National Auto & Truck Museum
On July 6, 1974, a vast piece of Indiana’s automotive history, restored and saved for posterity, marked its opening with a ribbon-cutting ceremony. This was the culmination of extensive planning, fundraising, and negotiations by residents and business owners that kept the iconic Art Deco edifice of the Auburn Cord Duesenberg showroom and corporate offices from becoming a demolished footnote — a history we conveyed in HCC #181. But while the showroom-turned-renowned museum glistened once again on the southern outskirts of Auburn, the remaining pair of corporate buildings standing on the A-C-D property continued to lay dormant.
Constructed in 1923, the Service and New Parts Department building — the oldest of the trio, with a barrel-designed roof — originally housed both the company’s distribution center and new parts inventory on
