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In 1963, to commemorate the centennial anniversary of the birth of Henry Ford, the Ford Foundation donated three million dollars to the City of Dearborn to construct a memorial library. On July 30, 1963, Ford's hundredth birthday, the Ford Motor Company deeded 15.3 acres (6.2 ha) of land to the City of Dearborn for the building. The library was formally dedicated November 25, 1969.

Henry Ford Centennial Library's original floorplan designs included large meeting rooms along the first floor; a sizable Children's section, detailed public card catalogue, an adult reading room (now a conference room where the Ford Collection of books is currently kept), open periodical stacks for active issues of magazines and closed periodical stacks where back issues could be kept, record listening booths, adult fiction and nonfiction sections, and typewriters spread along the second floor; and a closed book stack and the Audio-Visual department, where 8mm and 16mm film reels and other materials were kept in staff-accessible archives, were located on the third floor, where the Mezzanine and study rooms are located now.

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