Each week here on @FordOnline we bring you highlights of the people, products and other various pieces that make up Ford Motor Company’s rich 117-year history. But none of that would be possible without the vast collection of assets dating back to its founding in 1903.
The Ford Archives, located adjacent to the company’s Dearborn engineering campus, house more than 1 million photos, films and videos in an environmentally controlled space. The collection was created in February 1951 as part of the company’s 50th anniversary celebration and was initially housed in the company’s Engineering Building, where it would later return.
Henry Edmunds, formerly head archivist of the U.S. War Production Board, was named chief archivist. The Ford Archives’ first big challenge was to provide raw material for a two-volume history of Ford Motor Company (later expanded to three volumes) by historians Allan Nevins and Frank Ernest Hill.
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Ford's archives escaped ruin in the 1962 fire that destroyed the Rotunda Building.
The Ford Archives moved in 1952 and was formally dedicated at Fair Lane Estate on May 7, 1953. It was then relocated to the Rotunda building in February 1957 while some of the holdings were donated to Henry Ford Museum to enhance the mission of that organization.
While fire destroyed most of the Ford Rotunda building in November 1962, the archival records survived and were dispersed to different storage areas. As part of the Ford 2000 reorganization, the Ford Industrial Archives became part of Public Affairs in January 1995 and was later renamed the Ford Motor Company Archives in April 1997.
In late 2015, the Ford Motor Company Archives returned to the Ford Engineering Lab, where it originated in 1951. This state-of-the-art space includes climate-controlled stacks, containing three miles of moveable shelving, three separate climate-controlled film coolers and a flexible exhibit space. The area has been used recently to host members of the media for an exhibit featuring artifacts from the Ford GT programs of the 1960s, 2000s and 2010s. The space also served as a location for shooting the mockumentary “John Bronco.”
For the past 70 years, the Ford Archives has existed to help Ford associates around the world by maintaining and sharing the company’s collections. This goal is aptly summed up in its current mission statement: “Ford Archives will collect, preserve and disseminate Ford Motor Company’s physical and digital artifacts to document the history of the company, its vehicles, innovations, employees and culture. We – and key partners – will use our heritage and these assets to create value, build reputation and link past innovations to today, building trust in our ability to lead in the future.”
Look below for photos of the Ford Archives as well as a sample of the historic images from the company's past!
As part of the archives team’s efforts to share the Ford Motor Company’s heritage, they have launched Ford Archives Online, a new digital repository of Ford Motor Company photos, documents and videos. All team members with a CDSID and network password can now access more than 30,000 assets – and that number is expected to grow to nearly 50,000 by the end of the year – to help inform and illustrate company storytelling:
More than 25,000 photos
More than 1,000 press releases
More than 300 videos
“For the past 70 years, we have been preserving and organizing the rich assets of the Ford Motor Company, we are now excited to have a new way to share this content with our associates around the world to continue building trust in our ability to lead in the future,” said Ted Ryan, heritage brand manager.
The variety of content will continue to expand as the team continues to digitize and organize material. Current featured collections on Ford Archives Online include a photo celebration of the company’s diverse workforce from the past century, images from the original Ford Bronco’s design and development, as well as photos from when the Model T opened the highways to all mankind.
