  Mikeg Member Username: Mikeg Post Number: 1981 Registered: 12-2005 |
Ford Rotunda, Dearborn, 1936-1962. Originally constructed for the 1933-1934 Chicago World's Fair, it was relocated to Ford property on Schaefer Road in Dearborn and opened to the public on May 14, 1936. By the 1950's it was the fifth most popular tourist destination in the United States and it served as the starting point for the public tours of the nearby Ford Rouge Complex. From 1953 through 1961, the Rotunda's annual Christmas Fantasy display drew up to a half-million visitors annually. On Nov. 9, 1962, the roof caught fire during maintenance work and the entire building burned to the ground in less than an hour. Ford Rotunda exterior, July 1955: (full size)  Display inside the Ford Rotunda, July 1955. The sign reads, "MICHIGAN leads the nation in the number of state parks and prepared campsites available to the public!" (full size)  The Rose Terrace mansion in Grosse Pointe was built by Anna Dodge (the widow of Horace Dodge) in 1934 at a cost of $7 million. She died in 1970 and the mansion was razed in 1976 to make room for a subdivision of new homes on the 8.8 acre site. The following photos were taken on May 18, 1975. Front Exterior (full size)  (full size)  (full size)  Wall Detail (full size)  (full size)  Garage Front (full size)  Garage Rear (full size)  Garage Rear Wall Detail (full size)  Service Entrance (full size)  | ||
Eastsidedame Member Username: Eastsidedame Post Number: 576 Registered: 12-2006 |
I'm proud my Dad helped build the Rotunda. | ||
Bulletmagnet Member Username: Bulletmagnet Post Number: 1597 Registered: 01-2007 |
Nice work on these photos, Mikeg. As kids we would often venture over to Rose Terrace on our bikes. We would marvel at the sheer size of the garage, and the number of vintage cars it held inside. It was sad to see it go, but to this day a small remnant of the house remains there to serve as a reminder of an end of an era. | ||
Ray1936 Member Username: Ray1936 Post Number: 3777 Registered: 01-2005 |
It amazed me when the Rotunda burned to the ground. Looking like a granite fortress, it seemed indestructible. By the way, the '55 Ford in that photo was, IMHO, the prettiest Ford in 100 years for styling. Unfortunately, the sheet metal was just a tad better than tinfoil. | ||
1kielsondrive Member Username: 1kielsondrive Post Number: 364 Registered: 08-2008 |
Mike, you're amazing! Thank you. | ||
Maof2 Member Username: Maof2 Post Number: 923 Registered: 06-2008 |
Mike, thanks for the great pictures. I too remember the Rose Terrace and when it was torn down. Besides, the new subdivision, was it the up-keep, her wishes, family decision? | ||
56packman Member Username: 56packman Post Number: 2484 Registered: 12-2005 |
Quote: Besides, the new subdivision, was it the up-keep, her wishes, family decision? Simple answer: Money The Dodge heirs, especially the children of Horace and Anna Thompson Dodge were pretty fast and loose with their cash. After she died the market for a mausoleum like Rose Terrace was non-existent. 20 years later Art VanEslander built a mansion that is larger, but in 1976 there was no market for it, the rich (HFII included) had little use for a manor in the 1920s scale like Rose Terrace and there was no plan 'ala Meadow Brook or the Edsel and Eleanor Ford homes to preserve Rose Terrace. The family was burning through cash at an advanced rate by then, a tradition started by Horace junior, a poster child of how ambition and intelligence does not transfer from generation to generation. | ||
Maof2 Member Username: Maof2 Post Number: 927 Registered: 06-2008 |
thanks packman | ||
Gistok Member Username: Gistok Post Number: 7402 Registered: 08-2004 |
Ray1936, most World's Fair buildings are made of impermanent materials. They're usually only built to last as long as the fair. Lots of faux stone. Although I'm not privy to what the Ford Rotunda was made of, I believe that it wasn't as solid as one would think. Otherwise disassembly and reconstruction would have been very very expensive. And it would help explain why it burned to the ground. | ||
