Automotive pioneer Walter Flanders was regarded as a genius of production and management and was among the first to develop the moving automotive assembly line in Detroit. In 1907 he implemented production methods at the Ford Motor Company's Piquette Avenue Plant, which produced 10,000 cars in one year. After leaving Ford in 1908, he joined B.F. Everitt and W.E. Metzger to form the E-M-F Company in Detroit, and he later led several automobile companies, including the Studebaker Company, which purchased E-M-F in 1911. In 1917 U.S. President Woodrow Wilson called Flanders to Washington D.C., along with Henry Ford, William C. Durant, and John Dodge, to determine how the automobile industry could assist in winning World War I. Born on a Vermont farm, Walter E. Flanders owned a 1000-acre estate at the height of his success in the 1910s that included all of Green Lake, large farm outbuildings, a greenhouse, a garage, and an adjacent Craftsman-style house. He kept a variety of livestock and at times employed 300 to 400 men on his farm. The garage, which he used for entertaining, featured an automobile turntable, a billiard room, a ballroom, and a two-lane bowling alley. Flanders moved to Virginia in 1919, died in an automobile accident in 1923, and after his departure the Aviation Country Club bought the estate in 1920 and used the garage as a clubhouse. The lakefront land and golf courses were later developed as subdivisions, and the Green Lake Association purchased the garage in 1949.