A brief break in the rain gave me a sunny day to dash east across Michigan before the next storm moves in.
Central Michigan continues to be carpeted with dense forest and for much of the way we are traveling through walls of green. Further east more of the forest has been cleared and increasingly cultivated land comes into view.
The land is flat with the only real “views” appearing when crossing the top of a highway overpass.
Our next stop is the village of Frankenmuth, settled on the banks of the Cass River in 1845 by a group of 15 German immigrants from Bavaria intended to be a religious community for German Lutherans. Frankenmuth is one of a number of villages in eastern Michigan settled before 1850 by immigrants from Germany. Today the village maintains its’ German heritage and is a center for tourists coming to eat and shop in the picturesque town.
Frankenmuth
Entering town from the north the main street gently drops to the Cass River in an imitation Bavarian village tableau.
Near the bridge across the street from each other are two of the mainstays of town. The imposing Zehnder’s Restaurant stands to the west, descendant of Frankenmuth’s first restaurant, the Exchange Hotel, which opened on this site in 1856. In 1900 the “New Exchange Hotel” was built on the site and in 1928 William Zehnder acquired the hotel and remodeled it featuring an early American theme. The newly remodeled restaurant, dubbed “Zehnder’s” opened on Mother’s Day 1929 and the iconic institution continues to prosper, boasting of serving more than 26 million people in the next 75 years.
Across the street is the Bavarian Inn which began life as the Union House Hotel in 1888, soon thereafter named “Fischer’s” after new owners. Their counterpart to Zehnder’s famous chicken dinner was an “all-you-can-eat” chicken dinner. The Fischer’s chose to contrast the early American atmosphere of Zehnder’s with an emphasis upon the Bavarian heritage of the area and in 1959 the Bavarian Inn was born. The redesign of the restaurant in the Bavarian architecture and décor became the inspiration for present day Frankenmuth.
The heart of the village rises north from the two restaurants.
Behind the Bavarian Inn is the Cass River, crossed by a picturesque covered bridge.
Across the street next to Zehnder’s is a recreation of the 1910 Nickless-Hubinger Flour Mill. Early settlers built a mill on this site in the mid 1800’s but fire destroyed that building 1909 so this structure was built to accommodate the needs of farmers in the area. The mill was later abandoned and demolished but was reborn in 1984 as part of the Zehnder’s business operations and operates as a coffee shop.
Just behind the mill is the river that powered its grinding wheels.
The popularity of Frankenmuth is pretty obvious as demonstrated by the number of tour buses parked throughout the village! Leaving the tourists of Frankenmuth behind I strike out south, skirting the metropolitan areas of Flint and Detroit to land at my next stop, The Henry Ford.
The Henry Ford Museum of Innovation
The Henry Ford is the largest indoor-outdoor museum complex in the United States and it took me two days to experience. The museum, founded in 1929 and originally called the “Edison Institute” after Ford’s longtime friend Thomas Edison, was at first an educational institution not open to the public. Created by industrialist Henry Ford, the opening ceremonies were highlighted with a dedication by President Henry Hoover and attendance by many of the important “innovators” of the day, including Marie Curie, George Eastman, John D. Rockefeller, Will Rogers, Orville Wright and others. The complex opened to the public in 1933. The indoor museum is the Henry Ford Museum of Innovation and is housed in a building whose center is modeled after Independence Hall in Philadelphia containing 523,000 square feet of floor space.
The actual entrance is at the far western corner.
One walks down a long front corridor spanning the front of the building before turning left into the foyer of the actual museum.
A map of the museum shows the path I took (the green in the upper right hand corner is Greenfield Village, the outside museum visited the next day.)
Henry Ford (1863-1947) grew up on a farm but was drawn to mechanics and industry. Before starting Ford Motor Company he worked in jobs as diverse as ship building, railroad car construction and electric power generation, where he became acquainted with life-long friend Thomas Edison. I can’t pretend to share everything, what follows is a sample from my wanderings through an incredible diverse display of innovation spanning the evolution of the Industrial Age.
A fascinating opening display is a deconstructed 1923 Ford Model T. Ford workers were required to perform 7,882 distinct talks in assembling a Model T from its various parts. The deconstructed vehicle hangs from transparent strings from the ceiling.
The entire world of consumer products was transformed in the fifty years form 1850-1900 as mass production techniques became more common.
An example is the evolution of the building of the pocket watch. Prior to 1950 virtually all watches were made in Europe. Thirty years later Americans were buying American watches and exporting American-made watches around the world. The Waltham (Massachusetts) Watch Company was one of the most successful companies utilizing what was called the ”American system of manufacturing.” This display contains a number of the innovative machines used to mass produce Waltham watches.
As simple an object as a screw, once hand-forged, became mass produced. This machine, from around 1850, was used to put the slot in the head of the screw for the screwdriver to fit in and turn. The worker put the blank screws in each of the little holes in the center wheels then as the wheels turned small blades would cut the slot in the screw head and the finished screws would then drop into the chute under the wheels.
