A Trailblazer in American Automobile Manufacturing | Toledo Stories: Body By Fisher | Full Film

in 1927 seven brothers stood in a light rain at the groundbreaking of a new bold building that would bear their name the name Fischer stood for quality and safety in the auto industry and the brothers were all partners in one of the most successful companies in the United States they rarely gave interviews and never to retention to themselves or their families yet they left behind a legacy that would endure in American manufacturing their grandparents came from Germany the grandfather in 1848 his he was a blacksmith and wagon maker by trade among his several children were son Lawrence who learned the trade of blacksmithing and wagon making carriage making like many American families each generation taught their trade to their children Lawrence Fisher moved to Sandusky Ohio to take a job in a carriage shop and met and married a German immigrant girl named Margaret Tyson the first two boys were born there in Sandusky then he came to Norwalk in 1880 and opened his own shop and in 1890 built the shop across the street that became more famous the pictures we all have our own of that the Fisher carriage shop life for the Fisher centered around the carriage shop and their family life was not easy but they had each other and their strong faith Lawrence and Margaret had 11 children seven sons and four daughters fred was the oldest followed by Charles and their sisters Mary and Anna then came brothers william lawrence edward alfred and howard followed by sister Loretta one child Clara died young of influenza in 1918 a story is that they didn't have enough Sunday trousers to all go to church together so the some of them would go first early church come home she exchange trousers with the others who were the right size and then those younger ones would go back to would go to a later church because they though there just weren't enough breeches to go for help in the family at the shop one day lawrence asked each of his sons to pick up a stick and break it then to pick up another stick and give the sticks to their eldest brother Fred now Fred bundle them all together and try to break them he couldn't do it Lawrence said you see boys on your own you may be weak or vulnerable but together you are strong and can never be broken in 1902 Fred Fisher like his Uncle Albert before him left Norwalk for the booming city of Detroit Michigan as a skilled carriage maker and with his uncle's connections he was able to get a job at Wilson carriage works his brother Charles soon joined him Fred and Charles had a dream of building automobile bodies instead of carriages and they were not alone a friend and colleague of theirs at Wilson carriage Henry Ford was already tinkering with small-scale auto manufacturing as was just about every man they knew in Detroit with carriage bodies you know they they don't call the horseless carriage for nothing so it's just real natural thing you know dis progression from having carriages and wagons with horses to having wagons and carriages without horses and with engines and so they carry over all of these building techniques with a child on the way Charles's wife Sarah encouraged him to ask his bosses at Wilson for a raise he and Fred decided that if he wasn't given the raise they would leave and start their own company Charles didn't get the raise and the two took their own money and borrowed $30,000 from their Uncle Albert to start the Fisher Auto Body company in 1908 the fishers came at a time when the auto industry was absolutely in its infancy when they arrived in Detroit 19 to 19 for there were three automobile companies and only one other supplier listed in the Detroit city directories by 1915 by the time they were up and rolling there were 48 automobile manufacturers listed plus another hundred suppliers so in that period of 15 years the Detroit automobile manufacturing business just exploded and it's early the time when Detroit became the Motor City Uncle Albert became concerned when the brothers announced that they plan to put an emphasis on a closed auto body he didn't believe that people would ever want to sit behind that much glass which he thought would break when the driver hit a bump and Uncle Albert wasn't alone and Henry Ford when they told him they would be making these bodies he told them that was ridiculous no one would ever want to ride in a closed car they'd never sell while those I never would sell one and later he bought many of his bodies from Fisher Body Company Uncle Albert share in the new business was bought out by another pair of enterprising young brothers the Mendelsohn's with funding secured Fisher auto body began work the pace of business was hectic and the pressure to succeed in a crowded marketplace was great southeast Michigan was very much the Silicon Valley of say a hundred years ago the automobile industry was cutting edge technology at that time you had folks like William Durant Henry Ford they all were in this Southeast Michigan area and you had that critical mass of dreamers and doers if you will to make it happen many auto manufacturers were going out of business practically every day but the Fisher operation was growing rapidly brothers william lawrence edward and alfred would soon join them in their closed car endeavor a new client called cadillac was showing great interest in their work cadillac menace now was a high-end car so these weren't vehicles for the common man if you will you know they were for upmarket customers when you have some kind of innovation that's popular with the wealthy and it proves to be practical it's going to come down in price and that's just what happened with closed bodies and the fixtures were very much at the forefront of that and it just seems that the Fisher's particularly with their emphasis on enclosed body automobiles really stepped forward really really increased it so that by the time they were five years old a company was five years old they had a capacity of a hundred thousand bodies a year and we're the largest manufacturer auto bodies in the world although their number was shrinking