Peek Through Time: Brooklyn shared in Henry Ford's dream of small, hometown factories - Brooklyn, MI - News Article Locations on Waymarking.com

World War I was nearly over and Henry Ford knew his burgeoning automotive industry was headed for greatness.

So, he built the world's largest manufacturing plant on the River Rouge in Dearborn in 1918. But his true vision at the time was of a much smaller scale.

Ford believed moving his factories away from large cities was the best way to solve employment problems and boost workers' living conditions, so he started buying rural land near water power for "village industry plants."

One of these 20 or so plants in southeastern Michigan came to 211 Mill St. on the River Raisin in Brooklyn after Ford purchased the spot where in 1834 the Rev. Calvin Swain built the mill that built the village.

The old Brooklyn Mill had burned about nine years prior to Ford buying the land in 1921. He hired 100 men in 1938 to build the factory that opened a year later.

Brooklyn's first Ford workers went to an Ypsilanti plant to learn the production and assembly of automobile horns. Under the supervision of plant superintendent Clarence Cline, their first products came off the line in July 1939.

Ford was a good employer that paid top wages. These "city wages" in rural areas made workers happier, he said, which meant less turnover and better quality workmanship.

The idea, Ford is quoted as saying at the time, was not to draw men from the farms but to add industry to farming. It worked, said Robert Wahr, 84, of Brooklyn who went to work at the Brooklyn plant at age 18 and eventually became a foreman.

"Farmers worked there in the winter and in their fields in the summer," Wahr said. "It was a good place to work because you knew everyone in town that worked there and everyone worked together to get the job done. When you go to a big plant, that's not always the way it goes."

In 1942, the Brooklyn plant shifted to wartime production, making parts for B-24 bombers. After the war, it made distributors and supplied 50 percent of Ford's horn buttons and starter switches for cars and trucks.

After Ford died in 1947, company leaders didn't share his love of the village plants. The focus began shifting to large manufacturing facilities that didn't use hydro-electric power.

The smaller plants began to close, but Brooklyn held on. Chuck Tilden, 78, of Cambridge Junction took a job there in 1953, the day after he turned 18, making about 96 cents an hour.

"We had two lines then," he said. "I worked with five women on my line. There were probably about 200 people working there then."

In 1954, the manufacture of starter switches and distributors was moved to Ypsilanti and the Brooklyn plant was converted to a plastics plant. Workers made arm rests, parking light lenses, interior dome light lenses, seat shields, air-vent registers and a variety of knobs and dials.

For many Brooklyn-area families, working at the plant was a family affair. Chuck Tilden's brothers William and Wayne, brother-in-law Hugh Drake and several cousins had jobs there, too.

"I was sure happy when I hired in in 1957," William Tilden, 75, said. "Mowing the lawns was my first job there. Then I did just about every kind of job there was out there including decorator - we painted the plastic knobs for vehicles."

When it converted to a plastics plant, the Brooklyn factory expanded to nearly double its size, but it still couldn't keep up with demand. By 1962, it was only one of three of the "village industry plants" still operating.

In July 1965, though, Ford Motor Co. announced it was leaving Brooklyn in late 1966 for a new plant in Saline.

Despite the lengthy commute, many of the 180 workers in Brooklyn at the time took the company's offer to transfer to the new plant, which was 25 times larger than Brooklyn's and would initially employ 2,000 people.

Working in the large facility just wasn't the same, the Tilden brothers said.

"In Brooklyn, we were one big family," William Tilden said. "We were all close. Every Christmas, we'd have a big get-together and every summer a big picnic at Wampler's Lake."

The property was sold to Jackson Gear Co. in October 1967 for the production of brake parts for heavy-duty trucks. In the mid-1980s, it began phasing out its Brooklyn operations and production ended there in 1987 when the company consolidated in Livonia.

Today, Dan Ross, owner of Napoleon Township's TransPharm PreClinical Solutions, owns the building and hopes to turn it into a culinary and recreation destination called the Old Irish Mill.

"I'm tearing down walls and ceilings," Ross said. "There is a lot of work ahead, but there is a lot of history here that I hope to preserve."

The plant's former Ford workers are pulling for Ross, Chuck Tilden said.

"I hope he does make something of it," he said. "It's a beautiful spot. While we were working, we'd see people fishing along the river or sledding down the hill."

Tidbits
* Ford created his "village industry plants" from 1919-44. Other factories like Brooklyn's were opened in Sharon Township, Northville, Dundee and Manchester.

* Because they were in the country, Ford thought it would be cheaper to operate the plants, but they never proved to be profitable. Historians have called the factories "monuments to a dream that didn't quite come true."

* In its first two years, about 265,000 electric air horns for cars and trucks were produced at the Brooklyn Ford plant.

* After Jackson Gear Co. moved out, the late Lee Koepke, a retired aircraft mechanic, bought the Brooklyn plant in 1990 hoping to turn it into the Yesteryear Power & Equipment Museum.

* The Brooklyn plant site also became part of the Huron-River Raisin route of the Ford Heritage Trail in 1990.

*n 2008, NextGen bought the Brooklyn plant with plans to renovate it as headquarters for its alternative fuel research and development program.

Type of publication: Internet Only When was the article reported?: 04/16/2014 Publication: Mlive.com Article Url: [Web Link] Is Registration Required?: no How widespread was the article reported?: local News Category: Business/Finance

Visit Instructions:
Give the date of your visit at the news location along with a description of what you learned or experienced.

Recent Visits/Logs:

There are no logs for this waymark yet.