When a friend kindly offered to drive me home to the Detroit area after a semester at college, he had one request: He wanted to see a car factory. I was skeptical I could pull that off—but lo and behold, Ford offers tours of its Rouge Factory as part of The Henry Ford museum complex.
Most factories are not known for their design, but parts of the complex were designed over a century ago by legendary Detroit architect Albert Kahn. Nor are factories known for the art they inspired, but Diego Rivera spent months at the factory doing research for his Detroit Industry Murals, featured in the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Many factories are, however, known for labor strife, and the Rouge factory has that too: 1937's Battle of the Overpass. Combine all that and you get a working factory that's also on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.