there were other successful car body manufacturers including the Briggs manufacturing company Walter Briggs and his wife Jane lived in the same apartment building as Charles and his wife Sarah the two couples and their families became very close despite being competitors and they only had one rule to never talk about business the Briggs and the Fisher's would end up sharing a long history together in Detroit the Fisher brothers continued to innovate adding electric starters windows that rolled up and down and some of the first windshield wipers the brothers hands-on knowledge of manufacturing gave them a decided advantage the Fisher brothers were really in the forefront of creating specialized machine tools which allowed them to make exact replicas of parts the assembly line in the popular imagination is often credited to Henry Ford but the fact is it existed in various forms before Henry Ford came on the scene the Fisher brothers ran a dependable company that employed many workers and their clients came to understand that the brothers were more than innovators they were honest as walter Flanders of the e-m-f group learned when he and his two partners hired the brothers to provide the bodies for EMF cars and he had contracted with them to buy a large quantity of bodies for this EMF automobile that they were going to make and they got to looking it over and thought well that isn't gonna cost that much to make it so they contact and went back to mr. Flanders and said we want to talk to you about a price adjustment well he hit the ceiling and you're gouging me you're just doing this you got me trapped and now you want to raise the price on me and he screamed and hollered and said you people are crazy you'll never get along this way when he got all done they said well we're not here to talk and increase we're here to talk or reduction because we figured out and he jumped up and congratulated him and shook their hands and he wasn't so the story goes he wasn't happy until everybody in the auto industry knew that the Fisher brothers were fair and honest the Fisher brothers also made it easier for consumers to from a wide variety of colors on an auto body through a unique lacquering process they developed there has long been the story that Henry Ford said you can have a car in any color as long as it's black and for the Fisher's to bring along color was a wonderful thing to be able to offer cars in multiple colors with such a boon to the manufacturers especially when Henry Ford was standing so hard on the reliability of his Model T despite it being black despite it being old despite it being open that it really gave the other manufacturers a chance to catch up and in almost surpass Ford the Fisher's were a solid investment and the banks enthusiastically supported the idea of Fisher body growing larger there was even talk that Fisher would purchase a car company perhaps Toledo's willys-overland or even one of their largest clients General Motors an automobile manufacturer doesn't build the various components they outsource them or buy them from other suppliers and then they assemble them together in a final car some car makers were touting this in their advertisement they're saying you know this car is not just designed by the folks at the automobile company it draws on the best talents and abilities of all these various suppliers together but there was a move toward more of the vertical integration certainly led by General Motors and by Ford General Motors was an assembled company a collection of many automotive lines it was put together by William Durant the Motor City's master of the deal though in Durant is unquestionably one of the most colorful characters in the history of the automobile industry period you know much less the early history which of course he was a founding partner Billy Durant drops out of school at the age of 16 to make it on his own it's involved in building carriages and they go from being a small mom-and-pop operation to being one of the largest carriage producing companies in the country very successful some of these investors convinced arena to take a ride in a Buick Durant fell in love with it and decided he was gonna make this wholesale change so he gets a controlling interest in Buick builds some successful cars paulie's that into a few other companies and then consolidates them all as General Motors in 1908 he buys the Oakland car company in which later changes the themes of Pontiac eventually buys the maker of the Oldsmobile in Lansing in 1919 Durant worked with the Fisher brothers to put together a partnership deal GM would sign a 10-year contract with Fisher and purchase a 60% interest in the Fisher Body Corporation I think the Fisher's saw a real opportunity and merging with General Motors I think they may have understood that a lot of the smaller companies were going to go away and they would lose that clientele and by having an absolute monopoly over what General Motors was building wonderful control there were brothers on the board till the 1940s and I think they had a real strong support of Durant he's removed from the board and from the presidency of GM twice in his career first in 1910 when he goes out formed Chevrolet with a racecar driver named Louis Chevrolet as a direct competitor to the Model T Chevrolet such a success that Durant's able to buy stock in General Motors again buys control of the company again in 1915 they begin to integrate especially with a Chevrolet division and Fisher they build plants they're very close to one another so they can use transportation with them you know on the same campus so by consolidating Fisher Body making part of General Motors Alfred Sloan who's running the company at that time sees this as an opportunity to bring his engineers and the designers at Fisher together under one roof so they can work from the very start of designing automobiles together and start to realize what each other needs the Fisher's had become part of Detroit society and built homes in the Boston Edison neighborhood Charles and Sarah still lived close to Walter and Jane Briggs on the same Street by this time Walter brakes was the