The first automobile Henry Ford ever built was put together in a brick shed behind the rented half of a double house at 58 Bagley Avenue, on the block now occupied by the Michigan Building. Ford was working as an engineer for the Edison Illuminating Company, and he spent his evenings in the shed on a light, tiller-steered machine with bicycle wheels that he called the Quadricycle. In the early hours of 4 June 1896 it was finished, and it was too wide for the door. The famous version says Ford took an axe to the doorway. Tellings differ on whether it was the frame, the bricks or the door itself, and one history says the landlord fitted a wider door afterwards. Either way, the Quadricycle got out and ran. The block's later history is its own joke. A state marker and most histories say the Michigan Theatre, a 1926 movie palace, was built on the site, although photographs held by The Henry Ford show the old house still standing as a tea room in 1929. The theatre ended as a rock venue, closed in 1976, and the next year the owners spent $525,000 gutting the auditorium for a three-level, 160-space parking deck, leaving the plaster ceiling hanging over the cars. So the birthplace of the Ford is, by the usual account, a parking garage. Ford had the shed reconstructed at Greenfield Village in 1933.
Getting there
42.3348, -83.0534
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