In Detroit, it’s hard to escape the automotive industry, and that was even more true 50 years ago when the strangest team-up story happened in the Motor City. In 1975, Albert Brush Ford, great-grandson of Henry Ford, partnered with Elisabeth Luise Reuther, daughter of UAW co-founder and long-time president Walter Reuther, to buy one of the famed Fisher mansions on the far east side of the city. Instead of turning it into a residence, however, the unlikely pair morphed the mansion into a center for the then-burgeoning Hare Krishna movement.
Built in 1927, the 22,000-square-foot Fisher Mansion was the product of Lawerence Fisher, the first president of Cadillac and one of the seven Fisher brothers who came to Detroit to seek their fortune in the early auto industry. Through their talents as blacksmith and woodworkers, the Fishers quickly found success and opened automotive plants of their own in the city. The old Fisher Body Plant still stands and is second only to the Packard plant in the running for most grandiose ruin in the city. Lawrence, a confirmed bachelor, built the massive mansion near the mouth of the Detroit river so that his 108-foot yacht would be easily accessible. The mansion had 50 rooms, with only two of those rooms counting as bedrooms. The rest included gold-inlay pillars in a Moorish style with a swimming pool, bowling alley and miniature golf course. The four-acre lot was filled with gardens and fountains.
Albert Ford and Elisabeth Reuther met when both became involved in the Hare Krishna movement — a branch of Hinduism that encourages public singing and dancing in honor of the god Krishna — in the early ’70s. Just forty years earlier, Henry Ford and Walter Reuther were at each others’ throats to the point of violence. Ford was fanatically anti-union, after all, and Reuther was the organizing genius who made the United Auto Workers union a major force in American life. Those old dudes were bound to be at odds, but the later generations seem to have forgotten all of that bad blood. Walter died in a mysterious plane crash in 1970, and Elisabeth used her inheritance to buy the mansion, with Ford shoring up the rest of the $300,000 price tag.
Ford then spent $2 million rehabbing the mansion to its former Jazz age glory, but not as a private residence. They’d bought the property under the advice of the founder of the Hare Krishna movement in the Western world, Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhubada. So instead of a palatial mansion, the unlikely duo turned the mansion into the Bhaktivedanta Cultural Center, a ‘’cultural mecca of the Midwest,” for Hare Krishina followers. In 1977, Ford served as best man during Reuther’s wedding in the house, much to the enjoyment of her fellow Reuthers, according to the New York Times:
There were no Fords visible among the guests, who left their shoes at the door and then padded barefoot up the tile staircase to be garlanded with flowers, but the bride’s uncles, Ted and Victor Reuther, their wives and sons came. So did the Dickmeyers, parents and grandparents of the bridegroom, and his seven sisters and brothers, virtually all armed with cameras, who said they were enchanted with the bride.
Victor Reuther looked around at the past splendors of the Fishers and remarked: “When I think that this building was built with the sweat of the auto workers—what if the walls have ears, what would they think about a Reuther being married in these surroundings?”
What indeed? As for Reuther and Ford, the strange, intertwining history was not lost on them at the time, according to the Times:
She said she did not think her father, who was a major organizer of the United Automobile Workers in the 1930’s and who died with his wife in a plane crash 13 years ago, would have any problems with her life style today.
Nor does Mr. Ford think that his great-grandfather, Henry Ford, would mind. ‘’If anyone would object I guess it would be Lawrence Fisher,’’ he said, laughing. But he added seriously, ‘’I think he would probably have a personal sense of gratification that it is now being used to glorify God.’’
To this day, anyone and everyone is welcome to visit the Bhaktivedanta Cultural Center, now known as ISKCON Detroit. There, folks will find weekly vegetarian feasts, yoga classes held inside Fisher’s fabulous mansion, as well as kids programs, boat festivals and tours of the famous temple.