owner of the Detroit Tigers and the two families spent a great deal of time to Detroit was growing faster than any other metropolitan area per capita during the 1920s so the Detroit was growing out from its its early layout at the time they built in what's known as the bus in Edison district that was the northern part of town the Boston Edison area became the home of four of the brothers charles william edward and alfred the eldest fred lived nearby in Arden Park some of the brothers built beautiful beautiful Tudor or Mediterranean style homes and some of them built relatively modest considering their wealth relatively modest homes in the same neighborhood there it builds a house for their mother the whole family was within blocks of each other they were very much dedicated to the Catholic community they built the Catholic social services building is right there in the Boston Edison district for the fishers it really was their home Lawrence seems to have been the one who went in the other direction he was actually living closer to his uncle Albert right down on the river he had a beautiful Mediterranean style mansion and it was a mansion and and he really got into that the whole maritime aspect of things the industry continued to innovate and auto workers were highly sought after by the growing companies the Detroit labor force was able to demand higher wages and participate more in a booming economy it forces these manufacturers to also pay the workers for the semi skilled work more and that allows them to buy the products that they're making from the standard working man who actually had a Sunday off to play to the very wealthy who could afford to buy polo ponies and belong to the country clubs and the Detroit Athletic Club and the Detroit Yacht Club and build themselves beautiful boats Detroit was the center of powerboat racing and it was exciting now the Fisher brothers were into it and it was just real exciting it was it was a wonderful time and the the yachties had a head a just a football the world came to know body by Fisher from the famous company logo that have been displayed on top quality cars for decades well next to the automobile emblems themselves the Fisher body emblem I think is one of the most recognized emblems in the automobile industry and the logo is an apple trionic coach so not necessarily a coach home by Napoleon but one of that era and I think it suggests a couple of things in some ways settling in some way very overtly it suggests that this car is luxurious and it was a time when royalty was going away and yet during the 20s there was really quite it was the Gatsby era so there were the the nouveau riche the young royals who had come up and kind of taken over that spot and i think there was a there was a natural tie to that element of quality and royalty that they were able to get out of that Emel for years and years into the 80s even the 1990s that Fisher logo continued to appear on cars and most famously on the doors still there and to me that was always something that that set GM apart from its competitors the quality and class of body by Fisher was reinforced by a successful advertising campaign that merged cars wealth beauty and dreams you saw that coach on everything and they they spent a lot of money in magazines and some well-dressed people and that coach display you know body by Fisher Fisher means quality the Fisher brothers success with General Motors led to increased wealth and that enabled them to give back to Detroit and to their hometown of Norwalk Ohio the impulse Catholic parish was their home parish where they went to church and where they received their education where some of them were married they built of a new school grade in high school they built a rectory a gymnasium a convent for the nuns their mother Margaret Fisher created a memorial to the Fisher grandparents the shrine of the sorrowful mother was constructed in Norwalk and is still used for limited services today and one of the brothers William helped endow the local hospital a bill Fisher and his wife were still active in in Norwalk things his wife made laura titus and he gave over a million dollars to the hospital end it was named after the two families in detroit the fishers gave too many causes including gifts from charles and sara to the st. vincent orphanage later renamed the st. Vincent and Sara Fisher Center the stained glass windows in the center's playroom are famous for their beauty and storybook themes back in Norwalk a monument was built to the Fisher family to commemorate their accomplishments and the brothers build homes for their extended family members this house we're in was built by Charles Fisher and his wife Sarah for her parents to live in Alford Fisher and his wife Alma crips Fisher built a house for her parents at 90 West Main Street which is still standing and still a very very good repair it's very well taken care of in 1926 the closed body car was now the industry standard and GM acquired the remaining 40 percent interest in Fisher body the brothers were still involved in the management of the Fisher Division of GM but they were also branching out into new endeavors the Fisher brothers were about to present Detroit with an enduring icon of the city the Fisher Building the Fisher's bought the property in 1927 and they intended to put up three towers the the building that stands was supposed to be the first of two end pieces and then there was supposed to be a central tall a tower that rose probably another 20 stories over the existing 28 that we have in the Fisher Building you know we've already got this main grand arcade that sort of makes up the the ability for people to walk freely around the building if they would have completed those two other towers you'd have a stretch of arcade a stretch of hallway when that would have connected all three and would have been this massive thoroughfare that didn't happen because of the depression the Fisher's chose Albert Kaun and Joseph French who was actually the lead architect on the project to build them something that was unique and it was unique and in a couple of ways to run down the statistics