Ford Piquette Avenue Plant

This is where the modern world’s engine got built. In a handsome 1904 brick factory in Milwaukee Junction — the first building Ford Motor Company ever owned — Henry Ford and a small team tinkered away in a secret third-floor “Experimental Room” and, in 1908, produced the first Model T. The car that put the world on wheels and made Detroit the Motor City was born right here.

After Ford moved production to Highland Park and the moving assembly line, the plant passed through other hands and nearly crumbled — blown-out windows, rotted floors — before volunteers rescued it. Today it’s a National Historic Landmark and one of the great industrial museums anywhere: 65-plus rare early cars (Ford’s “letter” models plus competitors like Cadillac, Packard, and Detroit Electric), original plank floors worn smooth, and that recreated experimental room where it all began. If you visit a single origin story in Detroit, make it this one.