The Ford House - (lots of) room with a view

At 38,000 square feet, the Albert Kahn-designed Ford House in Grosse Pointe Shores is big enough to hold two Olympic size hockey rinks. Or about 117 of Dave's garage. Or a family of six, which is what it did through most of the last century.

Edsel - the only son of Henry Ford - and Eleanor Ford (that's a statue of them standing on the other side of the pond) lived in the mansion on Lake St. Clair beginning in the late 1920s. Pretty nice digs for their four children - Henry II, Benson, Josephine and William Clay. You might remember the latter as the longtime owner of the Detroit Lions.

 

When she passed away in the 1970s, Eleanor left the home for public use. Nowadays, it's a National Historic Landmark. Visitors can tour the home and the 87-acre property, catch a concert on the lawn in the summer, or grab a meal at the Continental, a restaurant that overlooks the lake.

Preserving graffiti at Michigan Central Station

When Ford sunk millions of dollars into restoring the old Michigan Central Station, they went out of their way to return the building to its original self. If you haven't visited yet (don't feel bad, Dave hasn't either), you should find time to check it out. The work they did is unbelievable, especially if you saw it a decade ago when ceilings were crumbling and hundreds of windows were shattered. Hard to believe it's the same place.

But when you do visit, make sure you don't miss the one section that Ford purposely left unoriginal. Graffiti covered many of the walls throughout the interior after years of abandonment and Ford opted to leave a portion of that street art in place. Possibly a reminder of what the building looked like when they started the project back in 2018.