Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Factory #66

Here is a photo showing Dominic and Venus Zsigo. They are standing at the corner of Carton st. and Industrial ave. Factory #31/66 is in the background. I found this at Washington Post.com and this is what it said: Dominic Zsigo and his wife Venus, pose for a portrait in front of the Buick plant in Flint, Mich., where he works. They are on a week long total layoff, however he worries about being laid off permanently. His wife recently lost her job at a Ford plant.



These photo's show the oldest surviving piece of the original Oak Park factory #01. Factory #01 was built in 1906. These trusses were a later addition to factory #01, added around 1909. They were then removed during an expansion in 1926 and reused here in a cost saving measure. This would be the new crankshaft factory at Buick. In the photo at top, the yellow arrow shows the factory #01 trusses have not yet been erected. The green arrow shows the factory #12 trusses already in place. Factory #12 had it's roof raised in 1925. The mid '20s was a time of great change at the Buick factories. This factory eventually became the north end of factory #31 after World War II. Factory #31 or building 66A was built in 1940. These photos are both looking east from the corner of Industrial avenue and Gillespie street. This photo was supplied by Kevin Burger. He took the picture July 26, 2009.
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Factory #01 Roof Trusses

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hello Gerry. This Blog is terrific - a great site with the largest electronic collection that I have found. Great job!

I worked in this building (Factory 31), and did not understand why in this photo you cannot see the trusses for the east-west wing with the trusses from Factory 1. I actually went to that location at one point to find out... I believe that the trusses may already be in place in this photo.

The issue is that the trusses don't start until about 10-feet in from the wall... this can be seen on the section with the trusses from Factory 12. The trusses in this front section actually block visibility to the ones on the other wing.

I had not considered that possibly the building was under construction. It is possible that this section did not have the roof on at that point on the back wing. The brick does look lighter on that back section in this photo.

I do notice that the windos are installed in the entire building, including one open on the back wing. I wonder when the windows would have been installed during construction, but I do know that the windows were installed after the roof when Factory 11 was built in 1909.

I think that a photo from that exact spot would answer this question!

Unfortunately I am now in North Carolina, so I cannot quickly get a photo.

Thanks for the great blog.

Don Bent