Cadillac
Cadillac was formed from the remnants of the Henry Ford Company. After a dispute between Henry Ford and his investors, Ford left the company along with several of his key partners in March 1902. Ford's financial backers William Murphy and Lemuel Bowen called in engineer Henry M. Leland of Leland & Faulconer Manufacturing Company to appraise the plant and equipment in preparation for liquidating the company's assets. Instead, Leland persuaded the pair to continue manufacturing automobiles using Leland's proven single-cylinder engine. A new company called the Cadillac Automobile Company was established on 22 August 1902, re-purposing the Henry Ford Company factory at Cass Street and Amsterdam Avenue. It was named after French explorer Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac, who had founded Detroit in 1701.
Alvan T. Fuller
Enamored by the new automobile, Fuller sold his racing trophies to finance a trip to Europe in 1899, where he learned more about the automobile industry. He acquired two cars (French De Dion-Bouton "voiturette"s), and had them shipped to Boston; they were the first motor vehicles brought in through that port. In 1903 he was awarded the Boston franchise for selling Packards, and later also acquired the local Cadillac franchise.
Fuller was enormously successful in the automobile business, extending his sales reach as far west as Worcester and south to Providence, Rhode Island. He opened his first dealership on Commonwealth Avenue in the Allston neighborhood of Boston, then a largely undeveloped area known by sheer coincidence as Packard's corner, after the owner of a nearby livery yard. He was, however, soon followed by other auto dealers, creating the Boston area's first auto row. Fuller was a significant factor in the success of Packard sales on the east coast, and was in 1920 dubbed the world's most successful car dealer. In 1927 he began construction on a new building at 808 Commonwealth Avenue. Designed by the noted industrial architect Albert Kahn, it became the flagship showroom for his Cadillac dealership. It is now owned by Boston University, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.