Horace Elgin Dodge

He was born in Niles, Michigan, on May 17, 1868. His father owned a foundry and machine shop. Horace Dodge and his elder brother John Francis Dodge were inseparable as children and as adults. The pair was noted for personal initiative and once built a working high-wheel bicycle from scrap materials.

In 1886, the Dodge brothers moved to Detroit, Michigan, where they took jobs at Murphy Boiler Works, a boilermaker plant owned by a marine engineer named Thomas Murphy. In 1894, they went to work as machinists at the Canadian Typograph Company across the Detroit River in Windsor, Ontario.

In 1896, Horace Dodge married Anna Thompson in Windsor, Ohio. She was a Scottish immigrant born in Dundee and came from a working class family. The couple had a son, Horace Jr., and a daughter, Delphine. Thompson later married actor Hugh Dillman after the death of Dodge.

While brother John Dodge was the sales-oriented managerial type, Horace was a gifted mechanic and inveterate tinkerer. He invented the first dirt-proof ball bearing. In 1897, John arranged a deal for them to join with a third-party investor to manufacture bicycles. Within a few years, they sold the business and, in 1901, used the proceeds of the sale to set up their own machine shop in Detroit. During their first year in business, the Dodge brothers' company began making parts for the automobile industry. This company secured a contract to produce transmissions for Oldsmobile and for the newly chartered Ford Motor Company.

Despite their wealth and growing influence in the business community, the red-haired Dodge brothers' crude manners and aggressive conduct made them socially unacceptable to most of the wealthy Detroit elite. In 1912, Horace Dodge built a red sandstone mansion in Grosse Pointe called Rose Terrace. The huge home with formal gardens and a boat dock overlooked Lake St. Clair.

This was replaced by a second Rose Terrace, constructed in the 1930s by architect Horace Trumbauer, for Mrs. Dodge and her second husband. Architectural historian W. Hawkins Ferry described the mansion as "unquestionably Grosse Pointe's most regal residence". In addition to Rose Terrace, the Dodges acquired a large winter estate in Palm Beach, Florida. Horace's wife Anna had studied music, and this fact won them acceptance by the city's social order. Horace and Anna Dodge became major benefactors of the new Detroit Symphony Orchestra and would play a key role in the construction of Orchestra Hall.

A speedboat and yachting enthusiast, Horace Dodge's keen interest in the vessel's engines led him to establish a marine division as part of their automotive business. He purchased several steam yachts, each larger and more luxurious than the previous. The first two large yachts were named Nokomis, both being purchased by the government for World War I use, with the second being described as a "floating palace" even as it was being stripped for Navy use shortly after completion. The last, named the Delphine for his daughter after following the Nokomis tradition in the early phase of design, was a 257.8-foot (78.6 m) vessel. Construction commenced in 1920 and was completed in 1921, after his death. In the ensuing years, the yacht experienced a sinking, a run onto rocks, and service as a United States Navy patrol boat during World War II. The Delphine passed through the hands of several owners and is in the final stages of restoration by its current owner (2025).