The Ford Motor Co. building at 117 University Ave. W. in St. Paul, built more than a century ago, was demolished Monday.

In it’s heyday, it churned out some 500 cars per day with workers shuttling thousands of parts up and down the three floors of the building. It closed after the opening of Ford’s Highland Park campus in 1925.

The building, which also served as a retail location for the state bookstore for many years, also served as office space and then went vacant.

The Ford Building, on University Ave. in St. Paul, under construction in 1914. (Courtesy of University United)

That corner of Rice Street and University Avenue was once a busy commercial hive, home to ground-level storefronts and office buildings besides the Ford building.

Not long after Henry Ford launched some 25 multi-story plants around the country, he and his engineers in Dearborn, Mich., had an epiphany. Long, linear assembly lines could do the work far more efficiently, slashing the typical production time for a car from more than 12 hours to just two and a half.

By the 1920s, when Ford’s Highland Park campus opened in St. Paul, the original Ford Building had been converted into a dealership and maintenance site.

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