— Ford's Landing Park —

One of the last and most architecturally important of the industrial facilities constructed on the waterfront was the Alexandria Branch of the Ford Motor Company. Designed by Albert Kahn (1896-1942) and built on wood pilings over the Potomac River in 1932, it served as a wholesale distribution and service facility for automobiles until 1942, when the U.S. Navy put it into temporary service as a munitions factory.

Kahn is internationally known as a pioneering architect of modern industrial buildings. He designed more than 2,000 factories worldwide. Emphasizing function and efficiency over aesthetics, his structures were designed for adaptability to rapidly evolving manufacturing methods. Kahn's Ford Plant in Alexandria was composed of two dissimilar buildings visually united with simplified Art Deco detail. The bulk of the facility, along Union Street, was a nearly two-acre, one-story, steel-frame service building. Kahn created large, unobstructed spaces using his hallmark sawtooth-shaped butterfly road trusses which contained skylights to bring sunlight into the interior. The pavilion you are standing under reflects this design. A traditional administration building with a large "Ford" sign on its roof was oriented to the river instead of the City, its primary fa?ade extending 204 feet along the Potomac's edge. The visitor was greeted by a lobby and offices paneled in exotic woods and fitted with custom-built furnishings created by Walter Dorwin Teague (1883-1960), one of the most influential industrial designers of the 20th century. These buildings were long an Alexandria landmark, prominently visible from the Maryland shore and the Woodrow Wilson Bridge.

Cook Inlet Region, Inc., bought the Ford Plant property 1985 and planned to create here a residential development to be named "Ford's Landing." Eakin/Youngentob Associates purchased the property in 1996, intending to preserve the Ford Plant. After extensive analysis, they determined that the wood pilings which supported the building and its piers were dangerously unsound. The structure was demolished in 1996.

The new townhouses and boardwalk that stand on the property today were constructed in accordance with a new plan approved by the City Council and Board of Architectural Review in 1996. The site design recreates the Old Town grid pattern, with all streets ending at the waterfront and 18th- and 19th-century industrial-style buildings lining the waterfront boardwalk. Eakin/Youngentob Associates began construction in September of 1996 and completed construction in early 1999.

The exhibit panels on the history of the Ford's Landing site were underwritten by Eakin/Youngentob.

(photo captions)
Albert Kahn (1896-1942) designed many buildings for the Ford Motor Company and other manufacturers. His flexible industrial designs were well suited to Ford's assembly line production. (Illustration: Albert Koton Associates, Inc.)

The Alexandria Ford Plant, designed by industrial architect Albert Kahn, was constructed over a pier in the Potomac River. The building's ornate administration wing and rooftop sign faced the river. In the assembly area, to the rear, butterfly trusses run north and south, allowing light into the building from above. (Illustration: Alexandria Library, Special Collections)

Ford's Landing, a residential community, was designed by the Dessard Architectural Group to reflect the Alexandria waterfront's rich industrial heritage. (Illustration: Eakin/Youngentob Associates)

This detail, taken from the original blueprints for the Ford Plant, shows the design of the butterfly trusses which were a pioneering feature of the building. The sky-lit trusses allowed daylight into the assembly portion of the plant. This truss design can be seen today in the pavilion directly overhead. (Illustration: City of Alexandria Archives and Records Center)

On October 29, 1996, Alexandria City Councilman William C. Cleveland, Councilman David G. Speck, Mayor Kerr J. Donley, and Councilwoman Rededa S. Pepper, joined LeRoy Eakin, III, and Robert Youngentob at the groundbreaking ceremony for the Ford's Landing residential community (Illustration: Eakin Youngentob Associates)

(List of the seven historical markers on display in Alexandria's Ford's Landing Park): Earliest Inhabitants 1000 BC - 1600 AD · Early Alexandria 1700-1800 · The Federal District 1791-1846 · The Civil War Battery Rodgers 1861-1865 · The Alexandria Marine Railway Company 1849-1900s · Battery Cove New Shipyard 1911-1922 · The Ford Plant 1932-1996.

Show me all markers in:  Alexandria, VA  |  22314  |  Virginia  |  United States of America

The Earliest Inhabitants
Battery Cove Filled: A New Shipyard
Early Alexandria and Keith's Wharf
The Civil War and Battery Rodgers
The Alexandria Marine Railway
The Federal District and Alexandria
Guarding the Potomac
The Fitting-Out Dock
Battery Rodgers
The Race to Build Ships on Jones Point

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