The interior of Detroit's Fox Theatre was magnificently renovated in the late 1980s. Now, it's the exterior's turn to shine.

BAC Local 1 masons and support crafts from restoration contractor Grunwell-Cashero are in the process of repairing or replacing tons of the Fox Theatre's terra cotta in what is the largest and most significant exterior restoration in the 75-year-old building's history.

"They say the Fox Theatre is one of the most photographed buildings in the Midwest," said Grunwell-Cashero co-owner Scott Cashero. "And it is a beautiful building. We're restoring it and cleaning it to make sure that it looks beautiful for another 80 years."

Terra cotta is a hard, fired-clay building material used in ornamental architecture. Over the years at the Fox, joints have failed, water has made incursions, and rust has affected supporting steel, causing some of the building's terra cotta panels to become loose from their moorings, necessitating the restoration work. The job will also entail cleaning the building's exterior and re-glazing its windows. Last week, about 10 building trades workers were on the project, mainly setting the job up with tarps for cover from the winter.

The most extensive part of the terra cotta renovation involves replacement of panels on the parapet wall's roofline, and above the second story.

"When we're done in the fall, the most important thing that we will do is make this building look like we were never here," said Grunwell-Cashero foreman Ed Raymond of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers Local 1.

The 5,000-seat, 10-story Fox Theatre is the nation's largest surviving movie palace of the 1920s, and among the most opulent. Built by 20th Century Fox owner William Fox and designed by famed Detroit architect C. Howard Crane, the facility's opening event took place on Sept. 21, 1928 with the showing of Street Angel, a silent film.

Over the years, in addition to hosting major motion pictures, the Fox hosted singers like Frank Sinatra and Sammie Davis Jr., stage shows like the "Motown Review" with Diana Ross in the 1960s, Broadway productions like "Cats," and in recent years, the Radio City Christmas Spectacular.

The Fox was fortunate because it never closed - and never suffered the fate of other historic Detroit theatres that had leaky roofs or were destroyed by vandals. The interior of the theatre, ornamented wall-to-wall with spectacular Asian elements featuring lions and elephants, had become run-down down by the 1960s, but was resurrected by a 2 ½-year restoration project that began in 1987. Fox owners Mike and Marian Illitch made the $12 million investment, and union trades performed the work at the time.

The Fox has been given the designation as a state and national historic landmark. The state landmark notes that the theatre "is the largest and most exotic eclectic Hindu-Siamese-Byzantine theater of the golden age of the movie palace (1925-1930). The Fox stands today, along with its 1929 twin, the St. Louis Fox Theatre, as one of the relatively few remaining movie palaces in the country. It epitomizes the opulence and grandeur that characterized the era."

With the historic landmark designation, architects from the Fox, together with the craftsmen from Grunwell-Cashero, are required to take pains to make sure as much as possible of the loose and damaged original terra cotta is repaired and re-set on the building. That which must be replaced is being manufactured by a company in New York state.

"Terra cotta isn't used as much as it used to be, but it's a great material to work with," Cashero said. "Architects love it because they can use it in different colors and mould it into whatever shape they want. The Fox is very ornate, and it's great to be on a project that's helping to preserve the exterior. It's almost an art form to repair and replace terra cotta, but we have absolutely the best and most skilled guys in the area on this job to do the work."

As recently as the 1970s and 80s, the Fox Theatre was reduced to showing (bad) Kung Fu movies - but now the theatre building has come full circle, and it is the No. 1 box office theatre venue in the nation. The skills of the building trades, both in the 1920s, 1980s, and today, have helped make the building what it is today.

"The Detroit Fox is the most spectacular, over-the-top movie palace ever built," said Ray Shepardson, a theater preservationist who oversaw the Fox's renovation, told the Detroit News. "It goes way beyond gaudy and hits magnificence." 

TARP TO ENCLOSE the second-story working area at the Fox Theatre is installed by Darrell Quick of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers Local 1. The lift operator is Mike Krayewski of Operating Engineers Local 324. They're working for Grunwell-Cashero.

A TERRA COTTA section of "water table" or ledge from the second story of the Fox Theatre exterior is removed by Tom Schmidtke, Herbert Strong and Tom Zawol of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers Local 1 and Grunwell-Cashero.