NAHA Schedules Wright Factory Tours Through End Of 2015

The history of aviation is so compact that it's still possible to see where it all started. The flight of the Wright Brothers in 1903 was the dawn of powered controlled flight. As important as the first flight was, the real fruit of their labor was achieved when they opened a factory to produce their flying machines.

The National Aviation Heritage Alliance (NAHA) has scheduled free monthly tours of the Wright Company factory buildings through the end of 2015, NAHA officials recently announced.

Tours of the two historic buildings will take place on the third Thursday of each month through the end of the year. Each tour will begin at 10 a.m. except on Dec. 17, when it will begin at 2 p.m. A tour typically takes about an hour.

The Wright Company factory is the birthplace of America’s aerospace industry; it was the first American factory built for the purpose of manufacturing airplanes. The two structures are the oldest airplane manufacturing buildings still standing in the world and the only buildings still in Dayton where the Wright brothers worked on airplanes.
 
Wilbur and Orville Wright formed the Wright Company in 1909 and built their first factory building in 1910. They added a second one in 1911. The buildings later became part of the Delphi Home Avenue auto parts manufacturing plant. The plant closed in 2008 and is now owned by a redevelopment company.

In 2009, Congress authorized the National Park Service to restore the factory as a unit of the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park, but it hasn’t provided funding to acquire or restore it.

NAHA’s vision is for the Wright factory to be restored as a national park unit and for other parts of the site to be redeveloped as an aerospace education, research and manufacturing hub.

With the cooperation of the property owner, Home Avenue Redevelopment LLC, NAHA is conducting the public tours to raise awareness of the factory and build community support for its restoration.

NAHA advises that the site is not restored at this time, so visitors will be asked to sign a hold-harmless agreement. Closed-toed shoes are required, and no restroom facilities are available. While visiting the factory will be “roughing it” a bit, but it will still be an amazing feeling to stand in the place where the production of airplanes got its beginning.

(1911 photograph of the factory from the Library of Congress)

FMI: www.aviationheritagearea.org