(Detroit’s Ford Rotunda building was more than a brick-and-mortar structure. To the residents and visitors of Motor City, it was a symbol of Detroit’s economic vitality, cultural significance, and shared community memories).

We warned you, Gentle Readers, that the Grand Tour of 1903 was going to visit you again. We had a part in saving some ancient history about his journey, peering at old ink and stiff old pages. We thought it might be useful to commemorate the publication of that ancient trip one century ago to Europe by a devout small-town merchant exploring his Lutheran heritage. So long as the memory remains, the Merchant’s life will not be lost.

The Family remembers it from the extensive collection of photos, postal cards and the little leather notebooks on which the detailed notes were kept. Across the Atlantic, there is a place that symbolizes things pretty well. It is back up in Michigan where some of us were raised. It is a place called “The Ford Rotunda.”

The building had its roots in the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, known as the Century of Progress Exposition, which opened in May of 1933 and attracted more than 40 million visitors over its two-year run. One of the major attractions at the fair was Ford Motor Company’s Rotunda, a structure built as a Ford showpiece for the 1934 Chicago World’s Fair. The building was designed by Albert Kahn, one of the premier architects who created Detroit as the “Paris of the Midwest,” a title that after the riots of 1967 and 1968 now seems ironic.

Kahn’s design was industrial in theme and demonstrated Henry Ford’s commitment to manufacturing. The design included a central hall reminiscent of a huge gear made of steel and weatherproof papier-mâché. That portion of the structure was disassembled after the fair and brought back to Dearborn, Michigan, where it was reconstructed using more permanent materials.

Designed to be the showcase of the auto industry, the Ford Rotunda was opened to the public on May 14, 1936. The original steel framework was covered with Indiana limestone, forming a design representing a stack of gears, decreasing in size towards the top. Located on Schaefer Road, across from the Ford Company’s Administration building, the circular structure had an open courtyard 92 feet in diameter with a wing on either side.

Ford had decided to dismantle the building and move it to Dearborn as a tourist attraction. When reconstructed, the Rotunda was built out of limestone on the original framework. The Rotunda featured automotive exhibits and seasonal shows. A 1961 Ford news release was issued when some of us were ten years of age. It detailed one “summer spectacular” with the “Star of the show as the Gyron, a futuristic car that would run on two wheels, using a gyroscope for stabilization… ”

For generations of Detroiters the only place to be at Christmas time was the Ford Rotunda in Dearborn. From 1936 to 1962, the gear-shaped Ford Rotunda attracted visitors from around the world. It was the fifth most popular tourist destination in the United States in the 1950s. Built on the South Side of Chicago, the Rotunda was relocated to Dearborn, Michigan. It was extremely popular, outdrawing the Statue of Liberty in the top five tourist destinations in America.

Detail was key: huge murals on the walls depicted the manufacture of the Ford automobile. Exhibits were changed regularly, but Ford products always took center stage. One of our favorites was what surrounded the Rotunda. The grounds contained reproductions of 19 historic Roads of the World: the Appian Way from Italy, the Tokaido Road in Japan, the Grand Trunk Road in India, a Mayan road from the Yucatan, the Oregon Trail and a wooden plank section of Woodward Avenue, the grand first concrete road in America where I got my first speeding ticket only a few years later. It was in a Chrysler 440RT Charger, with our apologies to Mr. Ford.

Besides its own attractions, the Rotunda served as the gateway for tours of the Rouge Plant. The Top Five American attractions of 1960? The Rotunda ranked behind only Niagara Falls, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, The Smithsonian Institution and the Lincoln Memorial as a national tourist destination. It was more popular than Yellowstone, Mount Vernon, the Washington Monument and the Statue of Liberty.

The building was closed to the public during World War II, and following the War underwent a massive remodeling. The Chairman’s Dad had joined Ford as a clay stylist in 1948 when he relocated from Brooklyn with his bride Betty. In 1952, the courtyard was covered with an innovative 18,000 pound dome. The weight of a conventional dome would have come in at 320,000 pounds and would have crushed the structure. Ford management turned to R. Buckminster Fuller, who came up with the design, the first commercial application of his then-experimental geodesic dome.

That may have been the most futuristic component of the Kahn design, but the one that appealed to us was what encircled the Rotunda. It was an oval roadway, broken into 21 sections. What was so cool was that the segments told the history of road construction around the world. From the dirt roads of early civilization, through wooden, cobblestone, and brick streets, to the most modern concrete highway, Ford illustrated the importance of all aspects of innovation related to the movement of people.

Described as “ultra-modern,”, the Rotunda reopened as part of Ford’s 50th anniversary celebration on June 16, 1953. A radioactive wand (the tip contained a small amount of radium), said to be symbolic of the arrival of industry at the threshold of the atomic age, turned on golden floodlights and lighted 50 huge birthday candles around the rim of the Rotunda. The wand bombarded a Geiger tube with 44,890,832 gamma ray impulses in 15 seconds. The final impulse (the number signified the number of vehicles produced by Ford since 1903) was said to trigger the electrical system.

With the Rotunda’s new design came a new lure for visitors: an annual Christmas display called the Christmas Fantasy, which first opened on Dec. 15, 1953. That first year, Donner, Blitzen, Prancer and Dancer were there, along with a 37 foot, 6 ton Christmas tree. Santa’s Workshop formed the centerpiece, with Santa’s elves building transportation toys on a miniature assembly line. Three-dimensional portrayals of the Nativity and ‘The Night Before Christmas’ were inside the Rotunda and Santa was on hand taking requests. Nearly 500,000 visitors saw the Christmas show that first year.

The next year, Story Book Land came to life, with Hansel and Gretel, Little Boy Blue, Puss in Boots, Little Bo Peep and Humpty Dumpty animated by machines performing around a vast Santa Claus castle.

In 1958, a 15,000-piece miniature circus highlighted the Fantasy, with a parade, a 10-piece band on a wagon pulled by a 10-horse team, a steam calliope and 800 tiny animals, 30 tents, 435 performers and customers, all in a scale of 1/2 inch to the foot. The hand-carved circus was the creation of Jean LeRoy, a former circus clown. Along with the circus, visitors saw a rustic barn dance, a shopping center with a doll beauty shop, animated dolls representing children of all nations, and woodland creatures frolicking in the snow.

The preparations for the 1962 Christmas display were well under way when disaster struck on Nov. 9. While workers applied tar to the dome as weatherproofing, they kept it warm with an infrared heater. Somehow the tar caught fire. Shortly after 1 p.m., an employee saw flames on the ceiling of the main floor, and gave the alarm as workmen raced down from the roof. Sheets of flames shot 50 feet high. The black smoke was visible for miles.

In less than an hour the Rotunda lay in ruins. All employees and display workers escaped injury, except for the engineer in charge of the building, who ran to the roof at the first alarm and suffered from smoke inhalation. The roof collapsed shortly after the fire started, and a shouted warning to the firemen barely got them out of the building before the walls fell in.

The site is now home to a family service and learning center, child-care center and a Michigan Technical Education Center.

There are still ruins up there, with some Detroit whimsy. Circling the outline of where the Rotunda once stood are segments of the famous roads that helped build Western Civilization nd preserve some in the East as well, like Rome’s Appian Way and the Road that lead to Burma.

Or, of course, we can just let the Rotunda’s legacy lie with the buried road segments around where it stood in the center of the Arsenal of Democracy that won a global war. The Paris of the Midwest. You know, Detroit.

Copyright 2023 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com