USA Guide
The Great Lakes
The Henry Ford Museum
The enormous Henry Ford Museum pays fulsome tribute to its founder, an inveterate collector of Americana, as a brilliant industrialist and do-gooder. The former is certainly true. The hero of the "second industrial revolution" and inventor of the assembly line didn't succeed by being a philanthropist. His Service Department of 3500 private policemen prompted the New York Times in 1928 to call him "an industrialist fascist – the Mussolini of Detroit." Despite considering unions "the worst things that ever struck the earth," Ford was forced to let the United Auto Workers (UAW) into his factories in 1943, after only 34 out of 78,000 workers voted against joining. Ford also bowed to the economic necessity of employing blacks, though he banned them from the model communities he built for his white workers. Instead, the company constructed a separate town, which he sardonically named Inkster.
In addition to the massive "The Automobile in American Life" exhibit ranging from early Ford models and postal carriages to NASCAR vehicles and electric cars, the twelve-acre museum amounts to a giant curiosity shop, holding planes, trains, and row upon row of domestic inventions and non-technological collectibles. Real oddities include the chair Lincoln was sitting in and the car Kennedy was riding in when each was shot, the bus Rosa Parks was riding when she refused to give up her seat, and even a test tube holding Edison's last breath. One pertinent item not on view is the Iron Cross that Hitler presented to Ford (a notorious anti-Semite) in 1938. Down the street from the main museum complex, Greenfield Village is a collection of homes owned by famous Americans, relocated from across the country to this site by Ford (same hours as museum; $22, or $26 with Ford Museum). Among the 240 buildings, you'll find Ford's own birthplace, the Wright Brothers' cycle shop, Edison's laboratory, and Firestone's farm. Costumed hosts demonstrate everything from weaving to puncture-repairing.
Address: 20900 Oakwood Blvd, Dearborn
Opening time: Daily 9.30am–5pm
Price: $15, for Greenfield Village; $22
Telephone: 313/271-6001 or 1-800/835-5237
Website: www.thehenryford.org