Fisher Mansion

01 / The story of this place

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Fisher Body co-founder Lawrence P. Fisher spent about two and a half million dollars building this 22,000-square-foot mansion on a private canal off the Detroit River in 1928, hiring theater architect C. Howard Crane to blend Italian Renaissance, Moorish and Spanish styles across fifty rooms. Fisher lived there until his death in 1961, and the city of Detroit later took over the property. In 1975 Alfred Ford, Henry Ford's great-grandson, and Elisabeth Reuther Dickmeyer, daughter of labor leader Walter Reuther, bought the mansion for eighty thousand dollars and gave it to the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. Hare Krishna devotees moved in the following year, and the building has served ever since as the Bhaktivedanta Cultural Center, a working Hindu temple that still shows off Fisher's original marble and stained glass.

1. Built in 1928 for about $2.5 million for Lawrence P. Fisher of Fisher Body
2. Fifty rooms mixing Italian, Moorish and Spanish styles
3. Bought for the Hare Krishna movement in 1975 by Alfred Ford and Elisabeth Reuther Dickmeyer
4. Now the Bhaktivedanta Cultural Center, a Hindu temple