This Bar Honors the Dwarfs Who Built WWII Bombers

Ypsilanti — The Tap Room in downtown Ypsilanti is one of the community's most beloved bars. It's the kind of place where regulars have been showing up for decades, and where you'll almost always find some friendly locals posted up outside for a smoke break.

But if you've ever visited, you may have noticed something a little strange before you even walk in the door.

The handle on the front door sits oddly low to the ground. I'm talking really low—like only 3 feet off the ground.

This unusual door handle isn’t a design flaw. It was completely intentional, and the reason behind it ties back to one of the coolest pieces of World War II history in Michigan.

It all starts with the Willow Run Bomber Plant.

Willow Run was first built by the Ford Motor Company in 1940 to construct B-24 Liberator bombers for World War II, and it became one of the largest factories in the entire world. The plant stretched more than half a mile in every direction, employed over 42,000 people at its peak, and by 1944, workers were rolling a brand-new bomber off the assembly line every hour.

But getting there wasn't easy. At first, building a B-24 proved much more difficult than building any old car, and Henry Ford's assembly-line playbook didn't translate cleanly to aircraft.

One particular struggle was that some of the work had to be done inside the bomber's center wing, and the space was so cramped that many of the workers simply couldn't fit.

So Ford started looking for people who could.

He quickly realized that people with dwarfism would be perfectly suited for the job. Their small stature allowed them to crawl deep inside the bomber's wings and work in places that were simply inaccessible to almost everyone else.

Ford then started recruiting little people from all over the country to come work at the plant. He looked at circuses and even went to Hollywood, where he hired some of the actors who had played Munchkins in “The Wizard of Oz” just a few years earlier.

The work they did inside those bomber wings was so important to the war effort that, in 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt even visited the Willow Run Bomber Plant to personally thank all of the workers for their service.

The work wasn't always easy, and it definitely wasn't glamorous. The plant attracted so many workers that the federal government had to build entire neighborhoods nearby just to house them. According to local accounts, Ford even built special housing for many the new recruits, with everything designed to fit their size.

And because Henry Ford was such a stickler about every employee punching their own time card, coworkers would apparently lift each of the little people up so they could reach the clock.

But back to the Tap Room—why is the door handle so low?

Well, the bar first opened in 1941, the same year Willow Run began ramping up for bomber production. As the story goes, many of the little people became regulars there, stopping in for a drink after their shifts, and the door handle was lowered to accommodate them. One section of the bar was built shorter too, so they could grab their drinks.

Like a lot of local history, there's no surviving document proving exactly when or why the handle was lowered. But the story has been passed down in Ypsilanti for decades, and the low handle is still there today.

More than 80 years later, the Tap Room is still one of Ypsilanti's favorite neighborhood bars, pulling in a crowd that ranges from college students to longtime regulars. These days, you'll find open mic nights on Thursdays, live bands on Saturdays, and a devoted Sunday trivia crowd.

Whether you're stopping in for a burger or just walking past on Michigan Avenue, the low door handle is one of those details that's easy to miss. But once you know the story behind it, you'll never walk through that door the same way again.

All the people who worked at Willow Run were heroes, from the Rosie the Riveters on the line to all of the little people who did work no one else could. They helped win the war too, and it's nice to know there's still a tribute to them in downtown Ypsi if you know where to look.