Business & brands / Music / Visual art
Anna Thompson Dodge
1866–1970 · philanthropist, heiress of Dodge Brothers
Scottish-born widow of Horace Dodge, one of the richest women in the world, who backed the DSO and paid for the Dodge fountain in Hart Plaza.
- Born
Dundee, Scotland- Died
Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan
aged 103- Birth name
- Anna Thompson
- Also known as
- Anna Dodge · Anna Dodge Dillman
- Detroit years
- 1870s–1970
- Field
- Business & brands, Music, Visual art
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Anna Thompson was born in Dundee, Scotland, and grew up in Detroit, where she married Horace Dodge in 1896, before the brothers' success. The couple backed the young Detroit Symphony Orchestra and the building of Orchestra Hall in 1919. After Horace's death in 1920 she became a major owner of the Dodge company, and with John's widow Matilda she sold it to the bankers Dillon, Read & Co. for $146 million, then the largest cash transaction in history. In 1926 she married actor Hugh Dillman; they replaced the first Rose Terrace with a vast French-style mansion on Lake St. Clair, completed in 1934, filled with French furniture and art. She outlived both her children and died at Rose Terrace in 1970 at 103. Her bequest of $1 million to the city paid for the Horace E. Dodge & Son Memorial Fountain by Isamu Noguchi, dedicated in Hart Plaza in 1978, and much of her collection went to the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Highlights
- Married Horace Dodge in 1896
- Co-sold Dodge Brothers for $146 million in the 1920s
- Built the second Rose Terrace (1934), demolished in 1976
- Her bequest funded Isamu Noguchi's Dodge fountain in Hart Plaza (1978)
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 4
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Lived here · 1912–1970
Rose Terrace
Demolished · 1934–1976
Her lakeside home; the second Rose Terrace, completed in 1934, was demolished in 1976 despite being on the National Register.
Memorial
Horace E. Dodge and Son Memorial Fountain
Isamu Noguchi's fountain paid for by her $1 million gift in memory of her husband and son.
Related place · 1919
Detroit Symphony Orchestra — Orchestra Hall
The DSO's hall, built with the Dodges' backing in 1919.
Buried here · 1970
Dodge Brothers Mausoleum
Wikidata lists her burial at Woodlawn Cemetery, where the Dodge family mausoleum stands.