The Anthology of Henry Ford:
Greenfield Village

August 7, 2007

If I were to cut and paste favorite passages from the books I most enjoy, the final product would be called an anthology. Likewise when musicians collect the tracks that have most influenced them and put them on a CD, we would call that an anthology too (and it might be put on sale at Starbucks). But what happens when a great industrialist collects all the things that most influenced him? It won't work as either a book or a CD.. since it might include railroad tracks and machine shops. But you could put all these things together in a village. We could think of such a village as an industrialist's anthology.. a mix tape for inventors!

Most fascinating about Greenfield Village is the fact that it's not some latter Disney version of Henry Ford's past.. but actually a work conceived of by Ford himself. His personal heroes.. such as Thomas Edison, George Washington Carver, Abraham Lincoln, and the Wright Brothers.. are present in the village by means of the physical relocation of their homes or workplaces. (Think again of the anthology analogy: whereas I would cite passages from their writing in tribute, Ford cites physical structures that embodied their physical work.)

Greenfield Village is filled with structures like this. It looks pretty normal.. so what's the big deal? It's not an architectural gem. These buildings have each been sanctified by work and production.. and therefore have become worthy of preservation. The signs are helpful:

So there you have it. Robert and William Richart worked repair miracles in this shop located in Macon, Michigan. The building was therefore bodily removed from Macon and brought to Greenfield.. where it now stands as one of many physical emblems of work. These are the people that Ford admired.. and their products were always physical.. never intellectual.

The complete machine shop is similar to the wagon shop.. only more elaborate. The building was rebuilt to the same dimensions as one back East and all the metal working machines were brought to Greenfield Village, put into working order, and set up in their original order. The aggregate of these heavy machines represents a kind of knowledge that is pretty much gone. I have to admit that the project of keeping knowledge of these things alive is something that Old Roads strongly supports.. and there was a part of me fascinated by the experience of Greenfield Village.

If you pay a few extra bucks you can get a ride around the expansive village in an old Model T or some other early car! Like many anthologies, Greenfield Village has an unspoken narrative: everything leads to the automobile. In other words, Henry Ford is recreating the world that made possible his great industrial contribution. The fact that Greenfield Village was the brainchild of Henry Ford makes it fascinating as a text in its own right.

This sign crystallized some of my misgivings about Greenfield Village. I suspect that Sinclair Lewis made this Main Street comment with a little more irony than is present here.. but the statement is revealing when cited with seriousness. Remember, Greenfield Village predated Disneyland and its famous Main Street! In 1929 when Greenfield Village was opened (although obviously not everything that is present now was present then) the idea of Main Street would not have been a completely nostalgic concept. This was not a Disneyfied version of Main Street, it was the apotheosis of Main Street as known by all. The automobile was presented in this text as the capstone to this American Main Street.

That reading of the past is convenient.. and one can readily see how Henry Ford could find personal meaning in his work by connecting himself to this past. But the automobile tore the world of Main Street apart! And when you think about Henry Ford introducing the assembly line.. then what becomes of the Richart Brothers who could repair anything in their wagon shop? They and all those like them are done for, of course. Present at Greenfield Village is a fossilized reading of the industrial past.. which may have been tenable in 1929 and for a few years after that, but I doubt it makes a lot of sense to contemporary visitors (I am sure many automatically switch to a Disney mental frame to understand it.. which is an anachronism when applied to Greenfield Village).

The indispensable movie to watch before experiencing Greenfield Village is The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) by Orson Welles. The film is loving when it comes to its evocation of the past.. and in this way is parallel to Greenfield Village and its carefully reproduced sites. But the automobile in The Magnificent Ambersons is the machine that throws a monkey wrench into the old world. Where Henry Ford sees a straight line of development, Welles presents a break.. and the beginning of something new. That break brings an element of tragedy.. something that is wholly lacking at Greenfield Village.