Fashion Business: Automotive Pioneers Versus Tech Giants

Google's Sergey Brin, in jogging socks and mom jeans, just looks depressed in a faceoff with the dapper Alfred P. Sloan, who turned G.M. into the world's largest corporation.

Twitter's Jack Dorsey, with the collar pop and sunglasses, is no match for G.M. kingpin Charles Stewart Mott's eyebrows and lap dog combination.

This one really isn't fair. G.M. founder Billy Durant, in his jaunty driving cap, can't help but laugh at Google founder Larry Page's unfortunate shirt.

Louis Chevrolet shows Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg that a t-shirt and fleece is not how you do casual by opting for a suit, tie, goggles, and leather driving gloves. Mustache and cigarette are optional but highly recommended.

Fashion Business: Billy Durant and J. Dallas Dort Versus Google's Larry Page and Sergey Brin

Still more fashion advice from the early auto industry for today's high-tech titans. Fashion isn't just the clothes, but how you wear them. And how you act in public while you're wearing them. G.M. founder Billy Durant and automotive pioneer J. Dallas Dort show how to hang out in style. And then there's the founders of Google.

Flint Icons: The Durant-Dort Office Building

The news that General Motors had pledged to financially support the historic Durant-Dort Office Building on Water Street, which is owned by the Genesee County Historical Society, was a reminder of how close Flint came to losing this Vehicle City icon.

Like much of Carriage Town, the building where Billy Durant and J. Dallas Dort created G.M. and helped transform America had seen better days before it was restored as part of the ill-fated push to transform Flint into a tourist destination, proving that even bad ideas like AutoWorld can yield something positive for a community.

A brief history of the building on Wikipedia reads:

In 1895–96, the company built this building near their factories to house offices and, on the second floor, a carriage showroom. A contemporaneous account describes it as "an elegant office in connection with [the] main factory, where a small army of clerks, stenographers and typewriters are engaged in the clerical part of the company's business. The office building was originally built as a two-story Italianate structure with a flat roof. Around 1900, the flat roof was replaced with a hipped roof, and an entrance portico was added, giving the structure a Georgian appearance. In 1906, a fire damaged the roof, and rather than repairing it, the company added an extra story and capped the building with a flat roof; the portico was also removed at the time. The building remained in this configuration until the 1980s.

Durant left the Durant-Dort Carriage Company in 1913, and J. Dallas Dort used the office building and nearby factory for the production of automobiles by his Dort Motor Company. The building was used by Dort until 1924, after which it provided office space for various service organizations such as the Red Cross and the local Chamber of Commerce. In 1947, the Arrowhead Veteran's Club obtained the building for use as its headquarters. The club owned the building until 1977, when the city of Flint purchased the building with the help of an anonymous $55,000 donation. The building was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1978. Using the designation and the deteriorating condition of the building as an impetus, the Genesee County Historical Society undertook the task of restoring the building. Funds were raised, and the building was restored to its early 1900s condition, replacing the hipped roof and portico that had been in place at that time. The restoration was completed by 1986.

I can't help wishing many other buildings could have had the same luck. A restored Sill Building, with its slender profile, would be a nice addition to the UM-Flint campus if it hadn't been demolished. The houses on Manning Court would be a greater asset to the city than the parking lot that replaced them.

But rather than dwell on the historic structures the city has lost, let's be thankful for the one that didn't get away. Here's a selection of photos of the Durant-Dort Office Building over the years. For more photos and information, Gerry Godin's personal take on the building at his All Things Buick blog is a must. And the Durant-Dort Carriage Company Facebook page is another worthwhile source.

The original two-story exterior in 1898.

 

By 1901, a third story had been added to the building.
 

Despite the external decay, much of the ornate interior details were still intact in 1975 when Flint was beginning its downward slide.

Workers reconstruct the third floor in 1982 with the doomed Hyatt-Regency in the background.
 

The finished product.

1973: The Tipping Point for Flint?

It's hard to pinpoint the year that Flint reached the point of no return, the juncture when the city's post-war prosperity ended for good. There's no definitive answer. But the tipping point may have been 1973, when I was a seven-year-old student at Saint Michael’s on the edge of downtown. That’s the year C. S. Mott died at the ripe old age of ninety-seven. His foundation would live on, continuing to generously fund local initiatives and projects around the world, but it was hard to imagine the Vehicle City without the paternalistic guidance of "Mr. Flint." It was also the year when the OPEC oil embargo caused a spike in gas prices, followed by fuel shortages and lines at service stations. GM was near peak employment in the Flint area, with roughly eighty thousand workers at the time, but the crisis triggered a round of layoffs, a trend that would plague the city for decades as “Generous Motors” abandoned its birthplace in search of cheaper labor in right-to-work states and foreign countries. It's also the year that the Durant Hotel, named after G.M.'s flamboyant founder, closed its doors. Flint would never be the same.