industrial buildings.
The first automobiles in the United States were individually crafted by blacksmiths, toolmakers and machinists and powered by gasoline, steam, or electricity. Enterprising businessmen teamed up with these amateur inventors to create the American automobile industry. In 1910, approximately three hundred companies were producing automobiles in the United States. Within a few short years, most companies went out of business or were bought out by larger competitors. Of these, two giants eventually emerged: Ford and General Motors. In 1911, Ford's first full year of operation at its Highland Park complex, the company held twenty percent of the American car market. The dramatic production innovations - namely the moving assembly line - brought reliability and allowed price reductions that resulted in Ford's share of the market leaping to forty-eight percent.
Within eighteen months of the first experiments with moving line assembly at Highland Park, assembly lines were used in almost all Ford's plants, especially during final chassis assembly. Ford's output of Model Ts grew dramatically during this period, from 300,000 vehicles in 1914, to more than two million manufactured in 1923. From August 1st through November 1st, 1915, Ford production was two-thirds greater than the same period in 1914. By 1915 the company had become the largest selling and service organization in the country and was reported to have manufactured one-half of all the nation's motorcars.
Prices for Model Ts declined significantly, from $780 in 1910 to $360 in 1916, and as demand grew, Ford implemented a major expansion program, building assembly plants in scattered location across the country, including branch plants in Cleveland (1914), Cincinnati (1915) and Louisville (1915). Ford's principal architect, Albert Kahn, designed the plans and structural components of these three plants and Emest Wilby designed the Beaux Arts flourishes to their exteriors and showrooms. The buildings were similar in many aspects, including their reinforced concrete structural components, decorative veneers, and floor plans. The Louisville plant had the most complex plan of the three assembly plants mentioned.
Construction of branch assembly plants proved essential to Ford's national marketing strategy and the decentralization of its manufacturing operations. By building branch plants, Ford was not only able to provide cars to its dealers, but was better able to provide "around the corner service" to its customers. With a nation-wide network of factories for parts, customers could avoid returning the cars to the Detroit factory for major repairs. According to an early company brochure:
By 1936, Ford had no less than sixteen of these facilities located throughout the United States.
In 1912 the Ford Motor Company opened its first Louisville branch assembly plant and showroom at 931 South 3rd Street near West Breckinridge. The company converted an existing building and the seventeen employees, which included sales and administrative staff, turned out twelve Model T Fords per day. The cars were assembled by hand from component parts shipped to the site. According to Sanborn maps of the period, Ford's original branch assembly plant was not optimal but convenient. This section of Louisville was the hub of light manufacturing, close to both the downtown core and first ring suburbs, and close to various forms of transportation-electric streetcar, railroad and river. Given the relatively modest output capacity of twelve units per day, it seems reasonable to conjecture that the bulk of vehicles were purchased locally.
The site chosen for the second Louisville Ford Motor Company assembly plant was the southwest corner of Third Avenue (now 3rd Street) at the intersection of Eastern Parkway. According to maps and architectural drawings, the site was adjacent to the Louisville & Nashville and Southern Company railroads, and a railroad spur already connected the two major railways through the site. (This spur would be slightly rerouted during construction of the building.) The components for Model Ts were shipped in by train to the assembly factory. The site was convenient to working class neighborhoods already established just west of South Third Street, which had sprouted up during the growth of the Kentucky Wagon Company earlier in the century. It was also directly across from the Louisville Industrial School of Reform.
Besides being near its supply of parts and workforce, the site was convenient to its supply of buyers.
The building held a prominent location at the western terminus of Eastern Parkway. Before the 3rd Street viaduct was cut, the building's strategically placed showroom was at eye-level to those stopping at the tracks or waiting on traffic, making it an ideal marketing tool to residents of the high-end residential suburbs located south and east of the plant. The plant's high production capabilities meant that not all of the automobiles assembled there might be sold in the city; these could be shipped out by rail to meet other markets' demand.
