photo by Scott Beale
I was in Detroit last week and while there I visited the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, which is part of The Henry Ford, also home to Greenfield Village. This museum is an awesome testament to the history of American innovation and automation. It is so large, 12 indoor acres, that it even contains a couple of complete trains, both engines and cars with tracks built into the museum floor as well as several full-sized planes including a Douglas DC-3. Other notable installations were several of the Lincoln Continental presidential limousines, including the one that JFK was riding in when he as assassinated in Dallas, an entire motel room from a 70’s era Holiday Inn, Lamy’s Diner, a 1940’s diner transplanted from Marlboro, Massachusetts, an Oscar Mayer Wienermobile and even the refurbished Rosa Parks bus.
photo by Scott Beale
One of the highlights of the museum was R. Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion House, a 1946 home-of-the-future constructed out of aircraft material. Only one was ever built and the museum purchased it from the original owners and refurbished it to Bucky’s original specifications.
photo by Scott Beale
Here’s my photo gallery of the museum. Hey, when’s the last time you saw a Merlin?
Photo Gallery: Henry Ford Museum
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Did it contain a section on anti-semitism? If not, you may want to read up on Mr. Ford – http://history.hanover.edu/hhr/99/hhr99_2.html
There’s plenty of documentation that shows Mr. Ford’s disdain for the Jews. I’m just sayin’, it should be part of the museum, alongside the cars.
Scott, great photos thanks. I went to Dearborn on a pilgramage a few years ago and it is an amazing museum. It’s important to note that it is a museum of industry and not just Ford products. The trains and planes are amazing as well as the generators and steam turbines.
As for Henry’s anti semitism, that is an historical fact and probably not one that the Ford family or Ford Motor Company are particularily proud of, but it has no place in the museum. Maybe they should mention it at Fairlane his estate just down the road.
Maybe people should realize that Henry is dead and leave it at that.
Ford Motor Company today is a forward thinking company that embraces diversity and has a great record on social issues.
I regret that I did not get to Fairlane or Greenfield Village. I want to go back to Dearborn and also visit the River Rouge plant.
Scott,i was a teenager at the Texas state fair in 1955. Late at night on the opening day as I was leaving the automobile building a car pulled into the parking lot unlike any I have ever seen. The young man driving it said it was a Ford concept car that had driven here alone from the design center and was late because he had a breakdown on the way and had wait for a service team to get him back on the road. Now in my later years I still remember the impression made on me by that young man, who was little older than me and the car he drove.you may have photographed that car.it was in front of the red Chrysler turbine car and the white motorhome.If it is the same car it would look like the Ford Futura which became the Batmobile but was an earler design with a true landau top and rear fenders like the 1962 Thunderbird, and i think it was called the Galaxy 500. Thank you for the photos of a place I can not go to. Tom
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Mustang prototype. I may never make it there to see! thank you for shaning.
I also have a myspace…. or just google Phil Clark Holly Clark Mustang…. So.. check out my info and tell me what you think of my dad’s involvment in Mustang I… since you seem to have seen the car. I found a stack of his designs.. and it seems he designed a lot of things no one knows of before he died in 1968.. we think someone killed him while he was turning in the design for the Mini Van..which we have the design for… … Holly Clark
Yes, very impressive. The Merlin looks pretty slick.
I have a hard time enjoying something that came from Henry Ford, though. His funding the Nazi Party and the abuse of power by Big Auto and Big Oil make it all a little less cool than it might be.