Motor City Library Owns the Road : Archives: If it has anything to do with cars, it can probably be found in the National Automotive History Collection in Detroit.
There’s a good reason Ron Grantz is so wiry. “Some days you just don’t get to sit down,” he says with a grin that blends pride with a dose of exhaustion.
Grantz is in charge of the nation’s largest collection of automotive publications, photos and a few other items that aren’t so easy to classify. It’s made him a much sought-after expert for those from Ann Arbor to Australia who are looking for answers to automotive questions.
The collection sprawls across much of the fourth floor of the main Detroit Public Library. A massive card file covers one wall of the National Automotive History Collection reading room. There are 435,000 items listed in the card catalogue, says curator Grantz, and “there are probably the same number we haven’t processed yet, maybe more.”
With only six staff members, including volunteers, it’s hard to keep up with all the material gathering on the shelves, desks and chairs. When Grantz sits down with a visitor in the conference room, he has to hack through a pile of magazines like an adventurer carving a path through a rain forest.
The collection began almost as an afterthought. “The library started collecting these things when the car first came on the scene,” he explains. “In 1953, we became a separate department,” and in 1988, the collection took over much of the fourth floor of the main Detroit library. It now takes up 11,000 square feet. The collection is a treasure trove of information about the evolution of the auto industry: the cars, the people who design them, and those who sell them. One of the most unusual items is a dealer manual containing paint samples of the various colors customers could choose when buying a 1937 Lincoln.
The first periodicals date to the early 1890s, and refer to the phenomenon of “horseless”--that is, self-propelled--carriages. The oldest book in the collection is “Notes on Motor Carriages,” published in 1896 by John Henry Knight. On March 3 of that year, Charles King became the first man to drive a car on the streets of Detroit. A picture of that momentous event can be found in one of the file cabinets. There is, in fact, a vast photographic archive, including pictures collected by the now-defunct Packard Motor Co.
There is also the collection of Nathan Lazarnick, who chronicled the first decades of the automobile and also the highlights of other aspects of American life, such as the days after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
Other parts of the collection contain new car service manuals, records of who bought which car when, and detailed models of concept cars such as the Firebird III. There are even automotive jigsaw puzzles.
Among the biographies, researchers can tap the papers and personal collections of some of the auto industry’s earliest pioneers, such as Henry Ford and Louis Chevrolet.
For the moment, the entire collection is open to inspection 20 hours a week. And the collection draws a steady stream of inquiries. It has become the resource of choice for anyone who needs a definitive answer about automotive history, business details or product specifications.
Access to the collection is free. For out-of-state callers, the library will assess a small search and photocopying fee.
Apparently, Grantz prefers standing. Any more material and the chairs are likely to disappear entirely.
