The Henry Ford (also known as the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation and Greenfield Village, and as the Edison Institute) is a history museum complex in Dearborn, Michigan, United States, within Metro Detroit.America's Story, Explore the States: Michigan (2006). Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation and Greenfield Village Library of CongressState of Michigan: MI Kids (2006).Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation and Greenfield Village The museum collection contains the presidential limousine of John F. Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln's chair from Ford's Theatre, Thomas Edison's laboratory, the Wright Brothers' bicycle shop, the Rosa Parks bus, and many other historical exhibits.
It is the largest indoor–outdoor museum complex in the United States and is visited by over 1.7 million people each year. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1969 as Greenfield Village and Henry Ford Museum and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1981 as "Edison Institute".
Background Named for its founder, the automobile industrialist Henry Ford, and based on his efforts to preserve items of historical interest and portray the Industrial Revolution, the property houses homes, machinery, exhibits, and Americana of historically significant items as well as common memorabilia, both of which help to capture the history of life in early America. It is one of the largest such collections in the nation.
Henry Ford said of his museum:
History Architect Robert O. Derrick designed the museum with a exhibit hall that extends behind the main façade. The façade spans and incorporates facsimiles of three structures from Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia – Old City Hall, Independence Hall and Congress Hall.
The Edison Institute was dedicated by President Herbert Hoover to Ford's longtime friend Thomas Edison on October 21, 1929 – the 50th anniversary of the first successful incandescent light bulb. The attendees included Marie Curie, George Eastman, John D. Rockefeller, Will Rogers, Orville Wright, and about 250 others. The dedication was broadcast on radio with listeners encouraged to turn off their electric lights until the switch was flipped at the Museum.
The Edison Institute was, at first, a private site for educational purposes only, but after numerous inquiries about the complex, it was opened as a museum to the general public on June 22, 1933.. It was originally composed of the Henry Ford Museum, Greenfield Village, and the Greenfield Village Schools (an experimental learning facility). Initially, Greenfield Village and the Henry Ford Museum were owned by the Ford Motor Company, which is currently a sponsor of the school and cooperates with the Henry Ford to provide the Ford Rouge Factory Tour. The Henry Ford is sited between the Ford Dearborn Development Center and several Ford engineering buildings with which it shares the same style gates and brick fences.
On August 9, 1970, the museum suffered a fire that destroyed the East Wing of the Mechanical Arts Hall that included a "Street of Shops" exhibit in Greenfield Village. Among the materials destroyed in the fire were a collection of Ford Motor Company production records. The same year, the museum purchased what it believed to be a 17th-century Brewster Chair, created for one of the Pilgrim settlers in the Plymouth Colony, for $9,000. In September 1977, the chair was determined to be a modern forgery created in 1969 by Rhode Island sculptor Armand LaMontagne. The museum retains the piece as an educational tool on forgeries.
In the early 2000s, the museum added an auditorium to the building's south corner. This housed an IMAX theater until January 2016 when museum management decided to change formats for the facility to better fit with its mission. The renovated theater reopened in April of that year.
Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation
The Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation began as Henry Ford's personal collection of historic objects, which he began collecting as far back as 1906. Today, the 12 acre (49,000 m2) site is primarily a collection of antique machinery, pop culture items, automobiles, locomotives, aircraft, and other items:
The museum features a 4K digital projection theater, which shows scientific, natural, or historical documentaries, as well as major feature films. An Oscar Mayer Wienermobile The 1961 Lincoln Continental, SS-100-X in which President John F. Kennedy was riding when he was assassinated. The rocking chair from Ford's Theatre in which President Abraham Lincoln was sitting when he was shot by John Wilkes Booth. George Washington's camp bed. A collection of several fine 17th- and 18th-century violins including a Stradivarius. Thomas Edison's alleged last breath in a sealed tube. Buckminster Fuller's prototype Dymaxion house. The bus on which Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat, leading to the Montgomery bus boycott. 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 at Talladega in 1987 Fairbottom Bobs, the Newcomen engine A steam engine from Cobb's Engine House in England. A working fragment of the original Holiday Inn "Great Sign" Chesapeake & Ohio Railway 2-6-6-6 "Allegheny"-class steam locomotive #1601, built by Lima Locomotive Works in Lima, Ohio. The Allegheny was the third most-powerful steam locomotive ever built, after the Union Pacific Railroad "Big Boy" 4-8-8-4 locomotive and the Pennsylvania Railroad Q2-class 4-4-6-4 locomotive. Toyota Prius sedan, the first mass-produced hybrid vehicle.
Behind the scenes, the Benson Ford Research Center uses the resources of The Henry Ford, especially the photographic, manuscript and archival material which is rarely displayed, to allow visitors to gain a deeper understanding of American people, places, events, and things. The Research Center also contains the Ford Motor Archives.
