Walking Walking

When you think about Ford, you think Detroit. When you think Detroit, well, there’s a lot of things you may think about, but Ford is probably one of them. Henry Ford is probably one of the most famous people in the car industry. I bet most people wouldn’t know the founders of any other car-maker (okay perhaps Enzo Ferrari), but who doesn’t know Henry Ford?

All cities have art centers, downtown view, science centers, and parks. Each city however also has its own special mark, something special that differentiates it with other city. New york has the statue of liberty, Washington (DC) the white house, Clevelend has the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Pittsburgh has the Mt. Washington view, Atlanta the coca cola factory, and Detroit has the Henry Ford museum and the Greenfield Village.

The Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village are located in Dearborn, a suburb of Detroit MI. Both these places were built with the purpose of collecting and preserving the best of human intelligence.

Henry Ford’s riches certainly made it possible. When you have almost unlimited money at your disposal, I guess you get bored buying cars, houses, and jewelry :). It is still amazing to see how his riches were used, for education and humanity.

The Greenfield Village, which we visited first is a large complex consisting of historical houses. These were important houses in America’s (and in some part the world’s) history. It shows what life was like in the old days.

However the greenfield village did not just contain any old houses in there. The houses in Greenfield Village were original (yes, original, well at least the parts that wasn’t renovated) houses of very famous people. The Wright brothers, Edison, Heinz (the ketchup guy), Webster (yes the dictionary man), and some other people who I have never heard of. It even had Edison’s original research complex (he had his own research complex…), and the boarding house for his worker’s nearby.

There was a sign in front of Edison’s complex that showed his ambitions. He wanted to create a major invention every 6 months and a minor invention once a week. Simply an amazing man.

The next part of the trip was the Henry Ford Museum itself. It had mainly cars, planes, trains, and round houses.
I thought the Greenfield Village was more exciting. I guess I prefer going to science museums, than just any museums. It gave a look on America’s past and culture, especially the culture of driving. Here’s a picture of us at an american diner (served no food though, it was just a replica, even the food were plastic )

It took us about 5 hours to get through this place. It wasn’t enough. There was just too many things to see, we were late because somebody (you know who you are) needs to spend 20 minutes in the bathroom he he he…

All in all we had a great time that day. Did a lot of things, also learnt a lot. I know what you’re thinking "Learning.. that’s like a school thing…"…

Here’s a satellite view of the Henry Ford museum and the Greenfield Village, in case you plan on visiting.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 2nd, 2007 at 8:41 am and is filed under Museum. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.