Patrick Member Username: Patrick Post Number: 5718 Registered: 10-2003 |
The Dodge family blew through millions of old Anna's cash. It was sad was regarded as the last great house to be built in America. It was Horace Trumbauer's epic finale. It would take well north of $100 million to construct that today and I doubt you could even find any skilled workers with old world knowledge of craftsmanship. What really broke the $$ bank was Horace Junior's series of messy divorces and failed business ventures. | ||
56packman Member Username: 56packman Post Number: 2485 Registered: 12-2005 |
Chrysler had a very moderne building at the Century of progress.  | ||
Larryinflorida Member Username: Larryinflorida Post Number: 3223 Registered: 02-2007 |
Same old story with Rose Terrace. Never remodel past what the neighborhood can support with comparables. Shooda just put it all into the kitchen. You always get that back. | ||
Mortalman Member Username: Mortalman Post Number: 433 Registered: 03-2007 |
Wasn't there a probate or some such lawsuit surrounding Horace Dodge or the Dodge Brothers Estates that ground on in courts for 60+ years? In an interview with Mrs. Ann Dodge she said, "The happiest times Horace and I ever had was when I was packing his lunch for work." | ||
Mackinaw Member Username: Mackinaw Post Number: 5441 Registered: 02-2005 |
Those are some great photos of Rose Terrace. I've never seen photographs from those perspectives with such detail. Thanks. | ||
Larryinflorida Member Username: Larryinflorida Post Number: 3224 Registered: 02-2007 |
http://www.thebig8.net/macgreg or.mp3 | ||
Maof2 Member Username: Maof2 Post Number: 929 Registered: 06-2008 |
Does anyone know if they saved anything from the house, inside and out and where some of the items went? | ||
Maof2 Member Username: Maof2 Post Number: 930 Registered: 06-2008 |
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi- bin/fg.cgi?page=sh&GRid=148127 62& Forget my question. I found this. | ||
Mikeg Member Username: Mikeg Post Number: 2000 Registered: 12-2005 |
According to this source, the contents of the Rose Terrace's 60 foot long music room reside at the Detroit Institute of Arts. The music room contained the pipe organ from the first Rose Terrace, which was torn down in 1934 to make way for the larger and more expensive Rose Terrace II. | ||
Catman_dude Member Username: Catman_dude Post Number: 321 Registered: 03-2006 |
It's a shame that such an exquisite mansion with awesome interior couldn't have been saved. The workmanship and craftsmanship was unbelievable! | ||
Eastsidedame Member Username: Eastsidedame Post Number: 584 Registered: 12-2006 |
The old lady always looks ticked off. Even in that photo with her boy toy. Put me in that house, and you couldn't blast the grin off my face! | ||
Jcole Member Username: Jcole Post Number: 4268 Registered: 04-2005 |
Wasn't Rose Terrace supposed to be architectually perfect? Like, all the angles were precisely 90 degrees, and all of the windows were perfectly parallel to the ground, etc, or is that just urban legend type stuff? | ||
Detroit313 Member Username: Detroit313 Post Number: 742 Registered: 02-2006 |
M- Amazing job. Please keep them coming! <313> | ||
56packman Member Username: 56packman Post Number: 2489 Registered: 12-2005 |
Portions of Rose Terrace were/are at a plastics prototyping company in Troy, the interiors of some rooms. The organ from Rose Terrace is in a Baptist church at ten mile/Evergreen/Lodge X-way. It is very much like the organ at Meadow Brook hall, a gigantic Aeolian residence organ, 60 tons of grey Muzak machine. The Rose Terrace instrument actually sounds good in the church; it speaks right into the sanctuary rather than being buried behind thick velvet drapes like most mansion organs were. | ||
Pkbroch Member Username: Pkbroch Post Number: 158 Registered: 02-2008 |
Some of the household goods and other furniture etc. were sold at an formal estate sale. My mother bought four goblets and four dessert plates heavily edged and embossed with gold. I still have them in my display case. | ||
