The Henry Ford

Thomas Edison's Menlo Park invention factory, as reestablished at Henry Ford's Greenfield Village in Dearborn. Taken in the autumn of 1988. There's something about Greenfield Village. For those of us who live near Dearborn, it's a special place; a slice of history as captured by Henry Ford and as interpreted by his successors. But I've friends in Dayton who consider the Wright Cycle Shop to be a stolen artifact, and I suspect there are folks in New Jersey with similar opinions about these buildings. ============= Sorry 'bout the horribly dirty slide. I may work this one over again one of these days.

This is the home where Henry Ford's friend Harvey Firestone grew up, as preserved at Ford's Greenfield Village. The photo was taken in the fall of 1988, only a few years after the farm was transplanted from Ohio. Reducing Firestone to "Henry's friend" is a tremendous injustice. Firestone was an industrial giant in his own right; that he was friends with Ford and Edison is certainly important, but it leaves out most of the man's life. I make it to Greenfield once or twice a decade. In all those visits, the addition of this farm is the biggest, and most obvious, change in the place. Greenfield Village is a strange and wonderful place--a very personal museum and preservation effort, done on a very large scale, reflecting the eccentric personality and interests of its founder still five and a half decades after his death. That, friends, is a legacy. Scanned from a slide. Camera: Minolta Freedom 100

Well, sort of. This was his home when he lived in Ann Arbor, but after he moved away, Henry Ford purchased it, and moved it to Greenfield Village in Dearborn. Pretty place. Photo taken in the fall of 1988. Scanned from a slide.