Vernors Riverfront Plant

01 / The story of this place

Make time for these

When James Vernor outgrew his downtown drugstore in 1896, he opened a new soda fountain and bottling operation on Woodward Avenue near the riverfront, close to the ferry docks that once carried passengers across the Detroit River. The business kept growing, and in 1918 Vernor's company bought the old Riverside Power Plant next door and built a larger main building the following year, eventually rising ten stories with a huge Vernors sign visible from across the river. The plant ran there for more than half a century, but in the early 1950s the city began redeveloping the riverfront for what would become Hart Plaza, and it condemned the Vernors site in September 1951 to make way for the project. Vernors relocated a few blocks up Woodward to a new Midtown plant, and the old riverfront buildings came down, leaving nothing of the original site standing today.

1. Opened in 1896 when Vernor moved from his original drugstore
2. Expanded into a ten-story plant after buying the old Riverside Power Plant in 1918
3. Its neon Vernors sign was a riverfront landmark
4. Condemned in 1951 to make way for what became Hart Plaza