Back in 1904 the oldest aquarium in North America opened here on Belle Isle. Designed by Albert Kahn alongside George Mason, the Belle Isle Aquarium presents a modest Beaux-Arts facade, but step inside and the ceiling glows green: a single long gallery lined with tanks, lit by an arched roof of opalescent glass tiles meant to evoke the underwater world. It opened the same day as the neighboring conservatory, twin gifts to a public hungry for free, refined amusement during the city's prosperous years.
Generations of Detroit schoolchildren took their first look at fish and turtles here. The city closed the aquarium in 2005 amid budget cuts, and it sat dark for seven years until a volunteer-run conservancy reopened it in 2012, and it runs today entirely on donations and volunteers. Walk the green-lit hall beneath the gleaming tiled ceiling arching overhead, then past the old tanks, a small jewel of a building that the people of Detroit refused to let go dark.