Grand Ledge Chair Company Plant - Grand Ledge, MI
N 42° 45.395 W 084° 45.329
16T E 683670 N 4736227
Grand Ledge Chair Company Plant operated from 1906 to 1981 in Grand Ledge, Michigan.
Waymark Code: WM18M67
Location: Michigan, United States
Date Posted: 08/21/2023
Views: 1
The Grand Ledge Chair Company Plant is located near the western edge of the city of Grand Ledge. It occupies a seven-acre site on level ground atop a wooded bluff overlooking the Grand River. A Pere Marquette Railroad line forms the northwest border of the complex and crosses the Grand River directly adjacent to the plant's river frontage. The plant contains three buildings and four structures. The principal building, which terminates the view along the short street providing access to the site, is a long and narrow, three-story, brick factory building built in 1906. The site also contains a small, frame factory building, brick power house, and veneer storage shed built of clay tile.
The factory complex is located at the end of Perry Street, a short, minor street containing several modest, turn-of-the-century, frame houses. The 1906 factory stands at the end of the street and is highly visible from the West Jefferson Street intersection, the ornamental central part of the facade, crowned by a water tower, being positioned directly in line with Perry Street. The grounds in front of the 1906 building to the right of Perry Street and behind the 1906 building back to the river bluff are level lawn areas containing a scattering of old deciduous trees. Some parts of the grounds have become somewhat overgrown in the years since furniture manufacturing ceased.
The 1906 factory building is 353.5 feet long by fifty feet wide and is three stories in height and built of cream-color brick with red brick accents. This structure, which housed the assembly, finishing, and shipping processes of the chair company, exemplifies heavy, timber, mill construction typical of the tum-of-the-century period. The building has a flat, built-up roof. Except for enclosed staircases, the building interior on each floor is largely a single open space with exposed plank flooring above floor joists for a ceiling and chamfered-edge vertical posts. The building's facade has a regular fenestration of double-hung windows set into segmental-arch heads. The portion of the facade fronting on Perry Street is treated in a somewhat more ornamental fashion, with a stepped-gable design containing in its center the main entrance and tripartite windows in the second and third stories above it. The parapets have corbelled brick detailing below the cornice line. Perched atop the roof on a square, brick base and in line with the main entrance is a wood-slat water tank held together with steel bands. Water penetration since the closing of the furniture operation has caused considerable damage to framing members as well as brickwork in parts of the building.
Immediately to the west of the 1906 building is a low, steel-frame, sheet-steel-sided warehouse structure constructed in 1957-58, Used originally for cutting, shaping, and assembly operations, this replaced the original three-story, frame factory building at this site.-
Grand Ledge Chair Company
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New York Times article about the conversion of the factory to apartments which still stand today.