Encyclopedia Of Detroit
Dodge, Anna
Anna Dodge, patron of the arts and one of the wealthiest women of her time, was the wife of Horace E. Dodge. Born Christina Anna Thompson in 1871 in Dundee, Scotland, she moved to Detroit, Michigan as a child with her widowed mother. She was encouraged to study music and supported herself and her mother by giving piano lessons. In 1896, she married Horace Dodge.
The Dodge Brothers, Horace and John, became the principle parts manufacturer and supplier for Ford Motor Company, leaving in 1914 to create their own automotive company. Dodge Brothers automobiles and stock in Ford created the fortune for which Anna is most well known. In 1910 Horace hired Albert Kahn to design Rose Terrace, their home, a red sandstone mansion in Grosse Pointe Farms. Anna and Horace were major benefactors of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and helped with the construction of Orchestra Hall. When Horace died in December of 1920, he left his entire estate to Anna. In 1925 Anna and John’s wife Matilda sold their holdings in the company and shared the $146 million profit.
In 1926, Anna Dodge married Hugh Dillman and decided to build a new Rose Terrace, tearing down the old. It housed many historical items such as chairs that belonged to Marie-Antoinette, a piano that had been played by the children of King George III, a jewel coffer that had once stood in the bedroom of Russian Empress Maria Feodorovna, and a bureau made for Catherine the Great of Russia.
Anna divorced Dillman in 1947 and once again took the name Dodge. She outlived both of her children, Delphine and Horace Jr. Upon her death on June 2, 1970, she left a sum of money to the City of Detroit for the Horace E. Dodge and Son Memorial Fountain, designed by sculptor Isamu Noguchi and constructed in 1978 in Hart Plaza. The contents of her music room at Rose Terrace were bequeathed to the Detroit Institute of Arts. She is buried in the Dodge mausoleum at Detroit’s Woodlawn Cemetery.
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