A while back, for the Fourth of July, I posted a story about Liberty Motors, which was briefly in business about 90 years ago. Liberty's patriotic founder Percy Owens built the company's headquarters on Detroit's east side as an exact replica of Philadelphia's Independence Hall. That means that Detroit is the only metropolitan area of the country with two replicas of America's birthplace, the other being the clock tower that Henry Ford built as the centerpiece to the museum in Dearborn that bears his name.
It was a beautiful 4th of July in Detroit this year: almost no humidity and temperatures in the low 70s. After attending some friends' annual barbecue, I decided to see if I could get some better photos of the Liberty headquarters. After Liberty went out of business in 1926, in time the factory passed into the hands of the Budd company, and it was used to stamp body panels. When Budd was bought out, the facility became the property of ThyssenKrupp-Budd, where body components were made until 2006. The building has been vacant since 2007. The dismantling of the factory part of the facility was documented by Paul Clemens in his 2010 book, Punching Out: One Year in a Closing Auto Plant, published by Doubleday (excerpt here).
The photos I used in that earlier post were taken during winter and from some distance away. Since the site was fenced off, with a closed gate, the only way I was able to get a view was from the employee parking lot of Chrysler's Jefferson North assembly plant, which is immediately adjacent to the Liberty HQ and plant. Putting cameras lenses through the gaps in a chain link fence and using the zoom function doesn't exactly yield optimum results. Also, it was the middle of winter and a cold, grey day.
Today, though, the conditions were ideal. The weather was fine, the sky was blue and the only problem was that because of the holiday, the Chrysler plant was closed and the gates to the employee parking lot were closed. Oh well. As I started to return home I was driving north on Conner and approached the traffic light at Charlevoix, where the Liberty building is located. I figured 'what the hell', made the turn into the driveway and pulled up to the gate. After I exited the car, the security guard came out and I explained that I write about cars and because it was the Fourth, I wanted to get some photos of the building. Surprisingly he volunteered to call his supervisor, who apparently gave the go ahead, because the next thing that happened is that he pulled open the gate, telling me, half seriously, just not to mess with any of the Ram and Dodge trucks that were being stored on the property, awaiting shipment. I pointed to the Audi SQ5 that I have this week for review and said, "That's a sixty thousand dollar Audi, I'm not going to mess with any pickup trucks." He laughed and waved me through the gate.
Ram pickup trucks being stored before shipment. The former Liberty Motors site is adjacent to Chrysler's Jefferson-North assembly plant. Full gallery here.
I'm glad that I asked because the access allowed me to shoot these photos. I generally will not shoot "ruin porn" in my hometown. It's lazy journalism and lazy photography. It's hard taking a photo of a ruin that isn't elegiac or poetic. At first I had second thoughts because the building is a bit dilapidated. The security guard told me that it has been "trashed" inside. One or two of the window panes in the Independence Hall part of the complex have been broken out. A carved wooden finial from one of the balustrades on the tower had fallen to the porch below. Percy Owens would be sad.
Still, the building doesn't appear to be too far gone and while there is indeed a huge surplus of commercial real estate inside the Detroit city limits, it'd be nice to see someone at least show the Liberty headquarters some care. According to Wikipedia, ThyssenKrupp sold off its North American body operations in 2006 to Martinreae International, another automotive supplier, but it's not clear who owns the building. Either way, both of those firms are multi-billion dollar multinationals that could probably afford to put some money into at least a minimal preservation of a building that is a rather unique piece of architecture and automotive history. As car enthusiasts we sometimes look down our noses at "clones" and replicas of important cars, but sometimes even a replica has historical value worth conserving.
Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth, a realistic perspective on cars & car culture and the original 3D car site. If you found this post worthwhile, you can get a parallax view at Cars In Depth. If the 3D thing freaks you out, don't worry, all the photo and video players in use at the site have mono options. Thanks for reading – RJS
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