Henry Ford House

Henry Ford's interest in historical preservation and antiquities may be traced to 1919 and his restoration of the Ford homestead. He continued to collect artifacts after this time and the collection soon grew to such proportion that it finally was necessary to store it in the abandoned Dearborn tractor plant. While the collection was being gathered Ford began to develop ideas for an organization that would preserve and teach American history through a massive collection of three-dimensional objects of all kinds. He viewed this collection as stressing the practical, day to day aspects of life in contrast to what he considered the overly political bias of the history commonly taught in schools.

The outgrowth of this idea was the incorporation on December 23, 1929, of The Edison Institute, named in honor of Ford's friend and mentor, Thomas A. Edison. Henry Ford was to be president of the Institute until his death in 1947. Throughout this time he played a dominant role in directing the affairs of the Institute.

The Edison Institute was functionally divided into three interdependent units, Greenfield Village, the present-day Henry Ford Museum, and the Greenfield Village school system. Its purpose was to collect, preserve, exhibit, and publish all forms of Americana. According to Mr. Ford, '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.

For by looking at things people used and that show the way they live, a truer impression can be gained than could be had in a month of reading--even if there were books whose authors had the facilities to discover the intimate details of the older life.'

The Edison Institute is a non-profit educational establishment located on 255 acres of land in Dearborn, Michigan, formerly owned by the Ford Motor Company and Henry Ford. The Institute is divided into two main units, Greenfield Village and the Henry Ford Museum. The Ford Archives are also a part of the Institute and are located on the premises. The Henry Ford Museum developed from a personal collection of artifacts begun by Mr.

Ford in the early 1920's. It consists of a Fine Arts section, with exhibits of American decorative arts from the seventeenth century to the twentieth century; a Street of Early American Shops composed of twenty-two shops equipped to illustrate traditional arts and crafts; and a Mechanical Arts Hall divided into seven major sections - agriculture, crafts, industrial machinery, steam and electric power, communications, lighting, and transportation. The artifacts on display are mainly of American and British manufacture. The collections of the Henry Ford Museum are remarkable for their great diversity, and for the fact that they clearly illustrate the historical thinking of one man, Henry Ford.

Probably in no other museum of similar size is the character of one individual so prominent. The museum is housed in a large brick and stone building measuring about 450 feet by 800 feet. The front units of this building are designed to be replicas of Independence Hall, Congress Hall, and the Old City Hall of Philadelphia. The fine arts exhibits are housed in this section, which has classical interiors of various styles.

The Henry Ford Personal History Exhibit is on the second floor of the front unit. About 20,000 square feet of floor space is devoted to the fine arts. The rear of the building is the Mechanical Arts Hall, with about 320,000 square feet of floor space. This area is one large room unbroken by partitions.

The roof is supported by 180 columns and natural light is provided through skylights placed in roof monitors. No ornamentation is used in the hall, but the floor is of teakwood.