The Fisher Building is a famous office tower located at 3011 West Grand Boulevard in the New Center area of Detroit, Michigan. This beautifully decorated 30-story building was completed in 1928 and is one of the most important works by architect Albert Kahn. It is designed in an Art Deco style and covered with limestone, granite, and several kinds of marble. The Fisher family used money from selling Fisher Body to General Motors to fund the building. It was built to include office and retail spaces.
The building contains the grand Fisher Theatre, which has 2,089 seats. It was named a National Historic Landmark on June 29, 1989. The building also houses the headquarters for the Detroit Public Schools and the studios of radio stations WJR, WDVD, and WUFL.
History
At first, architect Joseph Nathaniel French of Albert Kahn Associates designed a complex with three buildings, including two 30-story structures next to a 60-story tower. However, due to the Great Depression, the project was reduced to a single tower.
The Fisher brothers chose the location for the building across from the General Motors Building (Cadillac Place) because General Motors had recently bought the Fisher Body Company. These two large buildings helped create a new business district called the New Center, located north of the city’s downtown area.
The building originally had a hipped roof covered with gold leaf tiles. During World War II, the tiles were covered with asphalt because people worried the shiny surface might attract enemy planes. After the war, the asphalt could not be removed without damaging the gold tiles, so they were replaced with green tiles. Since the 1980s, the tiles have been lit with colored lights at night to look gold. On St. Patrick’s Day, the lights change to green, and in recent years, the tower has been lit red to honor the Detroit Red Wings during the NHL playoffs.
In 1974, Tri-Star Development bought the Fisher Building and the nearby New Center Building for about $20 million.
In 2001, FK Acquisition LLC, a real estate company from Southfield, purchased the two buildings from TrizecHahn Corporation for $31 million. FK Acquisition LLC lost the buildings to its lender in 2015.
In 2002, Detroit Public Schools (DPS) paid the owner of the Fisher Building $24.1 million to buy five floors for administrative offices. This was because the cost of fixing the Maccabees Building, the previous headquarters, to meet safety rules was too high.
In July 2015, Southfield-based developer Redico LLC, along with HFZ Capital Group from New York City and Peter Cummings of The Platform, a Detroit-based company, bought the Fisher Building, the nearby Albert Kahn Building, and 2,000 parking spaces in New Center for $12.2 million at auction. This happened because real estate prices in Detroit had dropped. Redico planned to turn the two connected buildings into a mixed-use development with offices, stores, homes, and entertainment spaces. The project could cost an additional $70 million to $80 million. In 2016, Redico’s interest in the project was bought by Cummings and his partner, Dietrich Knoer, from The Platform.
In 2023, Michigan State University acquired 79% of the owner of the Fisher Building, meaning MSU now owns it.
Architecture
The Fisher Building has 30 floors. Its roof reaches 428 feet (130 meters), the top floor is 339 feet (103 meters) high, and the spire on top measures 444 feet (135 meters). There are 21 elevators inside the building. Albert Kahn and Associates created the building, with Joseph Nathaniel French as the chief architect. French was inspired by Eliel Saarinen’s Tribune Tower design from 1922, which influenced the building’s tall shape and upper floors that step back. This building is unique compared to other projects by Albert Kahn. It has been called "Detroit's largest art object."
In 1929, the Architectural League of New York gave the Fisher Building a silver medal for architecture. The grand, three-story barrel-vaulted lobby uses forty different types of marble and was decorated by Hungarian artist Géza Maróti. Architects highly praise this space. Sculptors such as Maróti, Corrado Parducci, Anthony De Lorenzo, and Ulysses Ricci created the artwork on the building’s exterior.
- Looking east
- Arcade ceiling
- Arcade and theatre entrance
- View from the south
- Looking west
Radio
The designs included two flagpoles on the gold-colored roof. Although they were installed, they were not useful for radio broadcasting because a radio antenna was added when one of the building's oldest tenants, radio station WJR, rented space in December 1928. On-air hosts often say that broadcasts come "from the golden tower of the Fisher Building." This was a condition in the station's original lease agreement in exchange for very low rent. Two other radio stations, WDVD-FM (the former WJR-FM) and WUFL, also have broadcast studios in the building.
In 1970, building employees found a storage room sealed with tape. None of the staff knew what was inside or why the room was sealed. When they found the key, they discovered the flags of 75 nations that apparently were created in 1928 and meant to be displayed for foreign visitors.
Fisher Theatre
The building is also home to the Fisher Theatre, one of Detroit's oldest live theatre venues. The theatre was designed by the Chicago-based architectural firm Anker S. Graven & Arthur G. Mayger. It originally had a beautiful Aztec-style interior in the Mayan Revival style. The theatre once included Mexican-Indian art, banana trees, and live macaws that visitors could feed. After the Depression, the theatre mainly operated as a movie house until 1961. Originally, it had 3,500 seats. Later, the interior was renovated into a theater with 2,089 seats, allowing for more spacious seating and lobbies. This renovation cost $3.5 million. The decor was changed to a simple mid-century design.
The Nederlander Organization opened the "new" Fisher Theatre on October 2, 1961. It operated the theatre until April 2021, when it sold the venue to the Ambassador Theatre Group. The Fisher Theatre primarily hosts traveling Broadway productions and has hosted many out-of-town tryouts.
Pre-Broadway Engagements at the Fisher:
• 1961: The Gay Life
• 1962: No Strings, Bravo Giovanni, Oliver!
• 1963: Sophie, Here's Love, Jennie, Hello, Dolly!
• 1964: Foxy, Fiddler on the Roof, Golden Boy, I Had a Ball
• 1965: Pleasures and Palaces, Pickwick, Skyscraper, Sweet Charity
• 1966: Pousse-Café, Walking Happy
• 1967: Illya Darling, Henry, Sweet Henry
• 1968: George M!, I'm Solomon, Lovers and Other Strangers, Maggie Flynn
• 1969: La Strada
• 1970: Applause, The Rothschilds, Not Now, Darling
• 1972: Tricks
• 1973: Seesaw, Lorelei, Turtlenecks, Gigi
• 1974: Good News, London Assurance, The Wiz
• 1979: Sugar Babies, Oklahoma!
• 1982: Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
• 1986: Into the Light
• 1996: Big
Art
Because of the Fisher Building's long history with art, three well-known fine-art galleries have used space in the building, including the Gertrude Kasle Gallery and the London Fine Arts Group.
- Gertrude Kasle Gallery: From 1965 to 1976, the Gertrude Kasle Gallery was in Suite 310 of the Fisher Building. It showed artwork from many important artists in the second half of the 20th century, including Willem de Kooning, Jim Dine, Helen Frankenthaler, Robert Goodnough, Adolph Gottlieb, Phillip Guston, Grace Hartigan, Ian Hornak, Ray Johnson, Robert Motherwell, Lowell Nesbitt, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jack Tworkov.
- London Fine Arts Group: During the 1970s and 1980s, the London Fine Arts Group was in a large part of the third floor of the Fisher Building. It helped create limited edition artworks for many well-known artists, including Yaacov Agam, Karel Appel, Arman, Romare Bearden, Gene Davis, Don Eddy, Alberto Giacometti, Ian Hornak, Lester Johnson, Alex Katz, Richard Lindner, Roberto Matta, Lowell Nesbitt, Robert Rauschenberg, Harry Bertoia, Donald Sultan, Victor Vasarely, and Larry Zox.