Soon-To-Be Gone Building Rich Part Of St. Clair Shores History

ST. CLAIR SHORES, MI — All traces of the building once housing an auto dealership that sold some of the first cars ever manufactured in the Detroit area will soon be gone from the corner of Nine Mile Avenue and Greater Mack Avenue in St. Clair Shores. The building still houses an auto dealership — Roy O’Brien Ford — and the owner is tearing down the original building as part of an extensive remodeling.

However, the memories created in that building — from a dealership founded by a man who dreamed of manufacturing electric cars to the firefighters who slid down poles and raced to put out fires — remain steeped in St. Clair Shores history.

The cars sold in the building’s first iteration were Hupmobiles, manufactured by the Hupp Motor Co., which sold its first cars in 1909. The founder, Robert Hupp, learned about the auto industry, first in a blue-collar job on Henry Ford’s factory floor and through the ranks to a top administrative job with Ford Motor Co., then struck out on his own.

He was successful, too, according to a post on the Detroit history website detroit1701.org.

The Hupmobile models of the 1920s were “much more advanced than the model T’s that Henry Ford continued to sell,” according to the history of Hupp Motor Car Co. It was one of the most successful and long lived of the smaller auto companies, according to the history, and more than 500,000 cars had been manufactured before the company shuttered in 1940.

Given the uncertainty over whether engines in the cars of the future would be gas or electricity powered, Hupp formed a separate venture, Hupp-Yates Electric Car Co., over the objections of his business partners, who obtained a court order to prevent him from using his own name on the electric car venture. In 1911, three years after he founded his company, he either forced out of the company or voluntarily sold his shares, the history account said.

The dealership in St. Clair Shores continued in operation until 1939 as Hupp Motor Car Co. managed to defy odds and remain in operation through the early years of the Great Depression and during a year-long worker strike before financially surrendering in 1940 under a mountain of unpaid taxes.

Firefighters protecting the area — St. Clair Shores was still a dozen years away from incorporation — took over the building after the exit of Hupp Motor Car Co., the St. Clair Sentinel reported. After that, the Holzbaugh Ford dealership sold vehicles until Ford shut down production to assist in the World War II effort.

Current owner Mark O’Brien, said his grandfather, the dealership’s namesake, purchased the building in 1945. It has operated since as an auto dealership.

Plans for the building reflect the same entrepreneurial spirit that guided Robert Hupp.

When the renovation is complete, the building will be state of the art, Mark O’Brien said.

“I think both (our) grandfather and our dad would be supporting us on the decision,” the O’Brien family’s third-generation owner said. “You have to stay with the times. You want to have a very clean and exciting environment.”

» For more about the history of the building and the renovation plans, go to candgnews.com.

Photo of 1911 Hupmobile Roadster by Daderot / Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons