The Dodge Brothers: The Men, the Motor Cars, and the Legacy (Great Lakes Books Series) by Charles K. Hyde

Author:Charles K. Hyde [Hyde, Charles K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Published: 2005-04-07T22:00:00+00:00

Matilda and John Dodge next to a transplanted tree at their unfinished Grosse Pointe mansion, 1919. Courtesy of Oakland University’s Meadow Brook Hall.

John and Matilda Dodge’s unfinished Grosse Pointe mansion, 1919. Courtesy of Oakland University’s Meadow Brook Hall.

John and Matilda Dodge also spent lavishly on social events to showcase their wealth and to achieve some acceptance in Detroit society. Daughter Winifred’s social debut in December 1913 featured an elaborate dinner dance at the Pontchartrain Hotel in Detroit. Decorators turned the ballroom into a replica of an English garden, complete with plants, flowers, and songbirds hidden in the shrubbery. On 30 October 1916, Winifred married William Gray, Jr., the son of a Detroit banker. One of her bridesmaids was Josephine Clay, the sister of Eleanor Clay, future wife of Edsel Ford. As a wedding present, John Dodge gave the newlyweds a large house at 1723 Iroquois Avenue in Detroit’s fashionable Indian Village neighborhood. Still, Matilda Rausch Dodge never sought acceptance by Grosse Pointe society as desperately as Anna Thomson Dodge did.60

John and Horace Dodge were not alone in receiving little recognition for their accomplishments. All of the Detroit automakers struggled for social acceptance. An examination of The Book of Detroiters (1908), the principal guide to Detroit’s elite, speaks to the Dodges’ low profile in the community. Thomas J. Mahon, the lawyer John Dodge attacked in a bar fight, had a biographical sketch of seven lines, the same amount of space given to Henry Ford. John Dodge and James Couzens had three lines each, and Horace Dodge was not listed at all. Two automobile executives associated with the Chalmers Motor Car Company, Roy D. Chapin and Howard Coffin, had eleven lines of text and Henry Leland received ten lines.61

The pattern remained the same in the revised edition of The Book of Detroiters, published in 1914. John Dodge’s entry expanded to ten lines and Horace was absent again, probably because he simply refused or neglected to send information to the editor. Henry Ford’s entry had grown to eighteen lines, while James Couzens had nineteen lines. Although Henry Leland and Roy D. Chapin were arguably less significant to the automobile industry and to the Detroit community than Ford or Couzens, Leland’s entry stood at twenty-three lines and Chapin’s at twenty-seven lines of text.62

In time, both John and Horace Dodge slowly made their way into most of the clubs of the elite. In the case of the Detroit Club, neither was a member as late as 1913, but they were admitted sometime before 1920. They both became members of the DAC and the Detroit Golf, Yacht, Motor Boat, and Country Clubs. Both belonged to a half-dozen additional golf/country clubs in the metropolitan Detroit area. Horace was more active than brother John, in part because of his serious interests in yachting and music. He belonged to the Larchmont (New York) Yacht Club, the Atlantic Yacht Club, the Chicago Yacht Club, the Chamber Music Society, and the Detroit Symphony Society. Horace was also a member of the

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