‘Detroit’s Largest Art Object’ Gets $100M Facelift

DETROIT, MI — Some buildings find a place in your heart. It isn’t just that they’re architectural gems — though you’d be hard pressed in any American city to find a building that would outshine the handsome Fisher, the world’s largest marble-clad commercial building and so opulent in its appointments that it is often referred to as “Detroit’s largest art object.”

The Fisher and its companion Kahn Building are more than architectural masterpieces, though. They were gifts to the city by the family of brothers Fred and Charles Fisher, who came to Detroit in the early 1900s to work for their uncle making horse-drawn carriage bodies. When he got out of the business, five other Fisher brothers joined the enterprise, and together they launched an empire that would be known as Fisher Body Co. and would eventually sell to General Motors.

With their windfall from the sale, the Fisher brothers wanted to give something grand to Detroit. They hired celebrated architect Albert Kahn and gave him a blank check to design “the most beautiful building in the world.” Kahn delivered with a skyscraper the New York League of Architects named the building the most beautiful building of 1928.

The handsome building’s interior features 52 different types of marble from all parts of the world and in an array of colors. Art deco chandeliers twinkle overhead, lighting a frescoed ceiling. The lobby elevators, one the fastest in the world, have cast bronze doors and marble frames. The Fisher Theater seats 2,089.

For years, the Art Deco masterpieces stood in the center of what was once of the world’s most affluent commercial centers. Occupancy plummeted as Detroit fell into economic despair and, as often happens to treasures in crumbling cities, some of the sheen had worn off the Fisher by the time it went on the auction block for the last time 17 months ago. The properties sold for a song — $12.2 million — a fraction of the buildings’ $31.1 million selling price in 2001.

Both the Fisher and the Kahn buildings are getting a $100 million facelift, split about evenly, by the new owners. Their renovation isn’t just a symbol of Detroit’s rebirth, but a catalyst for more development, co-owners Dietrich Knoer and Peter Cummings said.

“Someone described the overall plans for the area as turning New Center from the end of downtown to the beginning of downtown,” Knoer told The Detroit News.

Cummings said in prepared remarks for an event later this week that the Fisher, designated a National Historic Landmark in 1989, will “redefine its place in the city of Detroit.”

“The Fisher brothers wanted more than just an office tower, they wanted this building to serve as a shopping and and entertainment district, a public gathering place,” he said.

A 24/7 City

The developers aren’t looking at a single use for the buildings, but rather contemplate an office, residential and retail mecca with space for restaurants, theaters and other cultural attractions to revitalize the New Center district as an area bustling with activity around the clock, the Detroit Free Press reported.

Work on the Fisher has already begun, and the public’s chance to see it starts Friday, when the first in an ongoing cultural series known as The Fisher Beacon Project debuts in the building “arcade” in the buiding’s opulent lobby.

Detroit photographers Michelle and Chris Gerard are exhibiting 27 large-scale works of Detroit “makers” — pastors, artists, small business owners, community activists and other everyday heroes — and each is accompanied by the subject’s individual story. The idea is to connect the Fisher to the neighborhood around it, and to the larger conversation about reinventing Detroit.

“The reactivation of the Fisher Building Arcade is one of the most important things we can do as stewards of this iconic building,” Knoer told the Free press. “Our goal is to make this the great public space for this city that it was designed to be. This is in keeping with our overall mission of activating New Center and other neighborhoods, and of creating equitability and sustainability through our development approach.”

Plans for the Kahn building remain mostly under wraps. The owners are in talks with a national home furnishings store as an anchor tenant, floors 3-11 could be converted to provide 162 residential apartments, and the Albert Kahn Associates architectural firm would remain in the building named after its founder.

Feature photo by Ken Lund via Flickr Commons