Motor City History: The Murray Body Plant

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With the launch of the new 2014 Corvette, an interesting piece of Motor City history was suddenly back in the spotlight: the former Murray body plant, known today as the Russell Industrial Center. Let’s take a tour. Photo by Steve Fecht for Chevrolet 

 

Chevrolet used the old manufacturing complex to host the Corvette unveiling on the Sunday night before the opening of the Detroit Auto Show. And of the more than one thousand automotive journalists on hand that evening to witness the PR spectacle, only a handful had any idea where they were. Time to fill in the blanks.

The Murray body plant, built in 1915, is instantly recognizable as the work of famed Detroit industrial architect Albert Kahn.  Founded just down the street a few years earlier by father John W. and son John R. Murray, the company built complete bodies and components for Ford, Dodge, Chrysler, Graham, and countless other automakers.

Many of Ford’s fancier body styles in the Model A and early V8 era—Convertible Sedan, Victoria, the famed ’32 Deluxe three-window coupe–were supplied by Murray. These bodies were typically constructed, painted, and trimmed at the Murray plant, as shown below, then sent over to the huge Ford complex on the Rouge in Dearborn for final assembly on a chassis.

1934 Ford Victoria body by Murray

 

For automakers who lacked their own design departments, Murray supplied in-house engineers and stylists, including Amos Northup, designer of the innovative ’32 Graham line, to provide one-stop service. Bodies and components were sometimes shared among clients. If you think the cab and roof of this 1935 Hupmobile look a lot like 1933-34 Ford, you’d be right. When the Ford was redesigned for ’35, the obsolete body dies were passed down to the Hupmobile line at Murray.

 

1935 Hupmobile 517W Coupe body by Murray

 

Murray was also the parent firm of Dietrich, Inc., the well-known Classic-era coachbuilding house, which used a portion of the Murray factory complex for a time. Dietrich, Inc. was formed by Murray essentially as a favor to Edsel Ford, who wanted designer Ray Dietrich to have a base in the Detroit area. Big-C Classics using Dietrich custom and semi-custom bodies included Lincoln, Chrysler, Packard, and others.

1932 Packard Dietrich Convertible Victoria Model 904

 

As the number of automakers dwindled and the remaining manufacturers brought their body assembly work in-house, Murray’s fortunes faded as well. Among Murray’s last two big auto contracts were bodies in white (i.e., bare body shells) for the 1953-54 Hudson Jet and the 1952-55 Willys Aero compacts. When those jobs dried up, the company survived a few more years making washers and small appliances under various brands, along with some other light manufacturing.

 

1952 Willys Aero body shell 

1954 Hudson Jet four-door sedan 

 

Another noteworthy aspect of the old Murray complex is its very location. If you walk out the side door and take just a few steps, you are standing exactly at Milwaukee Junction, the center of the original Detroit auto industry. This is the point where two major railroads, at one time named 1) the Detroit, Grand Haven and Milwaukee and 2) the Chicago, Detroit and Canada Grand Trunk Junction, intersected.

This easy access to major freight roads on every point on the compass helped to get the Motor City off the ground. Ford, Studebaker, Cadillac, Regal, Hupmobile, Dodge, Packard, and others, along with countless suppliers, all built plants in the area around Milwaukee Junction. Here’s a street map of the neighborhood in 1911.

Milwaukee Junction on a 1911 map of Detroit 

 

Below is a present-day aerial view of the Milwaukee Junction area. The sprawling Murray complex lies right on the northwest corner of the rail crossing. Interstate 75 (just north of Exit 54, East Grand Boulevard) runs across the lower left corner of the photo. The night photo of the plant that leads this story was taken from across the I-75 expressway.

Milwaukee Junction aerial view present-day 

 

You’ll be pleased to know that the old Murray complex is still in use today as the Russell Industrial Center, developed by Detroit pizza guy and entrepreneur Dennis Kefallinos. Along with corporate functions like the recent 2014 Corvette launch, the Russell provides rental spaces for small businesses and artists’ studios, and it also hosts the Russell Bazaar, an art, craft, and trunk show held every Sunday. The Russell is also home of the People’s Arts Festival each August. (Links open in new windows.) All these events are worth a look and make for a dandy excuse to visit the place. The address is 1600 Clay Street, Detroit, MI 48211. UPDATE: The Russell Center was declared in violation of building and safety codes and ordered to close down in 2017, but is reportedly now back in regular operation. 

