How Boeing Started in a Red Barn

William E. Boeing was a Yale dropout running a Pacific Northwest timber empire when he saw his first airplane fly at the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in Seattle. He bought a boatyard on the Duwamish River the following year — the Red Barn (Building No. 105) — to finish a yacht. Then in 1914 a friend offered him a hydroplane ride, and Boeing was hooked. He took flying lessons at Glenn L. Martin's school in Los Angeles, bought a Martin TA seaplane, and decided he could build a better one. He partnered with Navy engineer Conrad Westervelt and engineer Wong Tsu, converted the Red Barn from yacht-building to airplane-building, and on June 15, 1916, the first "B&W" seaplane (christened Bluebill, for Boeing & Westervelt) lifted off Lake Union. One month later, on July 15, 1916, Boeing incorporated the Pacific Aero Products Company. He renamed it Boeing Airplane Company in April 1917. The first 50 production aircraft (Model Cs for Navy training) came out of the Red Barn during World War I. Boeing himself sold his stock and walked away from the company in 1934 after the Air Mail Act forced manufacturers and airlines to divest. The Red Barn was nearly demolished in 1970 — instead, in 1975 it was barged down the Duwamish and trucked to Boeing Field, where it sits today as the heart of the Museum of Flight. The oldest aircraft manufacturing facility in America. Walk the second floor and you'll stand where the first Boeing airplane was built.