The giant tire began life as a Ferris wheel at the New York World Fair in 1964.
Uniroyal plant grew up with Auto Industry
A looming gray fortress of concrete and brick across from Belle Isle on the Detroit River, Uniroyal's Jefferson Avenue plant had been another local landmark for 73 years. Construction on the first buildings in the riverfront complex began in August 1905. Completed in October 1906, the plant housed the Morgan & Wright Bicycle Tire Co., once the world's largest marker of bicycle tires. Morgan & Wright had migrated from Chicago to link up with Detroit's developing auto industry. In its early years, the tire plant housed several of the annual Detroit Auto Shows. Initially the 750 people who worked there produced 350 tires daily. In 1906, company President Samuel P. Colt commented on the auto-rubber connection: "Judging from the past, the growth of the automobile tire business will be of momentous importance in the future. Ten years ago, rubber tires were not important. Now they consume one-half of the raw unprocessed rubber product."
In 1906, the complex started with 900,000 square feet of floor space; by 1929 it grew to 2.5 million square feet. By the 1980s the complex included 20 buildings on 20 acres with 3 million square feet. In 1914, U.S. Rubber Company acquired and expanded the firm which later became Uniroyal. In 1929, the company decided to concentrate its auto-related production in the city. The Detroit facility brought new efficiency to the tire-making industry in the early '30s. A new process nicknamed the "merry-go-round" introduced the efficiencies of assembly line production which substantially reduced material handling and dependence on skilled labor and training.
The Uniroyal plant was a magnet for immigrants from Europe, and the South looking for rich job opportunities offered by an expanding auto industry. Like their neighboring auto plants, the Uniroyal facility sizzled as a hotbed of union organizing activity in the 1930s. The Akron, Ohio, based United Rubber Workers union gained certification as the workers' bargaining agent on St. Patrick's Day in 1937. Four years later, U.S. Rubber became the first multi-plant rubber company to negotiate a company-wide contract with the union. This union pioneered the six-hour workday as a job-sharing device during the Depression and the notion spread to other unions in Detroit.
But labor peace was not to last. The short workday ended when the plant joined the war effort. New priorities required making aircraft tires and rubber aircraft gasoline tanks.
During its peak in the mid-1940s, 10,000 workers produced 60,000 tires per day. Many of the workers migrated to the city to work at Uniroyal and at other Detroit "Arsenal of Democracy" plants. Some would share boarding rooms, often sleeping in shifts, and shuttling between jobs at Uniroyal and nearby auto assembly plants. Eighty-hour workweeks were common. But by the late '70s, sales had dropped sharply and operation fell into the red. Like steel and autos, tire manufacturing had become a mature, low-growth, low-profit margin business. People bought fewer cars, which meant fewer tires sold to auto manufacturers. Also the new radial tires, which lasted much longer than conventional bias-belted tires, resulted in less replacement business.
The tire industry battled over market share, with each of the big four - Goodyear, Firestone, Uniroyal and B.F. Goodrich - scrambling to keep position in the face of emerging foreign competition from Michelin and Bridgestone. The struggle hit Uniroyal especially hard. By January of 1980, the company announced plans to shut down the riverfront facility, idling its remaining 1,700 workers.
The city of Detroit purchased the riverfront property in 1980 and razed the buildings in 1985, with high hopes of developing the prime riverfront property. Today the still vacant land offers a clear view of the river and Belle Isle.
The only remaining symbol of the once proud Detroit tire manufacturing industry is the landmark giant tire on I-94 in Allen Park. Like the giant stove, it starred at another fair, the 1964 World's Fair in New York. The gigantic tire doubled as a Ferris wheel. About 2 million people rode the wheel, including Jacqueline Kennedy and the Shah of Iran.
After the fair, the mammoth 86-foot tire was dismantled and shipped by rail to Detroit, where it was reassembled outside a Uniroyal sales office. Later the sales office moved but the tire stayed put, becoming a symbol of Detroit's industrial might.
The interior's Ferris wheel assembly went to an amusement park and a new framework of structural steel was built to support the giant attraction. The tire weighs more than 100 tons and took 130 days to rebuild. The tire, described as "the largest ever built," is designed to withstand hurricane force winds, and certainly blowouts.
In 1990, Michelin Tire bought Uniroyal-Goodrich Tire Co, and in 1994, announced plans to renovate the structure. The tire's fiberglass cover, washed, painted and updated, emerged with a sporty new look. A company official, Lowell Eckart, Uniroyal brand marketing manager, said: "Updating the giant tire is symbolic of the revitalization that the Uniroyal brand itself is experiencing," he said. "Given the brand's prominent position as an original-equipment supplier, it is fitting that the symbol of the brand's close connection to Detroit be refurbished." The Uniroyal plant attracted generations of men and women seeking a better life and a better future. Now only the giant tire remains to bear witness to the working lives of those who sweated and toiled in the riverfront factory that helped build the city of Detroit.
Detroit's giant stove and tireBy Vivian M. Baulch and Patricia Zacharias / The Detroit News
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