But Ford may be best represented not by the Highland Park or River Rouge assembly lines but by the stables, shops and churches of Greenfield Village.
It would involve a multistorey five-star hotel with spa and conference centre, two 18-hole courses, a golf academy, riding stables, shops, and a sprawling housing development involving time-share apartments, private villas and homes for local people.
Some even have stables, shops, clinics and more.
The Briarcliff Lodge was noted for its cuisine (including Briarcliff dairy and table water), a golf course, fifteen tennis courts, a music room, theater, indoor swimming pool (measuring 30 by 70 feet, with a depth of 4 to 10 feet ), casino, library, stable, repair shops and a fleet of Fiat automobiles.
"They are looking for homes in turnkey condition in stable neighborhoods near shopping, highways and New York City transportation," he said.
Although one-third of its school population lives in poverty, Somerset is also a magnet for young professionals, who are drawn to its stable neighborhoods, convenient shopping and easy commuting to Manhattan.
Tourists who flocked here by the millions annually now dribble through so sporadically that his two horse buggies sit unused many days and only 3 of 15 employees remain around the family stable and perfume shop.
The complex also included bathhouses, ice houses, carpentry and blacksmith shops, a soap manufactory, a stable, a chapel, an apothecary shop, a bakery that produced 10,000 loaves daily, a brewery that produced 400 kegs of beer at a time, and five dead houses, one for each of the divisions.
Cavalry stables (Bldgs 34 and 38), a double stable guardhouse and blacksmith shop (Bldg 37) were built behind these residences.
Benny Avni saw, here and there, decrepit dovecotes, livestock stables turned into shops, the skeleton of an old truck sunk to its hips in savage growth beside a deserted tin shed or an empty doghouse.