A system of gravity chutes, ramps, and chain conveyors were used in this multi-story Ford plant for the transfer of parts from one operation to another. Parts were hoisted from freight cars to upper levels by hooks and chains and lowered by gravity along vertical chutes and ramps through the various processes of manufacturing and subassembly. Automobile bodies were generally attached to the chassis on the lower levels.
Ford was so optimistic about the value of his second Louisville assembly plant that a future fifth-story expansion was noted on the architectural plans. Ford also had Albert Kahn draw up designs for a four-story side addition to the building. Although production grew to two hundred cars a day, and the plant employed seven hundred Louisvillians, these additions were never made. However, a single-story addition was made to the building in 1923 and subsequently removed in 1935 by the Reynolds Metals Company to building a parking garage. (That parking structure was removed by the subsequent owners, University of Louisville.) Production of automobiles ceased during World War I, when the plant converted to production for the War. Also shortly after construction of the 3rd Street assembly plant, Kahn reconceived his notions of effective industrial design.
During the early 1920s, Ford Motor Company embarked on further expansion of the moving assembly operation. Ford's 1917 River Rouge plant showed the efficiencies of one-story over multi-story assembly plants, so Ford gradually phased out the older branch plants. In 1924, construction began on a new Louisville plant situated along the Ohio River at 1400 Southwestern Parkway. On February 2nd, 1925, the plant was completed on a 22.5-acre site. According to the Encyclopedia of Louisville the plant employed one thousand people and was capable of producing four hundred cars a day.
The 1924, Louisville Ford Motor Plant demonstrates Kahn's change in planning schemes from a factory under one roof to a factory on one floor. This exemplifies one of Kahn's major contributions to industrial architecture, responsiveness to the developing needs of the assembly line procedure.
Additionally the plant continued Kahn's tradition of decorating the exterior of the building to promote the retail aspects of car sales and distribute. Many customers still traveled to the production plants themselves to shop for and take delivery of their cars.
This single-story plant served Ford Motor Company's needs well into the 1950s when again, new demands and technologies required construction of another plant. Henry Ford and Albert Kahn had died in 1947 and 1942 respectively; however, the enterprises they founded continued to collaborate.
To serve increasing consumer demand, Ford Motor Company needed a larger facility better suited to its production needs. Albert Kahn Associates, Inc., designed the 1955 Fern Valley Road/Grade Lane Ford Motor Company facility, but its exterior was far less elaborate than either the 1915 or 1925 plants. This factory had more than two million square feet on a one-hundred-and-eighty-acre tract of land. On August 4th, 1969, production of heavy trucks was transferred to a new sixty-eight-acre factory.
Kahn's Industrial Designs
From 1908 to 1940 Albert Kahn, a German-born architect who had begun his practice in Detroit in 1892, designed most of Ford's assembly plants. Kahn's early work was primarily residential; it wasn't until 1901 that he was commissioned to do his first industrial building for the Boyer Machine Company in Detroit. In 1903 Kahn completed design work for the Packard Motor Company, a commission that ranks as one of the first reinforced concrete industrial buildings in the United States.
As such, the Packard Motor Company factory represented a departure from the standard tradition of mill construction in industrial buildings. Mill construction, with its heavy timber framing and wooden floors, was not well suited to the needs of modern assembly plants, especially automobile plants, where engine lubricants and oils posed extreme fire hazards. Reinforced concrete construction, on the other hand, allowed for greater floor loads, improved vibration damping and reduced the risk of fire, and more importantly, it reduced the frequency of interior posts and columns.
While best known as an architect, Albert Kahn also was co-founder of the Trussed Concrete Steel Company, a Detroit based establishment that manufactured steel reinforcement at Youngstown, Ohio. For many years Julius Kahn, Albert's brother, served as president of the company. The Kahns' chief innovation in this context was a patented system of reinforced concrete that featured a continuous bar and interconnected web members as the basic reinforcing elements. The trussed steel bar featured horizontal flanges or "wings" that served as rigidly connected diagonals, making a stronger and nearly fireproof unit of the main bar and shear members. The 1915 Louisville plant employed Kahn's system of reinforcement.
