Historic Ford House to get up to $7M to restore natural habitats

Table Of Content

• Paramount Global CEO Bob Bakish expected to leave the company
• A Brief History of Gaukler Pointe
• The Architect for Ford House: Home of Edsel and Eleanor Ford
• Group Tours
• Letters to the Editor: Slow, electrified cars that don’t kill anyone? Autopia should be everywhere
• Group Tours at Ford House
• My 17-year-old Honda, Broomhilda, met a tragic end. Why do we grieve when our cars die?

The Edsel Eleanor Ford House, a Cotswold-style mansion on Lake St. Clair in Grosse Pointe Shores, Michigan, is a surprising blend of the conventional and the extraordinary. The house was also the very private domain of one of America's wealthiest families, invisible behind spreading lawns and stone gates and rarely photographed for a half century. Today it stands open, preserved and polished—a window on the grandeur of America's industrial aristocracy and the unexpectedly rich aesthetic lives of Eleanor and Edsel Ford. The Edsel and Eleanor Ford House, located at 1100 Lake Shore Road in Grosse Pointe Shores, was the home of the family of Eleanor Clay Ford and Edsel Ford, son of Henry Ford and president of Ford Motor Company.

Paramount Global CEO Bob Bakish expected to leave the company

Skinner estimated that from 5,000 to 6,000 Edsels remain in circulation. That’s a high survival rate for a car that had a total production run of less than 111,000, and it helps hold down the prices of the more common versions. “I got pulled over for speeding on my first drive,” he said.

A Brief History of Gaukler Pointe

Of course, there was a time when both the 1932 and ’34 Edsel Ford Speedsters were also thought to be lost to history. Thankfully they have not, and you can see them together with the ’39 Continental prototype. The Ford House and its new Visitor Center are open Sundays from 9 a.m.–5 p.m., and Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m.–8 p.m.

The Architect for Ford House: Home of Edsel and Eleanor Ford

“Bob” Gregorie, the first head of styling for Ford Motor Company, to render his ideas—Edsel Ford was no novice at the visual arts. He himself drew and took painting classes his entire life, and Edsel and his wife, Eleanor, were informed patrons of the arts. Edsel underwrote the creation of the renowned Detroit Industry murals that Diego Rivera painted in the great hall of the Detroit Institute of Art, and Eleanor donated and funded that museum’s multi-million dollar collection of African art. Consequently, the landscaping has a deceptive openness that keeps the house from view until the visitor is nearly upon it. Jensen also remade some of the actual contours of the landscape, dredging a nearby cove and building up a sandbar into a wildlife sanctuary. Like ponds in a manicured meadow, his irregularly shaped 132-foot-long swimming pool drained into a lagoon and then into the lake beyond.

2023 Eyes on Design at Ford House Celebrates Cars Past and Future - Autoweek

2023 Eyes on Design at Ford House Celebrates Cars Past and Future.

Posted: Tue, 20 Jun 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

Group Tours

Edsel, Henry Ford’s only son, nearly bankrupted the family carmaking business in the 1950s, but the company was rebuilt by Josephine’s oldest brother, Henry Ford II, who was chief executive from 1945 until his retirement in 1979. Edsel Ford gave the third speedster to Gregorie, who drove it for a few years before selling it to a friend on Long Island. A 1952 photo shows it on a used car lot in Burbank, California. It had been modified, with a LaSalle grille, a padded “Carson” top, and a two-tone color scheme. How seriously Edsel considered producing it is open to speculation as he still feared his father’s wrath based on what happened to that Model T prototype.

Letters to the Editor: Slow, electrified cars that don’t kill anyone? Autopia should be everywhere

The ’34 Speedster is the definition of coherent design, and wouldn’t look out of place on a 1930s-era race track. Another pure speedster, in order to maintain the low look, it had no provisions for a roof, but then Edsel only drove it on sunny days, often in Florida. The grille, windscreen, and hood louvers are all at the same rakish angle. A valence panel, attached to the body with precisely spaced, aircraft-style rivets, covers the frame as it gently curves from front to back.

