- Architect Albert Kahn, 1928
- National Historic Landmark listed June 29, 1989
- National Register listed October 14, 1980
- State Historical Marker erected 1978
The Fisher Building is an Art Deco masterpiece with a 28-story marble and granite tower and two 11-story wings. William and Alfred Fisher founded the Fisher Body Company and were early developers of the closed automobile. There were seven Fisher brothers though, and it was here that their offices were located. Perhaps the most significant building designed by Detroit architect Albert Kahn, it has been called the largest art object in Detroit. Kahn won the Architectural League’s Silver Medal designating this as the most beautiful commercial structure of the year.
The lavish ornament of the interior was the result of collaboration of several noted artists including Geza Maroti an important figure in the development of the European arts and crafts movement of the teens and twenties, and the firms of Caraddo Parducci, Ricci and Zari, and Anthony DiLorenzo of New York, who designed and executed much of the plasterwork, stone carving and ornamental bronze work.
Intended truly for mixed-uses, inside the Fisher Building housed offices, art galleries, a theater, an 11-story parking garage, and a restaurant. The original theater featured a lavish Mayan-themed interior with banana trees and live macaws that its patrons could feed. The theater operated as a movie house until 1961. The interior was then gutted entirely and made to appear Modernistic and to seat around 2,000 people comfortably for concerts and traveling productions of Broadway shows.
In 1978 a State Historical Marker was erected.
Photo Credit: Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library
