The Great Lakes Engineering Works was a shipbuilding company with a shipyard in River Rouge, that operated between 1902 and 1960. It is most notable for its construction of the S. S. Edmund Fitzgerald.

The Great Lakes Engineering Works’ fifty-eight year history of shipbuilding saw the end to their own epoch. Foreign ships started to handle much of the bulk ore and were producing cost-cheap ships therefore, the America steamship companies began dealing abroad. On April 30, 1961 stockholders of the GLEW agreed to dissolve the shipbuilding giant and the property was then sold to the Great lakes Steel Corp.