During the early part of the twentieth century, Kahn teamed up with Emest Wilby. During this time, Wilby's intricately patterned exterior veneers of brick and terra cotta helped promote retail sales. Although thought of as a Beaux Arts style building, Wilby and Khan chose to break from the strict Beaux Arts tradition of using elaborate architectural detailing to differentiate the main entryway of the 2500 South Third Street plant. Wilby and Kahn chose not to break the rhythm of the eleven bays, but instead placed the public entrances and showroom at the arc of the facade. An answer of why this was the case may be found in this quote by Kahn, "So long as the lines of the building indicate that there is behind them a sustaining skeleton, and so long as they do not mask the reality and pretend to be the sustaining material, there is no offense." This modular approach is a harbinger of the cleaner lines of the International style that was to define factory buildings for decades to come.
Building Description
The Ford Motor Company Louisville Plant is located three miles south of downtown Louisville near the University of Louisville Belknap Campus. The assembly plant sits at the southwest corner of South 3rd Street and at the western end Eastern Parkway, adjacent to the Southern Railway tracks. The building's immediate site is characterized by asphalt parking lots surrounded by tall chain link fences topped by protective barbed wire. Surrounding the building are industrial properties to south and west, a seven-acre recreational city park to the north, a residential neighborhood to the west, and the expansive University of Louisville Belknap Campus to the east. The building, designed by Albert Kahn, was erected in 1915.
The four-story industrial building's perimeter measures approximately 160 feet by 115 feet by 16 feet by 238 feet. The trapezoidal building follows the contours of the angle formed by the intersection of the Southern Railway tracks with South 3rd Street, while allowing space for parking on the south side of the lot. Brick-veneered vertical piers and recessed horizontal panels are divided into wide rectilinear bays, which echo the reinforced concrete column and slab framing underneath. Typical fenestration is rectangular, bounded on each side by brick column facings the width of the capital behind. Kahn's design for the windows allowed generous amounts of natural illumination to enter the plant through large window bays. The original multi-light windows with pivoting sashes allowed for ventilation of the building and appear to be similar to the "United Steel Sash" advertised by Kahn in the Trussed Concrete Steel Company catalogue. On the building's top, two interior elevators and stairwells pierce the flat roof and are accompanied by a square chimneystack, skylights and a 40,000 gallon steel water storage tank. Also resting on the roof near the southeast corner is a deteriorated Quonset hut. Reynolds Metals Company used this c. 1950 metal structure as a boardroom.
The 3rd Street elevation (east and north facade) rises four stories and is faced with red brick and glazed white terra cotta. The facade is eleven bays wide and changes direction by arcing to fill the angle of its lot. The facade, with its Beaux Arts influences, is divided into three elevational zones: ground or first floor, intermediate (second and third floors) and roof. A belt course of white terra cotta divides the first floor from the other zones. The spanning panels of the intermediate zone are punctuated by squares of white terracotta. At the fourth story, each pier is topped by a stylized 'capital' detail, and the spanning panels between each are filled with ornamental brickwork. A minimal terra cotta cornice with dentils and rosettes connects these 'capitals.' Although plywood now protects the lowest story from vandals, a site visit and Kahn's architectural drawings both indicate that there were two single leaf entryways to the building on this elevation: one to the showroom and another to the office hallway.
The south side elevation is the most utilitarian and has suffered the most alterations. The reason for its austerity was Kahn's intention to connect a full four-story addition. A single-story addition was made during the Ford Motor Company's occupation. A parking structure was also located adjacent to the south elevation but the University of Louisville tore this down sometime during their ownership.
The single bay northwest elevation connects the front and rear facades. This windowless bay of the building is enlivened by the careful application of ornamental brickwork within the inset panels that communicate interior zones on this exterior elevation. This brickwork bears a striking similarity to Ford's Highland Park Plant and to a pair of academic buildings at the University of Michigan, all of which Kahn designed with the help of his assistant architect Ernest Wilby.
