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Destination: Michigan
The Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village
Author Bill Bryson sums up the Henry Ford Museum, "you find yourself in a great hangar of a building covering twelve acres of ground and filled with the most indescribable assortment of stuff...This was the way the Smithsonian once was and still should be - a cross between an attic and a junk shop." Henry Ford first started collecting historical objects in 1906. This collection was meant to document the genius of ordinary people by preserving the objects they used in the course of their everyday lives. His desire to share these with the public soon led to the completion of the Henry Ford Museum in 1929. Henry Ford's museum allowed him to collect "the history of our people as written into things their hands made and used.... When we are through, we shall have reproduced American life as lived, and that, I think, is the best way of preserving at least a part of our history and tradition..."
The Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, also known as the Edison Institute, is located in Dearborn and is America's first and largest indoor-outdoor museum. It charts the country's evolution from a rural to an industrial society through exhibits covering communications, transportation, domestic life, agriculture, and industry. The museum's intent is to show how Americans lived and worked since the founding of the country.
The Henry Ford Museum began as Henry Ford's personal collection of historic objects. Today the site houses his personal collection as well as many, many more historic objects. The museum is primarily a collection of antique machinery, pop culture items, automobiles, locomotives, aircraft, and other artifacts.
Greenfield Village is the largest outdoor museum in the United States. With nearly one hundred historical buildings, Greenfield Village is also known as a "museum of buildings". The buildings in the village were chosen to reflect Henry Ford's view of what was important in history. The Village includes buildings from the 17th century to the present (the actual buildings - most were moved there!). They range from the laboratory of Thomas Edison, to Noah Webster's house, and even all the way back to a British stone house. The village has served as a model for the development of open-air museums across the country, and the world.
The original name for the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village complex was "The Edison Institute". The name was dedicated by President Herbert Hoover to Ford's longtime friend Thomas Edison on October 21, 1929, the 50th anniversary of the invention of the incandescent light bulb.
Top things to visit at The Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village:
The Henry Ford Museum
- The nuclear-powered Ford Nucleon automobile.
- The Oscar Mayer Wienermobile.
- President Kennedy's Death Car, a 1961 Lincoln Continental.
- The rocking chair from Ford's Theater in which President Abraham Lincoln was shot.
- George Washington's camp bed.
- Thomas Edison's alleged last breath in a sealed tube.
- Buckminster Fuller's prototype Dymaxion house.
- The bus Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on.
- Igor Sikorsky's prototype helicopter.
- Fokker Trimotor airplane that flew the first flight over the North Pole.
- Bill Elliott's record-breaking race car clocking in at over 212 MPH.
Greenfield Village
- Noah Webster's Connecticut home.
- The Wright brothers' bicycle shop and home from Dayton, Ohio.
- Thomas Edison's Menlo Park laboratory from New Jersey.
- Henry Ford's birthplace.
- Henry Ford's prototype garage where he built the quadricycle.
- Harvey Firestone family farm.
- William Holmes McGuffey's birthplace.
- Luther Burbank's office.
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Posted/updated July 31, 2006
by Cody Sprattmoran
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