Many of the buildings that Henry Ford collected to create Greenfield Village are presented to match their original function—the Wright Home, for example, is set up as it might have been when the Wrights lived there. One building that has had multiple functions within the Village, though, is a machine shop built in Lapeer, Michigan, in 1888. Henry Ford met William and John McDonald, the two brothers who ran the shop their father started, and collected their building for the Village, where it now sits near the Glass Shop in Liberty Craftworks. For much of its history in the Village it has been a functional or maintenance space, but there are plans in the works to give it a bold new presence. We’ve just digitized several dozen photos that show the machine shop on its original site, including this exterior shot—visit our digital collections to see all of these images, and watch for news about this building’s future.
Ellice Engdahl is Digital Collections & Content Manager at The Henry Ford.
Michigan, glass, Greenfield Village buildings, Greenfield Village, digital collections, by Ellice Engdahl
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