Less than seven weeks from now, Oct. 7 will mark the 100th anniversary of the moving automobile assembly line at the historic Highland Park complex, where Henry Ford first paid workers $5 a day to build Model T cars.

But as with far too much of metro Detroit’s automotive heritage, the Ford Highland Park property has sat largely dormant and ignored for decades, sorely in need of restoration and renovation so it can be properly celebrated as a shrine of American ingenuity.

Today, the Woodward Avenue Action Association (WA3) is launching an online crowd funding campaign, dubbed Five Dollars a Day, hoping to raise the final $125,000 needed to buy two historic structures on the site, the four-story Administration Building which fronts Woodward, and an adjacent 8,000-square-foot executive garage....