The Russell Bazaar – Russell Center photo 

Murray Body complex, Clay Street side looking west, 1960s

 

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16 thoughts on “Motor City History: The Murray Body Plant”

  3. Sweet! I only knew a little about this, now I know a lot, thanks to Mac’s Garage.

  4. Mac, the Russell Industrial Center site is also where the Anderson Carriage Company built Detroit Electrics. The building where Ray Dietrich ran LeBaron, on the north side of Clay, still stands and is still occupied by a business.

    • @ Ronnie Schreiber — Indeed. The histories of Anderson/Detroit and Murray are intertwined. Electric cars pioneered closed bodies and where you find electric cars you will find body makers and vice versa. Murray’s buildings were on both sides of Clay St. and the RR, though not necessarily Murray Body Corp. CR Wilson was also on Milwaukee Junction and was eventually merged with Murray. Ford and Murray also had a close, complicated relationship. Murray CEO Clarence Avery had been Edsel’s teacher at Detroit University School. Detroit was a small town in some ways…and in some ways it still is.

  5. Thanks Mac.
    I spotted that building on Google when I was looking at the Packard plant after reading your story a couple of months back and I wondered what that building was.
    Thanks for reading my mind!

  7. To Bill McGuire,
    Great Detroit automotive history.
    Your web site is top drawer material every day.

    Jack Miller, Curator
    Ypsilanti Automotive Heritage Museum

  8. Bill,

    Thanks for posting. I remember decades ago as a wee lad my father was driving us downtown on I-75 and as we passed the Russell Industrial Center my father pointed up at the building and said,
    “That’s where Grandpa use to work before he went to work for Packard”….” It was called Murray Body Company back then”…..

    I shall never forget Dad’s words and got goosebumps entering the building for the first time as a guest during the new Corvette unveiling press event.

    Keep up the great work..!!!!

    Jerry Drenzek

    • Love that you are providing information about my grandfather’s industrial center, the Murray Body Corporation. I live in Detroit, where my grandfather built his home and raised his family. I grew up, hearing my mother and her brother and two sisters, talked about growing up in Detroit until my mother was about 10 years old, my grandfather then moved the family to Beverly Hills, California, where he had started another steel related business. They eventually returned when my mother was in junior high, when my grandfather was dying of cancer, as my mother recounted, he wanted to be near his favorite doctors at Harper Hospital.

      I keep collecting information wherever I can find it, and now I have additional information thanks to you!!

      Suzanne

  11. I worked in the Russell Industrial Center (RIC) for several months in 1963 before starting college. I worked for a printing/mailing company called Metropolitan Imprinters, which rented space (perhaps 10,000 square feet) on the second floor. We entered the building from Russell Street, but had windows facing both north (Clay Street) and south (toward Grand Blvd — the view to the south may have been blocked by another nearby building, I don’t remember; mostly it was offices faced those windows and I usually worked out on the production floor). On the way to our rented space, we went down a long hallway where there was an unused vertical opening (perhaps 20 feet square) that, I believe, extended through all the floors. I envisioned that some kind of conveyor system had once used that opening to transfer components — or auto bodies — between floors.

    The RIC complex had been subdivided into spaces for many smaller companies at that time (and my recollection is that a good bit of industrial space was still for rent). I remember that one of our neighbors (also renting space) was a cigar wholesaler.

    Metropolitan Imprinters had perhaps 15-20 employees when I worked there. The president was named Norm Coughlin. I also worked also for them during the summer of 1965 and during Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday periods in both 1963 and 1965. When I last visited them, probably in the early 1980s, they had changed their name to Norm Coughlin Associates and had moved most of their operations to Plymouth. They still had a small amount of rented space near the neighborhood of the RIC, but a couple blocks away, not in the RIC itself.

    I thought of all this (and googled RIC, which took me to your web site) because I’ve been reading a mystery novel (“The Detroit Electric Scheme” by D. E. Johnson, published in 2010). The story takes place in 1910, and the murder is either in a buiiding that was on the site earlier than the current RIC “main” building or in a building that has since been incorporated into the RIC complex. The Detroit Electric (auto manufacturing) Company and the Anderson Carriage Company are both mentioned in the novel. I had thought (from street names) while reading the novel that some of the story took place in the area now occupied by the RIC. However, it wasn’t until I found your web site that I realized Detroit Electric and Anderson Carriage were actual historic firms, not fictional.

    I’ll include my web site in the ID information associated with this post. However, my web site is largely about my family history and contains some personal travel photos and travel writing. It has nothing on auto history and only a small amount of stuff on Detroit history.

  12. Thanks for this article. We spent a bit of our early years at Clay and St Antoine where our Dad had a business in the old two story factory.

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