Dodge Hamtramck Plant Battery Building and Carpenter Shop Description and Photos
The Battery Building is one of three steel and glass structures erected south of the major production buildings and used for a variety of testing and repairs over the years. This building was used as a repair facility and more recently, to install air conditioning units in finished automobiles. It is a rectangular structure measuring 55 feet by 200 feet and features a gabled roof with a clerestory monitor to admit light.
BATTERY BUILDING, VIEW NORTHEAST, 1916
The Carpenter Shop is the northern fourth of this five-story reinforced concrete building which is 400 long, but only 40 feet wide. That segment was finished in 1914, but the building was later enlarged in 1916 to hold pipe and electrical shops. The building is similar to the other concrete structures of the same vintage by Smith, Hinchman & Grylls, using a flat-slab framing system and ten-sided concrete columns with flared capitals. Up to the closing of the plant in 1980, the building was still the center for much of the maintenance work carried out at Dodge Main.
CARPENTERS SHOP ADDITION, VIEW NORTH, 1916