Monday, April 23, 2012

Henry Ford Museum Creates Titanic Walk Through Time

When my brother Rick and I were kids in the early Sixties, we used to sneak into the Henry Ford Museum located in Dearborn, Michigan. These stolen moments in this world-famous museum were the most formative of my childhood. The outside of the old museum entrance was a replica of Independence Hall in Philadelphia.

Inside the foyer, there was a wide staircase leading to what amounted to a shrine to Henry Ford that was free. Rick and I would lurk and wait for our chance to slip unnoticed past the often preoccupied ticket takers. Not so easy these days.

Today, the renovated museum has a new entrance with a bookstore and an incredible Imax theater added to the museum complex. Adjacent to the museum is Greenfield Village, an attraction in its own right. It replicates a nineteenth century village with many famous buildings of that era like the Wright Brothers Bicycle Shop and Thomas Edison's workshop, where the electric light bulb was invented.

The indoor museum boasts having the restored bus made famous by Rosa Parks in Montgomery, Alabama. The Henry Ford Museum also has the chair President Lincoln was assassinated in at the Ford Theater in Washington DC. A grim irony is that the armchair is protected behind Plexiglas, and brown drops of the dying president's blood still stain the chair's red upholstered fabric.

Collectively, both museums are known as the Henry Ford.

In memory of the 100th Anniversary of the Titanic's tragic maiden cruise, the Henry Ford Museum has assembled an exhibit that does honor to the memory of those who died so many years ago. If you are in the Detroit area, don't miss this special exhibit.

http://blog.visitdetroit.com/entry/walk-through-titanic-henry-ford-museum.html

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