American Pickers: Mike CAN'T WAIT To Visit The Abandoned Packard Plant (S24)

[Music] foreign [Music] did you make it to the great state of Michigan yet okay good you need to be in Detroit because I have something epic epic for you okay what you got so you know the Packard plant right absolutely everybody knows the Packard plant okay so have you ever been inside of the Packard plant no sir would you like to go into the Packard plant of course I would are you kidding me hey hey man how you doing how you doing oh pretty good you talk Danny on the phone yes sir dude this is crazy how long you been associated with this property eight years going on now okay it was Christopher Burns I'm from Detroit Michigan I'm the property manager here at the Packer plant this is cool so you probably get people bugging you all day long don't you uh like people trying to come in here constantly I'm from this neighborhood when I was a kid I saw this place in business not as the Packer plant but as the a p grocery store remember to come into his kid my auntie would bring me here and other businesses and occupying the space wow so many square feets here 3.5 million square feet no way yes it's a very big place I've never even bothered coming over here but then when Danny called she said uh you know a dude over here that might have some stuff for sale and cool so how long has it been like this I mean all the windows in everything out of it in this state I would say since the late 90s that's when The Scrappers start coming in the last business to leave from here was 2010. Packard was around from the turn of the century all the way to 1958. every Packard that I've ever seen came from Detroit most of them from this Factory they were sexy they were sophisticated they were luxurious they were prestigious this is Detroit this is Motor City and this to me was the epicenter of what was happening here because it was one of the biggest plants or the biggest plant in Detroit now this is the administration building okay so this was all the like white collar offices everything for the plant and this is building number 13. what was this property this was the place where they built the Merlin engine I'm from World War II yes sir okay they collaborated with Rolls Royce and these power the P-51 Mustang airplanes unbelievable but this was all connected at one time no kids how many people did they employ here I mean I've heard over the years tens of thousands at its height they employed 40 000 people this opened in what early 1900s yes sir 1903. Albert Khan and his brother Julius Khan they used a consummate rebar process which allowed them to have more open spaces and to build further up they built this so strong that each floor is made to sustain cars and part of the assembly line as well at the time Packard was a state-of-the-art car and so was this Factory the way it was built and manufactured it stood the test of time this over here I've been protecting this this sculpture right here the Mr Palazzolo he commissioned a French artist to make a representation to embody the Packer spirit and this is what he came up with so big what was he going to do then just stick this out front and kind of show like hey the once the place was done he was going to make a a base or Deus and this will be outside wow and I've been protecting it see surprisingly enough it's in great shape there's only a little bit of tagging on it I'm not a bougie art guy but this thing definitely speaks to me it's airflow it's streamlined you know on top of that it's in the shape of a car down this way I mean this just looks like I mean an abandoned city yeah yeah it is there's a lot of opinions and a lot of hard facts in regards to the demise of Packard after World War II Packard's biggest competitor was Cadillac and their styling and Engineering was Second To None it was hard for a smaller company like Packard to keep up instead of focusing on being a luxury car brand Packard was trying to be everything to everyone when Packard moved manufacturing to a more modern single-story plant in 1955 it hit the company particularly hard because the quality of the builds started to suffer so is a lot of this stuff coming down now the city has now the right to demo uh the buildings everything has been stripped from the property over all of these years what's left is the skeleton and that's why a large portion of it is going to be tore down that's in the American Transportation history you know I mean especially Packard people they would love to have one of these doors actually up until now we had it cover it up with wood so no one would know that it was still there as much as I would love to have a door from the Packard plant I would never touch this look at the tile in here look at that color man no one's even thought about pulling the tile from the floor yet maybe because they didn't see it through all the rock dirt bricks and debris lay laying on top of it just to see this floor is exciting and the front entrance is made out of limestone and granite they took the front entrance the front entrance how long has this been gone did you ever see it this left and I would say 99 okay 99 were you affiliated with the property then no no but I live in the neighborhood so I obviously you actually oh no so you saw this you saw all this happening yeah that's all I deteriorated and I was just saddened by how things were going yeah absolutely nothing can prepare you to the scale of this property Packard the Titan of the industry that it was still crumbled this is the American ruins of what's left of it to me this is like walking around the Smithsonian it's been abandoned and deconstructed that's how cool this place is it's like a day-to-day treasure hunt I'm out there looking for Rusty gold I'm looking for the unusual and impossible it's back roads it's dumpster diving it's flea markets it's people's homes

Channel: HISTORY

Views: 109,919

Keywords: history, history channel, history shows, history channel shows, the history channel, documentary history channel, history documentary, documentary, history channel full episodes, documentaries, history channel documentaries, American Pickers: Mike CAN'T WAIT To Visit The Abandoned Packard Plant (S24), abandoned, packard, plant, abandoned packard, season 24, packard plant season 24, american pickers, american pickers season 24, motor city, detroit dreaming, detroit, michigan

Id: CQVVisHL_0w

Length: 6min 27sec (387 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 18 2023