Goat Member Username: Goat Post Number: 10457 Registered: 10-2003 |
DuMouchelle's sold a lot of the furniture at Rose Terrace. But since Anna Dodge had a lot of period Louis XV and Louis XVI pieces they went to Sotheby's in two 747's. | ||
Providence Member Username: Providence Post Number: 46 Registered: 11-2007 |
Anyone have $100? I'd like to see this: http://www.amazon.com/Remainin g-Contents-Terrace-Grosse-Mich igan/dp/B000K0D1I8 | ||
56packman Member Username: 56packman Post Number: 2502 Registered: 12-2005 |
Here's a slide my Dad took of the Bob-Lo boat "St.Claire", I think this was taken from the deck of the Columbia as they passed each other, circa 1970.  | ||
Leannam1989 Member Username: Leannam1989 Post Number: 77 Registered: 06-2008 |
Sickening to lose a building as beautiful as Rose Terrace. Unfortunately, it seems that in the 60s and 70s this country lost many fabulous old buildings that can never really be duplicated. | ||
Tkshreve Member Username: Tkshreve Post Number: 639 Registered: 07-2006 |
My girlfriends' grandmother lives on the lake extremely close to where the Dodge Mansion was. GF's uncle has actually scuba dived in the Delphine Channel for artifacts that made their way over the side of the Delphine. He has found a handful of things that I can not recall at this time. The Delphine required a specially dredged channel to safely harbour itself into the freighter channel. Reading about this family and their legacy is actually quite entertaining. | ||
Bulletmagnet Member Username: Bulletmagnet Post Number: 1624 Registered: 01-2007 |
Thanks for the contributions all, and especially for the photo of the St.Claire, 56packman. | ||
Patrick Member Username: Patrick Post Number: 5732 Registered: 10-2003 |
I actually own a genuine copy of the Rose Terrace auction catalog. Very neat to see all the items in it. | ||
Sumas Member Username: Sumas Post Number: 316 Registered: 01-2008 |
Thanks for posting the year that the Ford Rotunda burned. It must have been a really special Christmas display. I remember going there twice. I would have been five and six years old. The silliest memory I have is that I got a xmas coloring bool there. I left it on the kitchen table and our dog knocked it off and peed on it. | ||
Mortalman Member Username: Mortalman Post Number: 453 Registered: 03-2007 |
Not wanting to thread jack but the loss of Rose Terrace says a lot about the monied of Detroit and Anna Dodge. To say nothing about the loss of the Dodge legacy in concrete terms. For all the good it did Anna Dodge to leave her money to her descendents that pissed it all away all it would have taken was for her to set up the $10 million endowment for the DIA to take over and set it up as a showcase art center. Rose Terrace was a gem in the crown that WAS Detroit! Petra has been around in Jordan since the 4th Century B.C. and we can’t even maintain beautiful buildings like the Farwell Building for 93 years! Farwell Building Money doesn’t make us higher level animals but art and the pursuit and love of art does because it elicits emotion which distinguishes us from the lower animals of the creation. | ||
Jiminnm Member Username: Jiminnm Post Number: 1816 Registered: 02-2005 |
When Horace Dodge died in the 1920s, he left Anna Dodge all the income generated from his estate during her life, but on her death the body of the estate was to be passed on to his children or their heirs. She and her second husband spent a lot of that income (much of it building Rose Terrace), but she still accumulated quite an estate on her own . If I remember correctly, Anna Dodge was one of the reasons we have the alternative minimum tax and all its related problems today. as I recall, she had nearly all of her money ($100 million or so) invested in municipal bonds and paid virtually no income tax in the 1960s. | ||
Douglasm Member Username: Douglasm Post Number: 1147 Registered: 10-2003 |
bump | ||
Gistok Member Username: Gistok Post Number: 7424 Registered: 08-2004 |
