07/26/2026
What do the ceilings of the Fisher Building mean?
In 1927, the architect Albert Kahn was asked to build the "most beautiful commercial structure in the world."
Detroit's Fisher Building would be a sweeping artistic statement.
Kahn commissioned the visionary Hungarian painter Géza Maróti to design a set of frescoes depicting the progress of human art, culture, science and technology in the 20th century.
Maróti's frescoes elevate above all music, poetry and religion. They depict, at the apex of the building, muses and cherubs surrounded by the tree of life: the central image in Hungarian myth.
Surrounding them are eagles, symbolizing the economic basis of these artistic accomplishments: the arches intermix the virtues of peace, art, justice and knowledge with the useful trades, agriculture, navigation and other industries.
Its arch quotes Alexander Pope's prologue to Addison's Cato (1713) — the play staged by George Washington as the Continental troops shivered in Valley Forge at the most desperate stage of the American Revolutionary War.
The quote reads:
"To wake the soul by tender strokes of art, to raise the genius and to mend the heart"
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