Ford Moves its Headquarters After 7 Decades to a New Dearborn Campus

Ford is about to change addresses for the first time in nearly seventy years. The company will move its global headquarters about three miles across Dearborn to a brand-new 2.1 million square foot building that opens in November. The new flagship will formally carry the Ford World Headquarters name and sit within a larger campus that revives a familiar title, the Henry Ford II World Center.

What happens to the Glass House

Since 1956, the company’s home base at 1 American Road has been known to everyone as the Glass House. That chapter is coming to a close. Ford says the physical building will be vacated by the first half of 2026, with exterior demolition slated to begin in 2027. The 1 American Road address will live on and transition to the new HQ, a symbolic handoff that ties the company’s future to a storied past.

The move is not just about new drywall and fresh carpet. The campus is designed to bring leadership, design, and engineering teams into close orbit, placing roughly 14,000 employees within a 15 minute walk of the main building. Six design studios anchor the creative side of the space. Day to day life gets a lift from a 160,000 square foot food hall available to all Ford employees, plus wellness rooms, mothers’ spaces, and more than 300 tech enabled meeting rooms aimed at faster collaboration.

Why Dearborn still matters

Ford is not leaving its roots. The new headquarters rises on the site of the former Product Development Center, a place where some of America’s most recognizable vehicles took shape, including the Mustang, Thunderbird, and F Series trucks. When the original PDC was dedicated in 1953, President Dwight Eisenhower joined the celebration via one of the earliest uses of closed circuit television. The company’s heritage and brand team likes to remind people that Dearborn and Ford are inseparable, and that the blue oval on the side of the building has always felt like a family emblem.

The Blue Oval is not alone in rewriting its office map. General Motors is also preparing a headquarters move, trading its long time riverfront complex for a new office building in downtown Detroit. The region is reshaping where people work as the auto industry leans harder into software, electrification, and rapid product development.

What this means for employees and fans

For employees, the new campus promises shorter walks between teams and tools built for quicker decision making. For enthusiasts and locals, the move signals a fresh era that still respects tradition. Bill Ford put it plainly, saying that attracting top talent requires interesting problems to solve and great places to work, and that this new home is meant to be a magnet for both.

November marks the start of a phased transition into the new building. Over the following months, teams will continue migrating while the Glass House winds down. It is a short hop on the map, yet a meaningful step for a company that helped define the city where it was born. Dearborn remains the center of gravity, only now with a campus built for the next century of Ford.

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