Toward the end of the Nineteenth Century, the use of electricity became widespread in this nation’s cities. Electric lights replaced gas lamps, after 1888 electric street cars replaced horse-drawn cars, electric elevators made skyscrapers possible and, for a brief period, electric cars were sold in modest numbers. This meant that large urban plants were needed to produce electricity. Coal or natural gas was burned, generating steam that drove the turbines needed to produce electrical current. In 1877, Birdsill Holly, in Lockport, New York, demonstrated that one large plant could produce steam that might be sent around a downtown to heat commercial building and that this was more efficient than an arrangement whereby each building had its own boiler or furnace. This was the beginning of a system whereby one large plant could generate electricity and also steam that could be used for heating buildings.
In 1903, the Detroit Edison Company built the Willis Avenue plant that you see pictured above. I am not sure whether the plant was designed to generate electricity and also produce steam that could be used to heat downtown Detroit, or if it were specifically built to generate steam. Detroit Edison formed a separate company, the Central Heating Company, to distribute the steam. When the facility opened, there were only 3000 feet of mains for the steam and just 12 customers but this number increased rapidly.
Steam heat proved to be popular as Detroit became a major metropolis with dozens of downtown skyscrapers. In 1916, the Willis Avenue plant was reconstructed and a new boiler for steam generation was installed. Subsequently, Detroit Edison and its subsidiary built steam heating plants on Farmer Street, on Park Place, on West Congress near Cass Avenue and another plant close to the intersection of Second and West Grand Boulevard. In 1927, the Willis Avenue plant was linked to the larger Beacon Street plant, a location that was listed as a National Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark on May 22, 1985. There are only 14 National Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmarks in the State of Michigan.
The Willis Avenue plant was expanded once again in 1948, and by that time, this plant was linked into a network of three plants—Willis Avenue, Beacon Street and the Boulevard Plant near Second and West Grand that supplied heat for the large area stretching from Campus Martius to New Center. This plant also produced AC and DC current. The DC was needed by the Detroit Street Railways to power their large network of street car lines.
The Willis Avenue facility burned coal until 1972, even though no rail line running to the plant. For many years, coal was unloaded from rail cars at Detroit Edison's Conner Creek facility on Detroit's far east side. Then specially designed trucks brough the coal to Willis Avenue. Since 1972, the Willis Avenue boilers have been fired by fuel oil. This plant continues to supply steam to customers in downtown Detroit. Fairly recently the management of the steam system has been taken over by a firm known as Detroit Thermal whose website is listed below.
Architect: Unknown to me
Date of original construction: 1904
Date of updating and reconstruction: 1916 to 1927 and again in 1948
City of Detroit Designated Historic District: Not Listed
State of Michigan Registry of Historic Places: Not Listed
National Register of Historic Sites: Listed September 22, 1997
Use in 2008: Plant producing steam for distribution to downtown Detroit
Website: http://www.detroitthermal.com/steam.htm
Photograph: Ren Farley, September 6, 2008
Description updated: May, 2009