An example of the transitions occurring between craftsman and factory production is the Currier shoe shop. Will Currier of Newton, New Hampshire, ran this shop between 1880 and 1920. Currier would receive boxes of cut leather pieces from a factory in nearby Haverhill, Massachusetts, and then he and two workers would sew the shoes together and ship them back to the factory.
A circular display illustrates the evolution of the kitchen from the 1700’s to the 1930’s.
Continuing to wander I walk between a massive display of farm equipment and a smaller display of innovations in cast iron stoves.
The eclectic nature of the museum rears its head when a display of doll houses from the 1920’s fills the walkway between the agricultural equipment and the stoves.
Gleaming under the lights is one of the more unique examples of an innovation that didn’t quite catch on. The round Dymaxion House was promoted by the Beech Aircraft Company in 1946 as the house of the future.
The 1,017 square feet house, designed by architect and inventor Buckminster Fuller, was designed to be sold as a kit and boasted that it would take ten men only two days to assemble the house using simple, ordinary tools. Partitions divided the interior into the various living spaces. The bathroom was all metal and advertising noted that it had “Round corners – easy to clean!”
Other displays in the area noted technological developments in video/audio/basic computing from the 1960’s and 1970’s. (Anyone remember VCR’s?)
Moving back in time a massive display space is devoted to the invention and refinement of the steam engine, arguably the greatest invention at the beginning of the industrial age. The first steam engine was invented around 1710 to solve a specific problem: pumping water out of deep mines. By the 1780’s steam engine were powering factories.
The evolution of power creation unfolds from wind to the gas engine to electricity.
This massive steam engine was made by King Iron Works of Buffalo, New York, in 1875. It powered ships plying the Great Lakes for 51 years before being retired in 1926.
Moving to the eastern half of the museum the displays are now dominated by various modes of transportation, first the airplane. Hanging overhead in the foyer is a 1939 DC-3. It flew for 36 years as part of the Eastern Airlines and North Central Airlines fleet.
Orville and Wilbur Wright completed the first flight of an airplane in the US on December 17, 1903, south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. A replica celebrates their achievement.
Charles Lindbergh flew the Spirit of St. Louis across the Atlantic in 1927 on the first solo transatlantic flight. The original plane is on display at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. but the Henry Ford has the next best thing. Three replicas were built for the movie “The Spirit of St. Louis” in 1957 and one hangs on display here.
A dynamic display honors the daredevil circus riders of the first part of the 20th century.
Roughly one third of the museum is (to no one’s surprise) is devoted to the automobile in various formats. Enjoy!
The history of car racing is honored by the presence of the 1906 Locomobile, winner of the Vanderbilt Cup in 1908.
The history of the development of the train has its moment in the spotlight, beginning with a reproduction of the 1931 De Witt Clinton, the third train in America built for actual passenger service on a railroad.
Completing my circuit of the museum, the hall leading back to the entrance is lined by presidential transportation over the years, beginning with the1902 Brougham used by Teddy Roosevelt. Even though automobiles were coming into use, President Roosevelt rarely used them, preferring the horse-drawn carriage.
Presidential limousines from more modern times complete the collection.
As I leave I stand in the foyer and look down the corridors that radiate out like spokes on a wheel into the heart of the massive collection,
This was the perfect stop for a cool, rainy day. Fortunately, the forecast is a bit sunnier for my visit the next day to the adjacent outdoor museum, Greenfield Village.
Greenfield Village
Henry Ford’s Greenfield Village evolved from his desire to preserve his childhood home from destruction during a road construction project in 1919. Ford decided to relocate the house near his Ford factory and restore it to the way he remembered it looking at the time of his mother’s death in 1876. His dedication to detail was so intense that he actually excavated the original site in order to find pieces of the pottery dishes his mother used in order to have them reproduced. Once he completed the restoration he decided to create a village around the house to commemorate the growth of America from early days to what was then the present, 1929. The result is a fascinating diverse collection of buildings that caught Ford’s eye, either through personal experience or historical significance. This is not the reconstruction of an actual village, but rather a village created out of disparate parts. Let’s go!
Usually part of the joy of traveling in the fall is the absence of children and crowds at tourist sites. Unfortunately, this is the last week of the fall season at Greenfield and there were already seven school buses in the parking lot when I arrived. Greenfield Village is just east of the Museum of Innovation and once through the entrance the train stop has already drawn a line of six graders.
The students seem to be heading towards the train so I head right. Below is a map of the village with the path that I traveled marked.
The path splits, to my left is a working farm and to my right is the road to the main street of the village with Ford’s restored home on the right corner. Various forms of transportation can ferry visitors around the 80 acre village, a horse drawn bus is approaching as I walk.
The house that Henry Ford was born in was built around 1861 just a few miles north of here in what was then known as Springswell Township, now modern Dearborn.
The interior was restored to exactly the way Ford remembered it looking when he was 13 at the time his mother passed away.
Looking out from the front porch, Main Street stretches before me.
