BAC LOCAL 2 member John Hejnosz does some fine work tuck-pointing brick at the Durant-Dort Carriage Co. preservation project in Flint.

FLINT – General Motors is giving its birthplace a bit of a modern makeover.

Renovation work by brick masons began in September on the Durant-Dort Carriage Co. preservation project on Water Street in the city’s historic Carriage Town. GM has designated the 25,000-square-foot building “Factory One,” and together with the three-story former office building across the street, the automaker considers the site the birthplace of the company.

GM North America President Mark Reuss signed an agreement May 1, 2013 to purchase the former carriage works, built in 1880, while announcing that GM will provide funds to operate and act as curator of the city-owned office building (1896), which is occupied by the Durant-Dort Carriage Co. Foundation.

“We’re going to be the curator, the funder, for keeping the original Durant-Dort Office Building where General Motors actually was born,” Reuss said in an MLiveinterview last year when the deal was announced. “The carriage facility, and the business of that building – we’re going to take care of that and make sure that it’s maintained and possibly make a little museum out of it.” GM has been considering using the former plant as a showcase for some of its vehicles, but no plans have been finalized. GM  spokesman Tom Wickham said “whatever we do, it will have some historic tie-in.”

Renovation of the former carriage works has proceeded with Ideal Contracting as the general contractor. Ram Construction Services has been handling the exterior renovation this fall, repairing masonry and shoring up the foundation. New windows and doors will also be installed this winter.

While no General Motors parts or products were produced at the factory, Wickham said the carriage works are “part of the collective past of the auto industry.” And the paperwork forming GM was signed in the office building. “As a company, the site really helps us reconnect to our roots, even before we were founded in 1908,” Wickham said. “It recognizes the lumber industry, the carriage industry, which turned into the automotive industry.”

According to the state historical marker at the factory site: “This one-story mill was built in the early 1880s as part of an unsuccessful effort to diversify the Flint Woolen Mills. In 1886, J. Dallas Dort and Billy Durant began leasing it to manufacture road carts. By the end of its first year of operation, their Flint Road Cart Co. had produced 4,000 vehicles. The company later expanded to produce four-wheeled carriages, wagons, and for a short time, bicycles. The company ceased carriage manufacturing in 1917, and this building and other surrounding factories were converted to the manufacture of the Dort Motor Car.”

The Durant-Dort Carriage Company’s state historical marker across the street says the office building “was originally the headquarters of the Durant-Dort Carriage Company, one of the largest volume producers of horse-drawn vehicles in the United States at the turn of the century. Many of the decisions that led to the birth of General Motors…took place here.” The desk used by William “Billy” Durant, a co-founder of the company that became General Motors, can still be found on the second floor of the office building.

Paul Sobczak, foreman for Ram Construction and a Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers Local 2 member, said he expects their portion of the work on the former carriage factory to be complete at the end of January, but more masonry work will be needed in the future. He said the Ram crew, typically five or six masons, has replaced 5,000 lineal feet of mortar, about 20 percent of the entire building.

“For its age, it’s in pretty good shape,” Sobczak said. The biggest “rough spots” in the walls, he said, were areas in which the brick in various areas “sepentined,” or bowed in and out, and had to be removed and replaced. The Ram crew, he said took out and re-layed 17,000 brick on the building. He said a combination of red, reddish-orange and orange bricks of the same style were found, and blended in as replacements where the original brick was missing or couldn’t be salvaged.

“It has been really cool working on this building; just a neat experience,” Sobczak said. “You don’t often get to work around stuff that’s been around such a long time, and will now continue to be around a long time. Plus you get to work on details and materials that you just don’t usually see. You’re basically giving a great old building new life.”

BUILT IN 1880, the Durant-Dort Carriage Co. factory in Flint is undergoing a significant rehabilitation of its exterior masonry, and is getting new windows and doors. General Motors has dubbed the building “Factory One” – the company’s birthplace. (Photos courtesy of GM)