Architect Albert Kahn called the Fisher Building his greatest work, and Detroiters have long called it the largest art object in the city. The Fisher Building, completed in 1928, was financed by the seven Fisher brothers, who had made a fortune building automobile bodies, the Body by Fisher you still see in old car ads. They spared no expense: the tower is faced in granite and limestone and topped with a gilded roof, and the three-story arcade inside glows with forty kinds of marble, bronze detailing, hand-painted ceilings, and mosaics.
It was meant to be the first of a much larger complex, never finished when the Depression struck. Kahn, who designed many of the factories that built the auto industry, here turned his skill to pure splendor. Step into the barrel-vaulted arcade to see the painted and gilded ceiling, then picture the tower outside, once crowned in gold leaf, the brothers' monument to the city their car bodies helped build.