On the right side is an area dedicated to the Wright brothers. The large brick building is a recreation of the bicycle shop where they actual built the components of their first airplane, the “Wright Flyer.” They closed their bicycle business in 1904 and continued to build improved models in the shop until 1916. Next to it is the 1870 white frame house from Dayton, Ohio, where they were raised.
The interior of the shop looks much like it did in the early 1900’s with three main rooms on the first floor and offices on the second. The bicycle store was in front, the bicycle workshop in the middle, and a larger space used for creating airplane sections was in the back. The Wright brother airplanes were actually created in sections in this workshop and then fully assembled on site.
Across the street are the 1880 Cohen Millinery Shop from Detroit, MI, and the 1854 Heinz House from Sharpsburg, PA. H.J. Heinz spent much of his time in the basement of his family’s home making and bottling horseradish (which was the first Heinz product, not the more famous catsup!) Once he perfected the canning process he moved his operations to nearby Pittsburgh. The interior of the Heinz House is a mini-museum of Heinz memorabilia.
The next area to be explored is a recreation of the Menlo Park Thomas Edison complex. The development of Edison’s electric lighting system, the first phonograph, and other inventions all occurred within these walls.
The large brick building on the right is the machine shop where Edison’s machinists took ideas from his workers and made them into working models. In addition in 1879 the building housed the world’s first central power system.
The large two story replica wood frame building housed the main Menlo Park laboratory. The majority of Edison’s most famous experiments took place here on the second floor, which also had a large pipe organ at the far end for workers to entertain themselves during breaks!
Completing the complex is an imposing brick office/library building which served as the administrative center for the operation as well as a place to welcome visitors. The entire Menlo Park recreation was completed on this site in 1929.
Continuing south I pass buildings that Edison and his workers used when at his winter retreat in Fort Myers, Florida. Henry Ford and Thomas Edison grew close in the 1920’s as Ford persuaded Edison to research natural sources of rubber from tropical plants and both wintered in Florida. In the 1930’s this complex housed a small group of Ford Motor Company engineers who were developing the Ford V-8 engine.
I step aside to allow another bus to pass.
Greenfield Village is on the edge of a massive concentration of Ford Motor Company buildings and factories. As I approach the 1832 Ackley Covered Bridge a glimpse of the world beyond appears over the village walls.
Once over the bridge I am now in the residential section of the village. Here, on the spacious grounds, Ford collected buildings that once either served people he knew or simply were of a style he appreciated. There is no collective “village” atmosphere, just a somewhat incongruous walk down a spacious avenue dotted with totally unrelated buildings. Setting far back from the street is the Susquehanna Plantation, built sometime between 1826 and 1836 in St. Mary’s County, Maryland. Across the street is a Cotswold Cottage built in the early 1600s in Chedworth, Gloucestershire, England.
At the far end is a windmill from the mid-1600s in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, next to the 1754 Daggett Farmhouse from Andover, Connecticut.
Turning around I head up the street towards the village green. On my right is the large Noah Webster home, built in 1823 in New haven, Connecticut. Webster lived in this house when he published his famous American Dictionary of the English Language in 1828. Beyond the Webster house is the much smaller Robert Frost home, built around 1835 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and lived in by Robert Frost while he taught at the University of Michigan in the 1920’s.
I continue to be passed by various types of tourist tour transportation.
Two log buildings from an even earlier time sit beneath towering trees. The first is the William Holmes McGuffey Schoolhouse, recreated in 1934 with logs from the original McGuffey family property in Pennsylvania. In 1836 McGuffey began creating a series of textbooks that came to dominate the American educational scene for the next 75 years. Ford fondly remembered his days learning from McGuffey’s texts. Next to the school is the 1790 home where McGuffey was born in 1800.
Across the street is the 1869 Chapman Family home. This house was the home of Ford’s favorite teacher, John Chapman. Much like present day teachers, Chapman held a number of other jobs in addition to teaching in order to provide a comfortable lifestyle for his family.
I’m now back at the village green, a large expanse at the center of Greenfield Village. The striking Martha-Mary Chapel stands to the east, honoring Henry Ford’s mother, Mary Ford, and mother-in-law, Martha Bryant.
Standing on the steps of the chapel and looking west, the town hall stands at the far end of the green. Main Street is behind the town hall hidden in the trees.
Walking up the north side of the green I pass the Eagle Tavern, built in 1832 in Clinton, Michigan, and currently serving as a restaurant for visitors to Greenfield Village.
Just beyond the tavern is a large horse trough and space for people to get on and off the horse-drawn buses.
At the end of the green Main Street opens up but I turn right and head to the railroad yard.
Beyond the railroad roundhouse is Liberty Square, an enclave of shops around a small pond showcasing the work of local craftsmen, including glass blowing, pottery making, etc.
Nearing the exit, the brick walls of the Museum of Innovation rise in the distance as I walk past the working farm.
The combination of the Museum of Innovation and Greenfield Village is almost overwhelming, kind of like an educational “Disneyland” and well worth a visit.
Next up: Alleghany Country
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