Henry Ford Museum

Our hotel in Dearborn was right down the street from the spectacular, one of a kind Henry Ford Museum. Seriously folks, this museum is amazing. The museum started out just as Henry Ford's personal collection based on his desire to preserve things of historical significance.   

Mr. Ford began collecting as far back as 1906. Today, the 12 acre site is primarily a collection of antique machinery, pop culture items, automobiles, locomotives, aircraft, furniture, houses and so much more.  It's astonishing all the things Henry has collected for his museum.  The complex is divided into two sections, one indoor which has all the cars, airplanes, machinery, pop culture, furniture and other things of that nature.  The other section is outdoor and is referred to as Greenfield Village where Henry has collect houses of famous Americans such as Thomas Edison's invention lab.  This first post covers the indoor section of the museum ...

As you can tell my all my chandelier pictures.  The building itself is gorgeous and worthy of mentioning.

I am fascinated by the history of flight.  The early models of airplanes I think are so awesome.  Every time I get on an airplane I am STILL blown away by the fact that those things can fly us all over the world.  It just doesn't seem to make sense to me! But I am sure glad they were invented!

After learning about the history of flight, we moved on to the history of ground transportation.  There were so many amazing, historical things but we had such little time, so we had to just hit some of the highlights.

I thought this was pretty neat, it shows just how simple the Model T really was.  Right next to this display they had an area where they rebuild a Model T everyday, and they let anyone and everyone that wants to help!  We didn't have enough time to stop by to screw in a bolt, but I thought that was a pretty cool thing to offer.

Then we moved on to the car section.  Once again, this section was huge and had so many cool things!  We just hit the highlights though.

Yes.  That is the original.

After learning all we could fit into our minds about the history of travel, we moved on to the history of America.  Mr. Ford had collected some pretty impressive things from America's history. One item that I was especially excited to see, was the exact bus that Rosa Parks sat on and made history.

I made sure to sit in her exact seat.  They have a recording playing of Rosa Parks talking about that fateful day.

Our next stop was to see the chair that Abraham Lincoln was sitting in when he was shot.  While it would make for a more dramatic story to say that stain on the top of the chair is a blood stain, it's not.  Before it found a home in the Ford museum, the chair had resided in the break room of some business where lots of men would lay their heads on the back of the hair, leaving grease stains from their dapper Dan hair oil.  That is also the reason why the seat is so worn.

I threw this in just for giggles.  In the museum there is a wall lined with display cases.  Each case is dedicated to a decade starting with the 20s and going all the way up to the 2000s, filled with all the different things that were popular during that particular decade.  I thought that was such a fun idea!  I only had time to look at a couple of them, the case dedicated to the 80s was pretty awesome.  Apparently, some genius figured out a way to make the American population go crazy for pet rocks... was this a real fad...? Take a look at the pamphlet that comes with it "The care and training of your Pet Rock"... really?   Either way, it made it into a museum!  How funny.