Crescent Brass and Pin Company Building

The Crescent Brass & Pin Company Building housed what was for much of its career the only firm in Detroit, and one of few in the nation, that specialized in the manufacture of chaplets, which were essential tools in the manufacturing process for radiators, boilers, engines, and other foundry products used by General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, and other automobile companies and a who's who of important manufacturers of such products as stoves and ranges, plumbing and heating equipment, and agricultural machinery throughout the United States. The Crescent Brass and Pin plant was also the place where Simplex roofing nails, an innovation in roofing shingle fastening technology because of their very broad heads, were first manufactured. Finally, the Crescent Brass & Pin Company Building was built in stages from 1905 to 1956 and, in its use of heavy timber mill construction and of reinforced-concrete framing systems, it illustrates the evolution of standard factory construction technology in Detroit and Michigan in the early twentieth century.

The Crescent Brass & Pin Company Building is a flat-roofed, two- and three-story industrial structure that is generally rectangular in form. Its general ground dimensions are 170 feet in length along Trumbull Avenue by 124 feet eight inches in width. The building surrounds an open central courtyard. An extension at the building's southeast end is fifty-seven feet in width and thirty-one in length along Trumbull, making the overall length on the southwest facade facing Trumbull Avenue 201 feet. Crescent Brass & Pin's building was constructed in five sections from 1905 to 1956, with the L-shaped section on the far north end built first and the southeastern extension built last. The different parts of the structure exemplify heavy wood timber post and beam and reinforced concrete construction. The property also contains a tinning shed and a Quonset hut storage shed, constructed in 1949; both contribute to the property's historic character.