Henry Ford Museum

Day 2, the Henry Ford Musuem! One of my favorites due to the Homemaking stuff!

There is an actual size airplane behind them! This muesum is huge!!!

The spectrum of things the museum covers is insane! You have government, to pop culture to vehicles to dollhouses! This is the "The signers". I am assuming the signers of the declaration of Independence, I was too busy taking pictures to read much! haha!

I also love how interactive it all is. Henry Ford's motto was that kids learned better by doing and than by reading. Here Frankie gets to do both!

This is typical equipment from the Reveloutionary War period. Note how the bed comes out of the trunk!! Pretty smart if you ask me!

Abraham Lincoln's Life mask and Cast of his hand.....

The chair Lincoln was shot in. The chair was released to the theater owner. His wife tried to donate it to the museum, but the person who received her letter did not think Mr. Ford would want something as gruesome as that. So the woman sent it to auction. Later a different Museum employee ended up winning it at the auction! So they paid for something they could have had free.....lesson in communication maybe?

The bus Rosa Parks made famous. When the museum went in search of the bus, it was found abandoned in terrible shape. Through documents they verified that it was indeed the bus, and refurbished it to look as it did back then. Later when Rosa Parks died, they lent the bus to be parked outside the building she was laid out at.

The museum doesn't just have old stuff. here is something from 2010!!! Although it looks as if it's from the future!!

They have many displays of furniture through out the centuries! I did not take the time to read all of them yet, but I did take pictures of the signs so I can go back later! I wish I had taken more time to read while there!

              A litle potty chair......

A big potty chair! you lift the seat on this chair and hidden behind that front is a pot!!!

This dresser has it's own little hidden treasures.....

The top turns and there is a little sink and faucest and basin to keep water in! Plus a mirror! It was sooo cool!

It took us actually reading to figure out the thing on the left is the mold to make the chairs on the right!

This was a baby swing!! Not sure how safe it was, but there you are.....

An armchair!? Where there are certainly plenty of places to put your arm!! or you could say the chair itself has plenty of them!!

One of my most favorite parts of the museum! The kitchens through the years! this one is representing a late 1700's kitchen!

This one is a kitchen from the 1840's.....

This one is the 1890's.......

And my favorite of them all... the 1930's!!

This was not a normal doll house. This was a scaled replica of one of the Ford's homes, that Henry had made for his wife so she could figure out where to put the furniture! Can you say spoiled rotten! lol yes i am jealous!

There were also lots of other normal doll houses! One day, I want to own a dollhouse like these!

There was also a play house, that even an adult could enjoy! hee hee! How nice for her to match the colors of the house!

Oh the many stoves America has had through the years!

This bit of machinery, can pick your corn, husk it, and grind up the husks and cobs into grain all at the same time! That's insane!!!

This was sooo funny! After WWII this was supposed to be a type of prefabricated homes that they could sell and ship to anywhere. There was not enough homes when all the soldiers came back from war and this was one of the ideas they came up with. Needless to say, they did not take off and only 2 were ever manufactured, this is one of them.....

It was a round metal house with very little room. Think along the lines of the amount of room in a trailer!

Instead of a dresser, you had this little thing, where you push the button and the "shelves" rotated like a rotissery oven! And those were mighty small shelves to begin with let me tell you!

 A rare photo of Lincoln without his famous beard! Doesn't he look different!

This soldier was shot through the pelvic bone. Years later it still did not heal properly and in the photo he is holding a drainage  tube. He took the picture to send along with his letter asking for benefits after the war......

Next to the "Weiner Mobile" they had a lifesize hotdog bun the kids could lay in and pretend to be a hotdog....

           My favorite era, the 1930's.

The hippie era of getting back to the basics!

Along some of the walls they had different items from the different era's. Another one of my favorite eras!

In this era they even have a bra!!! hahaha! Good thing Frankie wasn't with us girls at this point in the museum! He won't even look at the Victoria Secrets windows at the mall!

Henry Ford did a wonderful job of putting together this museum and the people in charge since he passed have kept it up. There is so much to see and many museums have since tried to copy his style. But there will only ever be one Henry Ford. His life story is extremely interesting as well. I highly recommend reading it and then visiting the musuem and village afterwards!