The destruction of Rose Terrace is what triggered Eleanor Clay Ford to bequeath her 84 acre Gaukler Point mansion and its' contents to posterity (along with a $15 million endowment). | ||
Ptpelee Member Username: Ptpelee Post Number: 41 Registered: 09-2005 |
Let me play Devil's advocate....What if that mausoleum was still standing and some Fat Cat auto executive was living there.....how would any of us benefit? It shouldn't have been built in the first place, especially in the midst of a Depression. It was just a waste of time and materials, all to please some nasty old women! | ||
Crystal Member Username: Crystal Post Number: 315 Registered: 05-2007 |
I have a small carved chest that came from Rose Terrace. When my parents were setting up house in the 1960s and 1970s they often went to auctions and estate sales. Many of those auctions and sales were at the old Lake Shore mansions. I think a lot of them were razed in those decades. | ||
Ray1936 Member Username: Ray1936 Post Number: 3808 Registered: 01-2005 |
"she had nearly all of her money ($100 million or so) invested in municipal bonds and paid virtually no income tax in the 1960s." Well, what's wrong with that, Jim? It's perfectly legal, and any of us can also invest in munis. In fact, if you watch the Suze Orman show, that's what she preaches and personally invests in. Sure beats the hell out of the stock market under current conditions! | ||
Mikem Member Username: Mikem Post Number: 3718 Registered: 10-2003 |
"Well, what's wrong with that, Jim?" The A.M.T.? | ||
Ray1936 Member Username: Ray1936 Post Number: 3809 Registered: 01-2005 |
Ah, well, yeah, forgot about that since it doesn't affect me. Good point. | ||
Soomka1 Member Username: Soomka1 Post Number: 140 Registered: 02-2007 |
Ptpelee, building that "mausoleum" during the depression helped feed a lot of families. How is it a waste of time and materials for someone to spend their own money? What would all of the workers have done if the wealthy would have just sat on their money, or if the government would have "spread it around"? I'm not sure what policy you would have been in favor of, but it seems like I've heard it somewhere else lately. | ||
Ray Member Username: Ray Post Number: 1158 Registered: 06-2004 |
I really hate the AMT. I pay it on my middle-upper middle class salary becasue my state of Michigan property taxes are so high. So, for paying high Michigan property taxes I also get to pay $5000 more to the federal government. | ||
Gnome Member Username: Gnome Post Number: 2036 Registered: 08-2007 |
Mrs. Gnome here. My family and I were on our way home from somewhere when the Rotunda was on fire. I was very young but I remember my Dad saying "...I sure hope it isn't the Rotunda." Then, when it turned out that it was the Rotunda he was really bummed. He said it was a beautiful structure. Thanks for the pictures. I love that station wagon in the display pic. | ||
Ptpelee Member Username: Ptpelee Post Number: 42 Registered: 09-2005 |
Ray, they hired NO local labor to build that place. I know, my Grandfather went over there looking for work during the height of the Depression. All workers were brought in from New York, why I don't know. Anyways, he was volunteering at the Capuchin Soup Kitchen at the time when the word went around that there may be some carpentry work. When he saw this palace being built at the same time children were lining up for food and living in packing crates not 5 miles away he became so incensed that he joined the Communist Party.... for a while. He later calmed down and became a Roosevelt New Dealer! | ||
Mikeg Member Username: Mikeg Post Number: 2059 Registered: 12-2005 |
Inspired by the 1955 Ford Rotunda camping display, I share with you this 1949 Technicolor MGM short that I found, titled "Roaming through Michigan". | ||
Ray1936 Member Username: Ray1936 Post Number: 3821 Registered: 01-2005 |
Interesting short, Mike. Since my summer stomping grounds for years were Glen Lake and Traverse City, quite enjoyed that, dated as it was. |
