Henry Ford Centennial Library

The Henry Ford Centennial Library is the main branch of the Dearborn Public Libraries in Dearborn, Michigan in Metro Detroit. It is located at 16301 Michigan Avenue.HistoryIn 1963, to commemorate the centennial anniversary of the birth of Henry Ford, the Ford Foundation donated three million dollars to the City of Dearborn to construct a memorial library. On July 30, 1963, Ford's hundredth birthday, the Ford Motor Company deeded of land to the City of Dearborn for the building. The library was formally dedicated November 25, 1969.Henry Ford Centennial Library's original floorplan designs included large meeting rooms along the first floor; a sizable Children's section, detailed public card catalogue, an adult reading room (now a conference room where the Ford Collection of books is currently kept), open periodical stacks for active issues of magazines and closed periodical stacks where back issues could be kept, record listening booths, adult fiction and nonfiction sections, and typewriters spread along the second floor; and a closed book stack and the Audio-Visual department, where 8mm and 16mm film reels and other materials were kept in staff-accessible archives, were located on the third floor, where the Mezzanine and study rooms are located now.ArtworkA statue of Ford, created by Marshall Fredericks, was commissioned in 1968 and dedicated in 1975 on the library's plaza. The statue is bronze on a green marble pedestal. It depicts an elder Ford with head bowed and hands in his pockets as if caught in a moment of thought. Behind him is a green marble slab on which appear his signature, carved above the statue, and four relief scenes also in bronze. Three of the reliefs represent various modes of transportation including horse and oxen drawn wagons, steam powered vehicles, bicycles and finally several early autos. The fourth depicts trucks, autos and trains emerging from a collage of buildings associated with the history of Ford Motor Company.