The Henry Ford Blog

This is a guest post by Judy Endelman.

Henry Ford may have said “History is bunk,” but he founded one of America’s premier history museums–The Henry Ford

Eighty years ago this month, as the world teetered on the brink of depression, Henry Ford hosted a grand party.  To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Thomas Edison’s invention of the light bulb, he assembled an international audience of the “best and the brightest” to celebrate “Light’s Golden Jubilee” and dedicate The Edison Institute of Technology, known today as The Henry Ford.

In 1921, Henry Ford posed by a Model T, the car that changed America and made his fortune

The Model T, which first rolled onto the streets of America in 1908, had made Ford a very rich man.  By 1920, nearly half of all cars on America’s roads were Model T’s.  Ford now turned his tenacity, his attention to detail, and his fortunes to creating a museum that would “show people what actually existed in years gone by.”

The Menlo Park buildings under construction in Greenfield Village

Henry Ford had considered Edison his hero ever since he had met him at an electrical convention in 1896.   Not only did Ford dedicate his new museum to his great friend, but Ford had Edison sign the cornerstone, and the centerpiece of The Edison Institute was Edison’s lovingly reconstructed Menlo Park Laboratory, complete with seven train carloads of New Jersey dirt!

For Light's Golden Jubilee, Thomas Edison reconstructed his invention of the electric light bulb. This photo was taken during a rehearsal

As Ford’s distinguished guests dined by candlelight in the unfinished great hall of the museum–Marie Curie, Herbert Hoover, and John D. Rockefeller were some of the guests; Albert Einstein spoke to the assemblage by radio from Berlin–Ford and Edison repaired to the Menlo Park laboratory in Greenfield Village where Edison “reconstructed” his great invention of incandescent light.  As the successful “experiment” concluded, the millions listening by radio heard NBC broadcast Graham McNamee shout, “It lights! Light’s Golden Jubilee has come to a triumphant climax!”

The Edison Institute of Technology consisted of two elements–an open-air museum–Greenfield Village, the first open-air museum in America–and a museum of technology.  Ford sent agents across the country (he even had an agent in England!), to find and acquire objects to collect and buildings to preserve, after they were first dismantled to be re-erected in Greenfield Village.  The buildings Ford collected fell into four categories: buildings that reflected his life history–his own birthplace; buildings associated with Ford’s personal heroes–the Wright brothers home and cycle shop from Dayton; nineteenth-century industrial and civic buildings–the Hanks Silk Mill; and buildings from southeast Michigan that caught his fancy, often Greek Revival homes like Ann Arbor house.  He plucked a draftsman from the Ford Motor Company offices, Edward Cutler, and made him his personal preservation architect.  Cutler supervised the dismantling and re-erection of dozens of buildings.

Edward Cutler dismantled and re-erected dozens of historic buildings to create Greenfield Village

When Ford wanted something, he didn’t let anything get in his way.  Ford spied a courthouse in central Illinois associated with the law practice of Abraham Lincoln.  When the townspeople tried to protest its removal, Ford’s crew disassembled and moved the building before the citizens could stop them.  Henry and Clara loved the charming stone cottages of the English Cotswolds.  They bought one, along with its out buildings, had the buildings disassembled, and the stones shipped to Dearborn in sixty-seven train cars.

In his haste to collect, he was sometimes misled, as when he erroneously acquired a house he believed to be the birthplace of composer Stephen Foster.  It wasn’t.

Ford acquired objects and “relics” by the train car as well–whole inventories of general stores, machinery, steam engines, stoves, vehicles–nothing was too humble or ordinary, as long as it demonstrated technological progress.  Antique dealer Israel Sack bought him fine furniture, and attended auctions on Ford’s behalf; he bid on the chair in which Lincoln was assassinated, now a museum treasure.  It had previously been offered to Ford, but one of his secretaries had declined it, writing that it was “too gruesome.”

Costs never stopped him from doing anything he wanted in the Village. Whenever I’d bring it up . . . he’d always say, ‘Did  I every speak to you about cost around here?  Did I ever talk to you . . . about something costing too much?

–Edward Cutler

Ford’s primary interest in creating the museum and village was to provide for the education of America’s youth.  A month before the Light’s Golden Jubilee celebration, thirty-two students began classes in the Edison Institute Schools in Greenfield Village.  By the late 1930s, nearly two hundred students, ranging from kindergarten through high school, attended the school.  Most were children of Ford Motor Company management.  Ford believed in “learning by doing,” the way he learned best, and his school emphasized practical learning along with traditional subjects.  Students used the artifacts and historic buildings for practical learning.  Girls learned to cook in Noah Webster’s house while boys learned to fix Model Ts.  Even when the village opened to visitors in 1933, the students’ use of the historic buildings took precedence.

Henry Ford greeted students on the first day of the Edison Institute Schools in September 1929.

When the museum opened to the public in 1933, visitors found a work in progress.  As guides took visitors around, workmen completed the eight acres of herringbone pattern teak floor.  Staff sorted glass and ceramics in the front corridors while other areas of the museum served as staging areas for creating period rooms.  Most of the museum was devoted to rows of artifacts, laid out in chronological order, without labels or barriers, allowing visitors to examine technological progress.  Only the “Street of Shops,” a concept of Edsel, Henry’s son, put objects in context.

The 1940s were quieter years for the museum and village.  As World War II tooled up, activities and personnel were cut back, not as many visitors attended, and the Edison Institute school system was reduced in size.  Henry was becoming less active himself.  The death of Edsel, his only child, from stomach cancer in 1943 was a blow from which he never recovered.  Two years later, Ford suffered a severe stroke and died in 1947.  Ford’s vision and fortune had been the driving force behind The Edison Institute; he named no successor nor left it any funding.  However, he bequeathed to The Edison Institute, now The Henry Ford, an unsurpassed collection that has nourished and inspired The Henry Ford’s leadership ever since.

A new history of The Henry Ford–Telling America’s Story: A History of The Henry Ford–will be published in January 2010.

Judy Endelman

Director, Benson Ford Research Center