Car Builder - Robinson, Russell & Co.

In 1853, George B. Russell and other parties secured premises on the Gratiot Road and commenced the manufacture of twenty-five cars for the Detroit and Pontiac Railway.  This was the inauguration of car building west of Albany. 

In 1854, the co-partnership became Robinson, Russell & Company, which was merged in 1868 into an incorporated concern - the Detroit Car & Manufacturing Company, the works having been removed from Gratiot Road to the foot of Beaubien Street. 

In 1856, the company built shops on Croghan Street.  At that time there were no houses in that vicinity, and the subsequent settlement of that portion of the city is directly traceable to the location of these works. 

In 1871, the business was sold to the Pullman Company, which, in a few years, enlarged the works so as to cover the whole block between Croghan Street (now Monroe Avenue), St. Aubin and Macomb streets and the Detroit & Milwaukee Railroad. 

Then came an incident characteristic of the Detroit authorities of those days.  The company wanted to expand their works over much larger space, and asked that Macomb Street be vacated for a single block.  The common council refused; the company began to look elseware for a site, and finally located near Chicago, founding the Town of Pullman. It retained the shops here as a branch until 1893, when they were abandoned.  [HWC]