Henry Ford Museum and its adjacent Greenfield Village were conceived by Ford as a learning institution where Americans could learn how their ancestors lived and worked in the past � specifically Henry Ford's past, the latter half of the nineteenth century and early portion of the twentieth. Ford believed that the precepts he had learned growing up in rural and small town Midwest America was responsible for his success and that of other Americans such as Thomas Edison, George Washington Carver, and the Wright Brothers. Thomas Edison himself signed the cornerstone of "The Edison Institute," as it was originally known, in 1928. Then Ford began to fill the 8-acre building with what, at the time, many considered flea market fodder. Today, of course, they are priceless relics.

Legend has it that Ford set out to buy "one of everything made in America" from the Edison Institute's target time period and by all appearances, he very nearly succeeded. In addition to a word-class collection of historic automobiles, there is also a dazzling array of bicycles, plows, canning jars, saw mills, electric fans, steam engines, rocking chairs, early airplanes and other flotsam and jetsam from the Good Old Days. The present staff has expanded the original time period to include all of America's past. You will, for example, find a 1952 Oscar Meyer Weinermobile, a 1960 McDonald's Hamburger marquee, as well as relics from Colonial America. It is as complete a picture of American culture as has ever been assembled.

Not content just with artifacts, Ford also collected buildings and resurrected them in a "village" on an 81-acre tract next to the museum. Greenfield Village consists of over 80 historic structures that were built in different parts of the United States at different time periods, providing life-size snapshots of homespun American architecture and industry. Originally, the village was intended as a hands-on classroom where students could learn both old and new technical skills. There's still a fair amount of hands-on learning that goes on here, but Ford opened it to the public in 1933.

Some of the buildings in the village are the homes and workshops of the people who invented modern America � Ford's old Michigan homestead is there, along with Edison's New Jersey laboratories, and � of course � the Wright brother's home and bicycle shop.

The Wright home (right) and Wright bicycle shop (left) as they now appear in Greenfield Village.

The Wright home at 7 Hawthorne Street in Dayton, Ohio as it appear about 1900.

The Wright bicycle shop around 1919.

Orville and Charlie Taylor at work in the shop in 1897.

Wilbur at work in the shop in 1897.

The Webbert Building at 1127 West Third Street, which house the Wright Cycle Company, was expanded in the 1920s.

Henry Ford became interested in the old Wright Cycle Company at the urging of William E. Scripps, a Detroit journalist and aviation enthusiast. Orville was invited to visit Greenfield Village in the summer of 1936 and five days after his visit, the Wright's old landlord, Charles Webbert, sold the old shop building at 1127 West Third Street to Ford for $13,000. Several Dayton residents raised a fuss when the Dayton Daily News broke the story a few days later. Judge James Douglas of the Court of Common Pleas wrote, "It is an outrage to let a thing like this happen. First England takes the first airplane and now Henry Ford takes the original workshop�" (At the time, the 1903 Wright Flyer was in the British Science Museum. Orville had sent it there to protest the Smithsonian's refusal to admit that he and his brother were first to build a practical airplane.)

Most of Dayton, however, remained as uninterested in the matter as they had when the Wrights were making their first flights at Kitty Hawk and Huffman Prairie. Henry Ford, his son Edsel, and Fred Black, the director of Greenfield Village, swooped down from Dearborn that October. While talking to Orville about removing the bicycle shop, they found that the old home at 7 Hawthorne Street might also be available. A month later, they bought it from Lottie Jones, the Wright's former washerwoman, for $4,100. By February of 1937, both the shop and the house had been removed to Michigan. Henry Ford even took the dirt on which the house stood, and the hole in the ground on Hawthorne Street remained for many years.

Orville and Henry inside the old bike shop looking out on West Third Street.

Henry Ford (right), Charlie Taylor (middle right), Orville Wright (middle left), and Orville's nephew Wilbur Wright (left), consult about the restoration of the home and bike shop.

At Greenfield Village, both the house and the shop were placed side by side. (In Dayton, they had been a few blocks apart.) Curators restored them as nearly as possible to their appearance in 1903, when the Wrights made their first powered flight. Ford's people looked high and low for Charlie Taylor, the Wright's mechanic and the builder of their first airplane motors. They finally traced him to California where he was working as a machinist for North American Aviation for 65 cents and hour. The Edison Institute hired him as a consultant to oversee the restoration of the shop. Charlie, working with Orville's secretary, Mabel Beck, tracked down most of the machine tools they had used in the shop. What he couldn�t find, Charlie made, including the natural gas engine that the Wrights had built to power their tools.

Orville and Lottie Jones gathered items for the house, including some pieces of furniture that he and Wilbur had made. For some time, Lottie kept "discovering" things that had belonged to the Wrights and sending them up to Greenfield Village with requests for payment. Fred Black was amenable, but he didn't want her to continue milking the Edison Institute indefinitely. He finally confronted Lottie and demanded a complete list of the items she had so he could arrive at a final financial settlement.

The restored house and bicycle shop opened on Wilbur's birthday, April 16, 1938. Charles Kettering, inventor of the automotive self-starter and a friend of the Wrights, presided over the ceremony. Several pioneer aviators, including Frank Lahm and Walter Brookins (both of whom the Wrights taught to fly), also attended.

The restored interior of the Wright Cycle Company workshop.

Orville Wright and others guests of honor at the dedication ceremonies in 1938.

Members of the Wright family that gathered for the dedication.

Orville on the porch of his restored home.