Many people have only heard of the Ford Rotunda in the context of the catastrophic Nov. 9, 1962 fire that forced its closure. However, the building served as the backdrop to lifelong memories for millions of visitors as the home of Christmas Fantasy and many other displays during its quarter-century as Ford’s visitor center.

The Rotunda actually originated outside of Dearborn. The Albert Kahn-designed building had served as Ford’s exhibit space for the 1933-34 Chicago World’s Fair. The Rotunda stood out with its 110-foot-tall main cylinder and two adjoining wings resembling a concentric stack of gears. A series of colored spotlights lighted the Art-Deco-style exterior.

After more than 40 million attendees visited the Rotunda at the World’s Fair, the company decided to relocate the building to its home base, with Kahn, architect of this and many factory buildings at the Rouge Plant, supervising the reconstruction. Limestone was substituted for the original plasterboard siding of the building, the design for which had also been updated for its new purpose as a visitor center. The Rotunda was reassembled on a 13.5-acre site across from the Ford Administration Building on Schaefer Road, near the Rouge. Many of the original exhibits from the fair, such as “Roads of the World” and a Ford World Globe, were also relocated to Dearborn.

Following more than a year of reconstruction, the Rotunda opened in May of 1936, welcoming almost one million visitors each year – including movie stars, celebrities, business leaders and heads of state – until it closed to the public in 1942 due to World War II. During wartime, the building served as office space and a school for the Army Air Corps, whose barracks were located across Rotunda Drive, and the Rotunda’s movie theater was used as a movie hall to entertain soldiers.

Following the war, the Rotunda hosted dealer presentations, press events and other business meetings – including a lunch meeting between 10 young, heralded Army officers who would come to be known as “The Whiz Kids” for their first meeting with Henry Ford II. However, the building didn’t become the beloved exhibit space it has come to be remembered as until a renovation in 1953. The makeover transformed the court into a lightweight geodesic dome which created additional exhibit space. Other spaces were also remodeled, and new exhibits were added before the Rotunda, decorated as a birthday cake, reopened months later as part of Ford’s 50th-anniversary celebration.

The Rotunda is probably best known as the venue of the wildly popular Christmas Fantasy: an elaborate, annual display that included a nativity scene, Santa Claus in Wonderland – complete with a toy assembly line – candy kitchen, bakery and animated figures. The show ran from 1953 until 1961. Christmas Fantasy was one of a handful of recurring displays that painted scenes including the Alaskan wilderness, Hawaiian beaches and Parisian cityscapes, as well as a “dream garden” of 8,000 plants and flowers installed under the Rotunda’s dome and live animal displays.

Permanent attractions at the Rotunda included a 30-foot-long miniature assembly line exhibit and one-mile test track. The building also served as the origination point for the famed Rouge Plant Tours, complete with their cobalt blue, glass-topped buses, from 1936 until the Rotunda’s demise in 1962. It was also home to other miscellaneous installations, including 1961’s City of the Future exhibit, which featured elevated streets, an overhead monorail train, a helicopter landing on a skyscraper, and the then-new concept of a dome-enclosed baseball diamond. The building also hosted a display of each year’s new lineup of Ford vehicles.  

Rotunda attendance swelled during the holidays for Christmas Fantasy, but it was an accident that occurred during the preparations for the 1962 installment that led to the building’s destruction. A fire caused by a heater used for roofing repairs ignited the building, which was quickly covered in flames, and the roof and walls collapsed. While the building could not be saved, the Ford archives housed in the building’s north wing were rescued, preserving the company’s history. While the Rotunda name lives on, the original namesake building does not. Rebuilding was deferred due to plans for the Ford exhibit at the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair.

In all, more than 18 million people visited the Rotunda – it was the fifth-most popular tourist destination in the U.S. in 1960, outdrawing national landmarks such as Yellowstone, Mount Vernon, the Washington Monument and the Statue of Liberty – which saw its peak attendance in 1957, with more than 1.8 million visitors.