The rear elevation, or west facade, rises four stories from a concrete loading dock. As with the front facade, this one is faced with red brick and glazed white terra cotta; however, ornamental detailing is limited to the terra cotta elements - the brick pattern is running bond. Nine full-sized bays and one quarter-sized bay make up this elevation. The loading dock is protected from the elements by a flat metal canopy suspended by metal wires. Three wood-framed additions, clad in brick-patterned asphalt sheathing, project out onto the loading dock.
On the interior, the concrete structural system permitted an open floor plan for assembly and production. Widely spaced octagonal columns, three feet in diameter with plain octagonal capitals, support the slabs in a nearly square plan grid. Inside the automobile showroom, the same structural system was used, but instead of plain octagonal capitals, these capitals were cast with fleurs-de-lis, rosettes, and swag detailing. Although currently hidden from view by an acoustical tile dropped ceiling, the capitals are extant. Other original interior features include tile and terrazzo flooring in the showroom, toilets and office spaces, pipe railing in the workers stairwells, and wood panel office partitions. The current owner, The McGoodwin Company, plans to bring the ceilings back to their original height and clean and preserve the building's original details.
After the Ford Motor Company left this building to move to a larger plant located at 1400 Southwestern Parkway, the Packard Motor Company briefly occupied the building. During their occupation apparently no changes were made. The next owner of the building was the Reynolds Metals Company. A photograph shows that by c. 1950 the Reynolds Metals Company had cleaned and painted Kahn's steel windows. However, they had replaced the original front door with an aluminum one emblazoned with the Reynolds Metals Company trademark: a knight slaying a dragon. In addition, the Reynolds Metals Company installed Art Deco detailing to the doors of the main lobby elevators. Sometime after the photograph was taken, large aluminum awnings were added, and the window openings were in-filled with a mix of glass block and smaller aluminum sash windows. The building's new owner, The McGoodwin Company, intends to remove the metal awnings and restore the windows back to their original multi-light metal sash configuration. Inside the building the open floor plan allowed for numerous partitions to be made during the Reynolds Metals Company occupation of the building. Other interior changes date to the building's ownership by the University of Louisville, when the building was used for classrooms and offices and storage.
Alteration to the site during the Ford Motor Company's occupation includes the creation of a viaduct that allowed 3rd Street to pass under the Southern Railway tracks c. 1920. The c. 1950 removal of a brick and wood vertical post fence dates to the Reynolds Company occupation. The removal of the railroad spur that once ran to the plant dates to the University of Louisville occupation.
Construction photo (1915)
Interior of Ford Motor Company, Louisville Plant during final stages of construction (1915)
Showroom during construction (1915)
Construction of 3rd Street Viaduct (1920)
Showing alterations made by the Reynolds Metals Company (1955)
Primary facade (east) (2005)
Primary facade (east) close up of terra cotta belt course above first floor (2005)
Northwest elevation, part of primary facade (east) and west elevation (2005)
Looking northwest across S. 3rd Street, showing primary facade (east) and south elevation (2005)
Looking northwest across S. 3rd Street, showing primary facade (east) with 1915 decorative terracotta and brickwork and c. 1960 metal awnings and glass block (2005)
Primary facade (east) and corner of south elevation. Note indications that a single story addition on south elevation was removed (2005)
South elevation and parking lots. Note the shed roof and Quonset hut additions added by Reynolds Metals Company in 1950s (2005)
Rear (west) elevation and northwest elevation. Note loading dock and decorative terra cotta and brickwork (2005)
Northwest elevation cornice. Note intricate brickwork and terra cotta (2005)
Looking south on roof towards 1915 elevator shaft on right and c. 1950 additions to left with 1915 water tower in background (2005)
Interior 2nd Floor. Looking south showing octagonal concrete columns rising above partially dismantled dropped ceiling (2005)
Interior 1st Floor. Looking south showing octagonal concrete column and 1915 office partition (2005)
