Houses That T Built

These days, the automobile company that operates out of just one assembly plant is rare. A century ago, however, it was commonplace, and like many other automobile manufacturing innovations, the practice of operating multiple plants simultaneously derived from the popularity of the Ford Model T.

Ford Motor Company, however, didn’t just open one or two assembly plants here or there to handle the increased demand for the T. Instead, in the years before Peter E. Martin helped develop the moving assembly line for Ford, the company opened as many as 30 plants across the continent to churn out Ts like there was no tomorrow.

While a few “branch assembly plants” operated here and there, building up cars from knockdown kits (located in Buffalo, Kansas City, Long Island City, and Minneapolis), the initiative to build a network of assembly plants began in December 1911, when Ford’s board of directors sent James Couzens to California in “the interest of establishing Branch Houses, Warehouses, or to make other arrangements for