Framed or unframed, desk size to sofa size, printed by us in Arizona and Alabama since 2007. Explore now.
Shorpy is funded by you. Patreon contributors get an ad-free experience.
Learn more.
July 1942. "Detroit, Michigan. Looking down on a parking lot from the rear of the Fisher Building." Photo by Arthur Siegel for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.
Is that what it's called? Like a
school of fish, or a
pride of lions, or a
murder of crows (my favorite).
The tunnel under West Grand Boulevard, from "The Golden Tower of the Fisher Building" to GM headquarters, where you could see the Soap Box Derby winning cars on display in the lobby. Or the new models from the General Motors Five.
Like so many other places in '50s Detroit: the Ford Rotunda, J.L. Hudson Co. downtown in December, the little trains at the Detroit Zoo, the Vernor's bottling plant at Woodward and Grand Boulevard, the model railroad layout in the basement of the Detroit Historical Society, the lobby of the Guardian Building, etc.
There was no admission charge for many of these adventures, which fit the family budget nicely. My father was a shrewd family time investor.
[Strictly speaking, the Ford Rotunda was in Dearborn. - Dave]
Interesting to look at the size of the "slots" and the actual size of the vehicles parked in them. From when the auto body plant was built til the time of the photo, cars had sure undergone a growth spurt.
Wonder how that lot made out in the mid-fifties when automobile took a really big jump in size. Perhaps most of all in the creations coming from this very place.
[The Fisher Building is an office tower in downtown Detroit, not an auto body plant. - Dave]
I just thought it was a factory -- my mistake. Is the building named for the same person that ran the design and manufacturing company?
[Did you click on the link? The Fisher family financed the building with proceeds from the sale of Fisher Body to General Motors in the 1920s, after which it was known as the GM Fisher Body Division. - Dave]
On Shorpy:
Today’s Top 5