Dreadful Penny

On Sunday, we drove down to Dearborn to tour Henry Ford’s Fair Lane estate. Normal admission price is $10; we got in free thanks to a Museum Adventure Pass we picked up at the library. Fair Lane is now owned by the University of Michigan. How was it? My husband took me aside during the guided tour and said, “Don’t ever give my estate to a university! Burn it to the ground!”

I agreed. After all, that’s insurance money waiting to be earned. But was it really that bad?

Yes, yes it was. First of all, even the most diligent, devoted, and wealthy preservationists couldn’t have done much with the fact that the house is ugly and the original furnishings were sold off decades ago. The base design for the house was done by Frank Lloyd Wright, but early in the project it seems that Mrs. Ford decided she’d rather have a castle. Prairie and Tudor are two distinct styles, each ornamental in its own way, and they do not play well together.

That isn’t to say that everything is wretched. The site is pretty, right on the Rouge River, which generated power for the house and beyond. The landscaping must have been gorgeous at one time. There is some beautiful woodwork in the house. But generally? Ugh.

Our tour guide was the worst we’ve ever had. There have been others less honest, like the guide in Guatemala who insisted most sincerely that the Mayans were peaceful people who never performed blood sacrifice, but you knew that he was speaking from his heart. We couldn’t figure this woman out. She blithely switched between quoting and contradicting the introductory video we had all seen. She rolled her eyes at the “refrigerated, zinc-lined” floral arranging and fur storage rooms, which certainly weren’t unusual in mansions at the time. She didn’t seem to have any sense of history, architecture, art, or the personalities who passed through the home. She was exasperated with anyone who dared to look away from what she was discussing and downright nasty about a Chinese family in which a man was explaining things to his older relatives in their language.

Some of the anecdotes were silly. For example, she insisted that Henry Ford resisted the union until Edsel complained to his mommy, who then went to Henry and said she’d leave him if he didn’t permit unionization. “The next day, he did.” Oh bullshit.

The home and land are not in a particularly impressive state of preservation. Though we only toured a few rooms in the power house and the main house, it seemed that little attempt is being made to restore them to the condition they were when Fair Lane was occupied by the Fords. The furniture is a hodgepodge of originals — some in awful condition — and others that look like thrift store finds. One of the guest rooms was so musty that I was tempted to probe the extensive woodwork to find the dry rot. The beautiful stone terraces around the rock garden are tumbling down despite sloppy concrete patching. And, the clever dam that was built to generate power and provide a path across the river is backed up with fallen trees, branches, trash, and sludge.

I’m interested in both history and architecture and I really enjoy touring sites that were important in either. It’s a shame that Fair Lane is being displayed the way it is. If the funds or focus are not available to do a true restoration — which, since it’s not an attractive home to begin with, wouldn’t be a tragedy — it would be pleasing to see a tour that really addresses the people and events that the estate witnessed.

In contrast, we toured the Edsel and Eleanor Ford House last year. It’s lovely and worth a visit. Perhaps Eleanor saw what happened to Fair Lane and that influenced her decision of how to bequeath their estate. (Then again, I’m tempted to think that much of the Edsel and Eleanor Ford estate was designed as a response to Fair Lane. They used the landscape designer that Henry had chosen but Clara fired — Jens Jensen — to do their gorgeous grounds. They built on the water in Grosse Pointe, quite far from the elder Fords. And, they chose a Cotswold theme and stuck with it. Bravo.)

As a side note, I once owned a 1968 Ford Fairlane. It was twenty years old when I bought it, the inspection sticker was a forgery because it never would have passed, and it broke in half when they finally towed it away. Is there a point to this? Nope.