The Durant Dort Carriage Company Headquarters on Water Street has a new item between its walls: a piano that rested in General Motors founder William C. Durant's home more than 120 years ago.
FLINT, MI -- The line of Buicks expected outside the Durant Dort Carriage Company Headquarters at this year's Back to Bricks festival will have a little extra competition for fans of GM history.
And it doesn't even have an engine.
After making the rounds at homes around the state, the piano that sat in General Motors founder William C. Durant's home more than 120 years ago has landed at the Water Street building where Durant built what would become General Motors.
"It's well-built, and according to movers, it's the heaviest piano they've ever moved," said David White, president of the Genesee County Historical Society and the Durant Dort Carriage Company Foundation. "The tuner said it has good sound, and that it's very deep. It's something we can use as we have receptions and meetings in the building in the area."
White said that Billy Durant received the piano as a wedding gift from his new father-in-law when he married his first wife, Clara, in 1885. Ralph S. Pitt, Clara's father, was the ticket agent for the Flint and Pere Marquette railroad station in Flint.
The upright piano, made by Boston company Hallet, Davis& Co. is made of mahogany, and has intricate designs carved into its headboard and legs.
Shortly after 1900, Durant's family replaced it with a player piano--pianos that played themselves, just by a user pumping the pedals--which Durant recounted playing when his partner Dallas Dort and Charles Nash stopped by to try to convince him to come back to work at the Carriage Factory.
The original piano ended up in the Durants' family cottage in Pentwater and was eventually moved to the village's community building.
"That piano was a wedding gift for a wedding that broke up. It probably wasn't a very happy reminder," said Leroy Cole, one of old piano's later caregivers.
Frances Willson, Billy Durant's second cousin, gave the piano to Richard Scharchburg, a professor at Kettering University and resident of Grand Blanc, in the late 1970s. Willson donated $400,000 to the restoration of the Flint Public Library, and dorms at Kettering University are named after her.
Scharchburg gave the piano to Leroy Cole, a local auto historian, in 1995. He played the piano at Cole's home a few times before he passed away in 2000.
Afterward, the piano has sat in Cole's living room, where his wife and able guests would play it.
"It was always a good topic of discussion. Especially for people who could play piano," said Cole, 75. "...It was just another piano, except the way that the keys and balances were, you probably had to push it a little harder than normal."
This year, Cole decided the piano needed a new home.
"It was always fun having it here, but it needed to be where others could appreciate it," Cole said. "...The goal was always to get it to a place where it could have permanency and exposure."
Cole gave the piano to the Durant Dort Carriage Company Headquarters, located at 316 Water Street. In that building, Durant worked with Charles Stewart Mott It is recognized as a national landmark as the 1908 birthplace of General Motors.
After the Genesee County Historical Society and the city of Flint purchased the building, they invested $1 million into restoration over the next decade or so. After 1986, they rented the building to tenants to bring in money to maintain and operate the building.
General Motors funded restoration and painting for the exterior of the office building, which was completed last year. The building will soon be a museum open to the public, and the piano sits inside.
"There's not a lot of original artifacts related to Billy Durant. Sloan Museum has a few," White said. We want to have more material related to the pioneers of the auto industry in this landmark building, and (the piano) is an interesting piece people will enjoy seeing."
Cole plans to look at the piano on Saturday during the Back To The Bricks car show, when Buick Club of America, Michigan Turbo Buick Club, the Reatta Division of the Buick Club of America and will line their vehicles along Water Street for Buick's 110th anniversary.
"I'm very, very happy, I can't wait to see it. I haven't seen it in that context yet," Cole said.
White, meanwhile, is now looking for someone to play the piano at its new home. It was tuned this week, and he's looking forward to hearing an expert's fingers stroke its keys.