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Detroit's art-deco Fisher Building coming to auction

Dan Austin
Detroit Free Press
The historic Fisher building in Detroit. The Fisher building houses the 2,100-seat Fisher Theatre

The Fisher Building, one of Detroit's most celebrated skyscrapers, will be hitting the auction block this summer after suffering with vacancies and falling into foreclosure.

Often referred to as "Detroit's largest art object," the Fisher will be put up for bid on Auction.com in June, along with its next-door neighbor, the Albert Kahn Building, sources told Detroit Free Press.

Like so much of Detroit's history, both the Fisher and the Kahn are tied to the automobile industry. The Fisher brothers — Frederick J., Charles T., William A., Lawrence P., Edward F., Alfred J. and Howard A. — made a fortune making auto bodies for Detroit's booming car industry. Their "body by Fisher" tagline is still well known.

The Fisher brothers often used their wealth to better the city and its people. They gave millions to charities, civic causes, churches, educational institutions and to making Detroit one of the finest cities in the world. To that end, the Fishers commissioned Kahn in 1927 and told him to go wild.

Or, as the Michigan Manufacturer and Financial Record put it in October 1928, the Fisher is a building "into the making of which money has been literally flung with a generous hand, not merely for the sake of spending it, but to gratify the desire of the owners to (build) ... (one) of the most important structures of the country."

The recipe for the Fisher called for more than 12,000 tons of steel; 350,000 cubic yards of concrete and marble; 1,800 bronze windows; 641 bronze elevator doors; 420 tons of bronze finishings; 41,000 barrels of cement; 100,000 yards of sand and gravel; and 1,275 miles of electrical and telephone wire and cable. With more than 325,000 square feet of exterior marble, the Fisher is the largest marble-clad commercial building in the world.

The Fisher opened at West Grand Boulevard and Second Avenue on Sept. 1, 1928. It is decked to the nines in fancy marbles; mosaics; soaring, painted ceilings; and a whole lot of brass and bronze. The building is also home to the Fisher Theatre. Its most widely known tenant could be WJR (760-AM), which famously transmits from the golden tower of the Fisher Building.

One of the likely bidders for the pair of art deco gems will be Spanish developer Fernando Palazuelo, who made headlines in Detroit when he bought the Packard Plant and announced plans to renovate parts of the crumbling factory. He tried to buy the Fisher and Kahn buildings, but negotiations fell apart, and Farbman turned the keys over to the bank in lieu of foreclosure.

The Fisher and Kahn have struggled with dwindling occupancy in recent years. Despite the near-miraculous turnaround in downtown real estate thanks to building purchases and redevelopment by Dan Gilbert, the Roxbury Group and others, that surge hasn't been felt 3 miles up the road in New Center.

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