To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic, the Henry Ford Museum exhibited a vast array of artifacts and media documenting the Titanics voyage and demise. The exhibit was hosted from March 31 to September 30, 2012.
Selected exhibits
Greenfield Village
In 1929, Greenfield Village, the outdoor living history museum section of the Henry Ford complex, along with the adjacent Henry Ford Museum, was dedicated. It opened to the public in June 1933. It was the first outdoor museum of its type in the nation, and served as a model for subsequent outdoor museums.
Patrons enter at the gate, passing by the Josephine Ford Memorial Fountain and Benson Ford Research Center. Nearly one hundred historical buildings were moved to the property from their original locations and arranged in a "village" setting. The museum's intent is to show how Americans have lived and worked since the founding of the country.
The Village includes buildings from the 17th century to the present, many of which are staffed by costumed interpreters who conduct period tasks such as farming, sewing and cooking. A collection of craft buildings such as pottery, glass-blowing, and tin shops provide demonstrations while producing materials used in the Village and for sale.
The Village features costumed and plain-clothed presenters to tell stories and convey information about the attractions. Some of these presenters are seasonal, such as the "games on the green" presenters who only operate in the summer. Greenfield Village has 240 acres (970,000 m2) of land of which only 90 acres (360,000 m2) are used for the attraction, the rest being forest, river and extra pasture for the sheep and horses.
Village homes, buildings, and attractions include: Noah Webster's Connecticut home, which served as a dormitory for Yale students from 1918 to 1936, when it was obtained by Henry Ford and moved to Greenfield Village where it was restored. The Wright brothers' bicycle shop and home, which were bought and moved by Henry Ford in 1937 from Dayton, Ohio. A replica of Thomas Edison's Menlo Park laboratory complex from New Jersey. Its reconstruction started in 1928. The buildings were laid out according to exact foundation measurements from the original site. It was furnished with original or faithful duplicates, all placed as they were originally. The Edison Homestead, birthplace of Thomas Edison's father. It was built in 1816 in Vienna, Ontario, and moved to Greenfield Village in the 1930s. Henry Ford's birthplace, which was moved from Greenfield and Ford roads in 1944. Henry Ford had it furnished exactly as it was during his mother's time. Henry Ford's prototype garage where he built the Ford Quadricycle. Harvey S. Firestone family farmhouse from Columbiana, Ohio, which was given to the Village by Harvey's two remaining sons in 1983 to perpetuate their father's memory. The disassembling and rebuilding process took over two years, and the farm has been operated as a working sheep farm since 1985. The Logan County, Illinois, courthouse where Abraham Lincoln practiced law. William Holmes McGuffey's birthplace. Luther Burbank's office. J. R. Jones General Store was built circa 1857 in Waterford Village, Michigan. It was moved to Greenfield Village in 1927 after being purchased by Henry Ford from its then-owner August V. Jacober for $700 and the agreement to rebuild a new store on its Waterford site. It was the first structure to arrive at the Greenfield Village site. The general store was placed in its permanent location facing the village green in the spring of 1929. Ackley Covered Bridge, a 75-foot wooden covered bridge, built in 1832 over Enlow Fork along the Greene–Washington County line in Southwestern Pennsylvania and moved to the village in 1937. Cape Cod Windmill, also known as the Farris mill, is considered one of the oldest in America. It was originally built in 1633 on the north side of Cape Cod. It was moved several times around Cape Cod until it was given to Henry Ford by the Ford Dealers Association, and installed in Greenfield Village in 1936. In 1935, a structure was added to the park and was identified as the home of Stephen Foster. The structure was identified by historians of the time as being authentic and was then deconstructed and moved "piece by piece" from the Lawrenceville neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Greenfield Village, Michigan. Foster's niece insisted that it was not his birthplace, and in 1953 the claim was withdrawn. A 1913 Herschell-Spillman carousel with an Artizan 'C' band organ with a replica Wurlitzer #153 facade converted to play Wurlitzer rolls.
There are various modes of historic transportation in the Village providing rides for visitors, which utilize authentic Ford Model Ts, a 1931 Ford Model AA bus (one of about 15 known to exist), horse-drawn omnibuses, and trains pulled by steam locomotives on the Weiser Railroad.
Weiser Railroad
The rail line on which the steam locomotives in Greenfield Village presently run originally consisted of a simple straight stretch of track along the northern edge of the museum property, and has been present ever since Greenfield Village was dedicated in 1929. The rail line, now named the Weiser Railroad, was later expanded into a continuous loop around the perimeter of the museum property, which was completed in stages between 1971 and 1972.
This passenger line is long and has four stations. All of the railroad's stations consist solely of single side platforms except for the station in the Railroad Junction section, which also includes the relocated Smiths Creek Depot building originally built for the Grand Trunk Railway in 1858.