The Henry Ford and Greenfield Village, in the Metro Detroit suburb of Dearborn, is the nation's "largest indoor-outdoor history museum" complex.
Named for its founder, the noted automobile industrialist Henry Ford, and based on his desire to preserve items of historical significance and portray the Industrial Revolution, the property houses a vast array of famous homes, machinery, exhibits, and Americana. The Museum began as Henry Ford's personal collection of historic objects, which he began collecting as far back as 1906. The collection contains many rare exhibits including John F. Kennedy's presidential limousine, Abraham Lincoln's chair from Ford's Theater, Thomas Edison's laboratory, the Wright Brothers' bicycle shop, and the Rosa Parks bus.
Henry Ford said of his museum:
“I am collecting the history of our people as written into things their hands made and used.... When we are through, we shall have reproduced American life as lived, and that, I think, is the best way of preserving at least a part of our history and tradition.”