Group Tours at Ford House

The Fords were cultural, social, and economic leaders in an era of great optimism, as well as a turbulent time of economic depression and world war. They were nationally prominent, and they owned more than one house, but Southeast Michigan was their home. Here, they built their final residence along the shores of Lake St. Clair at a place known locally as Gaukler Pointe. Their impressive yet unpretentious home is where they raised and nurtured their four children - Henry II, Benson, Josephine, and William - in a safe and loving environment. It reflects their love of family as well as their mutual passion for art and quality design. When the Fords commissioned Kahn to design their house, they traveled with him to England for inspiration and ideas.

Take a tour and see the house for yourself.

The battered flag first hoisted at the South Pole is displayed along with a note of thanks to Ford from Admiral Byrd for underwriting the expedition and developing the plane that made it possible. After Edsel died in 1943 at the age of forty-nine, his widow gave orders that the fire never be lit again. The house has undergone multiple large scale restoration projects, including new roofing which was conducted by a firm from England using five professional masons. The roof was torn down to the base wood all of which was replaced where needed. The stone was selected to match the existing stone from the same quarry as the original. Eleanor and Edsel Ford designed their estate at Gaukler Pointe to reflect their public roles and private values – grand and gracious, a stately mansion inspired by cozy cottages.

My 17-year-old Honda, Broomhilda, met a tragic end. Why do we grieve when our cars die?

Karr said the Ford House plans to keep the public informed on the progress of the project through educational programs for children and adults. Discover the inspiration of Edsel & Eleanor Ford House, where picturesque architecture surrounded by beautiful landscapes takes you inside the story one of America’s most prominent automotive families. Edsel Ford – the only son of Henry and Clara Ford – became president of Ford Motor Company in 1919 at the age of 25. Explore the house and grounds on one of our regular and seasonal guided tours.

There are still many rooms where visitors are not permitted, including the basement. While the estate houses 60-plus rooms as well as other buildings, the public tours usually only showcase 20 of them. Occasionally the other rooms, such as staff living quarters, are showcased in specific tours. Though a number of rooms in the north upstairs wing of the house hold administrative offices, these are not shown to the public. Some of the rooms are still in less than desirable condition, and restoration projects hope to have the entire estate in show-worthy condition within the next few years. Both Edsel and Eleanor lived at the home until their deaths, in 1943 and 1976, respectively.

EyesOn Design 2023 - Ford Performance

EyesOn Design 2023.

Posted: Wed, 27 Sep 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

A different intricate pattern adorned each of the ten plaster ceilings, and the gabled roof was covered with limestone tiles—period and new—laid by English workers imported for the purpose. These artisans knew how to make a proper Cotswold roof, laying smaller and smaller tiles as they ascended toward the peak. (To this day English workers are brought in to make repairs.) The same craftsmen installed the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century paneling and other architectural details culled by the Fords from old English manors.

The bottom of the radiator grille was vee’d forward, presaging the grille on the 1933 Ford, as did the Speedster’s slanted hood louvers and suicide doors. Anticipating, or perhaps inspiring, “shaved” hot rods, Edsel’s ’32 Speedster has no exterior door handles. The windshield was raked and pointed, predating trends that would appear later in California customs.

The front axle was moved forward 10 inches, and a combination of stock and custom suspension and steering parts were used to lower and extend the front end. Gombos started a painstaking five-year restoration using period photographs to reproduce custom parts that had gone missing over the years. Mike and Jim Barillaro from Knoxville, Tennessee, hand-crafted new aluminum fenders,  and the car was painted in 1932 Ford Tunis Gray—based on untouched paint that Gombos found on the underside of the cowl vent. A period-correct ’36 flathead Ford flathead V-8, with a Stromberg 81 two-barrel carburetor, was sourced to power the Speedster.

Members of the Historic Vehicle Assn. set off Saturday to re-create the 3,500-mile drive that then-21-year-old Edsel Ford made from Detroit to San Francisco’s international expo in 1915. Edsel died at age 49 of stomach cancer and was survived by Eleanor and their four children. The only child of Clara and Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Company, Edsel was born in 1893 — the same year his father made his first gasoline engine. From riding in his father’s experimental Quadricycle as a toddler to driving on his own by age 12, Edsel grew up with the automobile industry.