  Aiw Member Username: Aiw Post Number: 5305 Registered: 10-2003 Posted From: 209.216.150.127 |
The Fisher Building That wasn't - P.D.J. | ||
Gravitymachine Member Username: Gravitymachine Post Number: 867 Registered: 05-2005 Posted From: 198.208.159.18 |
that is AWESOME. thanks. | ||
Walkerpub Member Username: Walkerpub Post Number: 82 Registered: 12-2003 Posted From: 216.8.170.45 |
Great work as usual Andrew- here is another rendering of the towers as conceived before the Great Depression.  "The Most Beautiful Building in the World” It may be the most famous Albert Kahn structure in the border cities, and many would argue that it is the most magnificent. When the seven Fisher Brothers of Fisher Body fame hired architect Albert Kahn in 1927 to design a building that would bear their name, they gave him a blank check and the instructions to build “the most beautiful building in the world.” Plans for a $35 million three-phase project were announced by the brothers in January, 1927. The original drawings called for three units to be built over a period of several years, but due to the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, only phase one, the Fisher Building, was completed at a cost of $10 million. The seven Fisher brothers – Frederick, Charles, William, Lawrence, Edward, Alfred and Howard – were the sons of Lawrence Fisher Sr., an Ohio carriage maker. Upon arrival in Detroit in 1908 they founded the Fisher Body Company with a capital of $50,000. Less than 20 years later, they sold the enterprise to General Motors for $208 million. In 1929, Albert Kahn’s Fisher Building was honoured by the Architectural League of New York as the world’s most beautiful commercial structure. In 1930, Kahn was awarded first place in commercial structures by the Detroit chapter of the American Institute of Architects. | ||
Jjaba Member Username: Jjaba Post Number: 3137 Registered: 11-2003 Posted From: 67.160.138.107 |
The Fisher Building is a city within a city, an Art Deco utopia in an new district known as Uptown. It is connected to the General Motors Building by a subway under W. Grand Blvd. In the Fisher Bldg., you can visit a dentist, a doctor, buy retail, go to a play or movie, have dinner or drinks, do your banking, watch a radio broadcast, and park your car inside the bldg. in a nice auto hotel. (Auto hotels provided many services for your car while you went about your business.) The Fisher Brothers engaged Detroit's best architect in Albert Kahn and he hired the best sculptors, stone masons, modelers, decorators and craftsman available. Here we have a twenty-eight storey tower with two, eleven storey wings spanning to the North along Second Avenue. The first three floors are faced in Minnesota Granite; upper floors in Maryland Marble. The 44 ft. high barrel vaulted arcade is a world renoun masterpiece. The decor has no peer. It was done by Geza Maroti, direct from Budapest, Hungary. In 1989, the Fisher Bldg. became a National Historic Landmark, a title reserved for very few places in the USA. AIW presents a wonderful set of renderings and photographs, eh. Merci. jjaba, enjoy The Fisher. You can get there on the Dexter bus. | ||
623kraw Member Username: 623kraw Post Number: 781 Registered: 10-2003 Posted From: 68.41.224.200 |
Great pix, as usual Andrew. Just curious, the proposed middle tower shown would have easily been Detroit's tallest at the time - how many floors would it have been? | ||
623kraw Member Username: 623kraw Post Number: 782 Registered: 10-2003 Posted From: 68.41.224.200 |
OOOPS!! Just saw the 50 story sentence -never mind. EZ on the graveyard shift... | ||
Marcnbyr Member Username: Marcnbyr Post Number: 628 Registered: 10-2003 Posted From: 68.43.13.13 |
50 stories? Man...Detroit doesn't need any more 50 story towers. What Detroit needs is a 100 story Fisher Tower that fills in the skyline apart from the RenCen, and is home to both ESPNZone and Applebees.....oh yeah, with 80 floors of condo's on top. | ||
1953 Member Username: 1953 Post Number: 691 Registered: 12-2004 Posted From: 209.104.146.146 |
Let's take up a collection and finish that building, as originally planned! | ||
Patrick Member Username: Patrick Post Number: 3256 Registered: 10-2003 Posted From: 65.222.10.3 |
I was under the impressiopn that the middle tower was going to be well over 50 floors. I thought I read over 900 feet tall...dont know where I got that figure from. | ||
Patrick Member Username: Patrick Post Number: 3257 Registered: 10-2003 Posted From: 65.222.10.3 |
People do not realize how wealthy the Fisher brothers really were. I heard that in in1928 their combined wealth was something like $500 million. What’s that today, 15-20 billion? They took a HUGE hit when the crash occurred. Even still, look at their homes. The Fisher mansions are some of the finest built in the area….in some cases, in the country. | ||
Rustic Member Username: Rustic Post Number: 2091 Registered: 10-2003 Posted From: 130.132.177.245 |
for those who like to play sim city with Detroit ... Imagine for a moment you are back in auto boom Detroit, imagine if there had been more commonsense development of the CBD proper rather than far flung creation of a New Center miles from the CBD. Imagine the new center cluster of buildings up Woodward, Park, Cass, JohnR, Brush etc. It would have extended up to at least Martin Luther King/Mack, if not all the way to Warren. It would have also obliterated the lower cass corridor and Brush Park as we knew them. It would have added tremendous volume and density to #s of CBD office workers. GM woulda represented a significant stabilization to the CBD durring the erosion of the 70's and 80's. pretty neat eh? The thing is that instead Detroit has been about growth, speculation, building new, moving out, risky development etc etc ... even waay back in the heady days when Detroit was creating itself ... | ||
Jjaba Member Username: Jjaba Post Number: 3142 Registered: 11-2003 Posted From: 67.160.138.107 |
Detroit WAS looking forward and progressive. It was competing with Uptowns in New York, Chicago, etc. Remember, we are in an era of N. Michigan Ave. breaking away from the Chicago CBD South of the Chicago River, and Rockefeller's Center in midtown Manhattan, up from the main Wall Street downtown. Woodward Avenue is being widened to accomodate the traffic in this incredible Midwestern Dreamtown. jjaba, enjoying a show at The Fisher. | ||
Rustic Member Username: Rustic Post Number: 2093 Registered: 10-2003 Posted From: 130.132.177.245 |
jjaba, new center is CENTERED what, 2.5 miles from the cbd center? show me another US city spreading itself THAT thin. (about the only one that comes to mind is LA.) Go 2.5 miles north of Wacker in Chicago and yer standing in the lincoln park zoo about a mile from the miracle mile which starts immediately north of the river. New York is New York, a singular case. | ||
Chris_rohn Member Username: Chris_rohn Post Number: 198 Registered: 04-2005 Posted From: 68.73.197.27 |
When the New Center was concieved in the 1920's it actually was the center of Detroit's metropolitan population. It wasn't really spreading anything thin, it was just putting it smack in the middle. It's reasoning is similar to why so many corporations have their offices in Southfield today - it's in the center. | ||
Jjaba Member Username: Jjaba Post Number: 3148 Registered: 11-2003 Posted From: 67.160.138.107 |
Oh, so that's why I can get WJR on the radio in Canada. When you hear Detroit radio in Canada, you realize why Lowell calls it an Internatioonal Metropolis. Detroit, in the center of alot, eh. jjaba. |