of the building the largest Marvel covered business building in the world 430 tons of bronze accenting everything in the building a gaze of Marathi who was also tied with sarin and the projects out at Cranbrook did most of the sculpture and directed a lot of the mural work the final product was just stunning I mean it was just it still remains Detroit's largest piece of art out of that 10 million dollars they spent on the building from 1927 to 1928 constructing it they said about 25% of that went towards the artistic elements that you see throughout the building and they saw this as an investment and it wasn't unusual of walter Chrysler had built himself a building in New York so for the Fisher brothers to do it it was not that unusual but to do what they did with the confirm the Albert Kaun associates and just kind of give him a blank check and say build us the prettiest darn building you can build that was also unique the Great Depression hit the United States hard and the building was never finished as originally planned in today's dollars the Fisher brothers lost an estimated three billion dollars during the stock market crash yet helped to inspire a new generation of innovators by offering annual $5,000 scholarships the Fisher craftsmen's guild was seen as by the company is kind of an incubator to find skilled workers down the line they tried to appeal to older teen boys and the way they did is by having them building a replica of the famous Fisher coach and then they would have this national contest and then the the winners I believe got some kind of scholarship in some kind of technical field that would be used by the company itself the Fisher brothers often entertain clients and friends at new york's 21 club there they met artists McClellan Barclay and with his help their ads reached new heights and became icons Berkeley created the body by Fisher Girl images of beautiful women came to represent the beauty and quality of Fisher autos Charles and Sarah Fisher's two sons married the two daughters of their longtime friends Walter and Shane Briggs the Fisher Building became the center of the Fisher brothers daily lives they always had lunch together and then they decided who that evening would go sit with mother and one of them would spend the evening with her in theory I'm told she never spent an evening alone after going to Detroit the Fisher's had a reputation for quiet family values and staying out of the limelight but one brother bucked the trend of the quiet life Lawrence was a flashy genius of auto styling at GM and was responsible for reinventing the Cadillac brand Lawrence Fisher had been not traveling out in Southern California and had run into a man by the name of Harley Earl who was a coach builder working out there and he had made something of a name for himself in Southern California in building fancy coach bodies for Hollywood stars brought him in to do some work on the 18:27 Cadillac and the 1927 LaSalle which is regarded now is one of the most significant early automobiles in terms of style and design the era of the Fisher brothers personal influence on the auto industry was coming to an end the eldest brother Fred Fisher would pass away in 1941 as the United States was readying for the Second World War the companies all of them turned to producing war material he had companies like Packard building airplane engines Studebaker was building them Ford with building pool airplanes in some cases so Fisher was right along with those other companies where all of their their factories all their equipment that plant their workers were turned over to producing in some cases turrets for tanks or airplanes and Detroit becomes the arsenal of democracy and it played no small part in allowing the Allies to come in and win world war ii official was a major part of that as the war was nearing its end the fisher brothers had retired from the board at general motors the industry was changing companies became more integrated the Fisher family turned its focus to philanthropy the Fisher's finalized the sale of the Fisher Building in 1974 it was one of the largest real estate transactions in the history of Detroit at that time these are guys that had impeccable timing since day one 1908 found their company three months later General Motors founders those companies worked together for years buddy by Fisher as a tagline used on General Motors cars up until the 90s and I think they sort of saw their timing coming year with the Fisher Building so you know by 1984 body buy Fisher's been preparing on General Motors cars since the 1920s people know that companies associated with General Motors have known it for 60 plus years it just becomes too difficult to manage Fisher as a separate company so General Motors finally streamlines and brings them together that's the end of Fisher is a separate company although the name will continue to appear on the cars for a few more years but for the Fisher brothers to have the vision to combine the two main exports of Detroit cars and culture inside of a building like the Fisher Building it's something that's resonating with residents today Detroit's largest art object is kind of making its comeback in 1995 the fabulous Fisher brothers were inducted into the automotive Hall of Fame in Detroit and their legacy lives on in every automobile produced anywhere in the world they very seldom gave interviews almost never what any of the brothers give an interview or talk about their business or talk about her wealth or were their worth but I think the boys just simply were just what they were they were hardworking people who didn't just didn't want to tell a lot of their own business body by fisher is brought to you through the generosity of the taylor automotive payment toledo ohio taylor cadillac is proud to be part of the Fisher family heritage you

Channel: WGTE Public Media

Views: 324,545

Keywords: Fisher Body (Defunct Organization), WGTV (TV Station), Detroit (City/Town/Village), Norwalk (City/Town/Village), Automotive Industry (Industry)

Id: lD7XT0DtOmw

Length: 26min 43sec (1603 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 24 2014