Carl Graham Fisher

Carl Graham Fisher (January 12, 1874 -July 15, 1939) was an American entrepreneur. Despite having severe astigmatism, he became a pioneer of the automotive, auto racing, and real estate development industries.

Regarded as a promotional genius for most of his life, he was a bicycle enthusiast and became involved in bicycle and later auto racing. After being injured in stunts, he helped develop paved racetracks and roadways. An Indiana native, Fisher helped organize the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and operated what is believed to be the first automobile dealership in the United States. He helped develop the Lincoln Highway, the first paved transcontinental east-west highway in the United States, and the Dixie Highway, which extended from the mid-western U.S. to Florida.

At the south end of the Dixie Highway, Fisher became involved in the successful real estate development of the resort city of Miami Beach. By 1926, he was worth an estimated $100 million. His final project, cut short by the Great Depression, was a "Miami Beach of the north" at Montauk, located at the eastern tip of Long Island, New York.

Although he lost his fortune in the Stock Market Crash of 1929, and later considered himself a failure, Fisher is widely regarded as a very successful man. He was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in 1971. In a 1998 study judged by a panel of 56 historians, writers, and others, Carl G. Fisher was named one of the 50 Most Influential People in the history of the State of Florida by The Ledger newspaper. PBS labeled him "Mr. Miami Beach." Fisher Island, just south of Miami Beach, is named for him.

Youth, early career, bicycles

Carl Fisher was born in Greensburg, Indiana, nine years after the end of the American Civil War, the son of Albert H. and Ida Graham Fisher. Apparently suffering from alcoholism, a problem which would also plague Carl later in life, his father left the family when Fisher was a child. Suffering from severe astigmatism, it was difficult for Carl to pay attention in school, as uncorrected astigmatism can cause headaches or eyestrain, and blur vision at all distances. He quit school when he was twelve years old to help support his family.

For the next five years, Fisher held a number of jobs. He worked in a grocery and a bookstore, then later he sold newspapers, tobacco, candy, and other items on trains departing Indianapolis, a major railroad center not far from Greensburg. He opened a bicycle repair shop in 1891 with his two brothers. A successful entrepreneur, he expanded his business and became involved in bicycle racing and later, automobile racing. During his many promotional stunts, he was frequently injured on the dirt and loose gravel roadways, leading him to become one of the early developers of automotive safety features.

Automobiles: Parts and sales

In 1904, Carl Fisher was approached by the owner of a U.S. patent to manufacture what would become known as the sealed beam headlight. Soon Fisher's firm supplied nearly every headlamp used on automobiles in the United States as manufacturing plants were built all over the country to supply the demand. The headlight patent made him rich as an automotive parts supplier and led to friendships with notable auto magnates. Fisher made millions in 1909 when he sold his Prest-O-Lite automobile headlamp business to Union Carbide.

Fisher also entered the business of selling automobiles (with his friend Barney Oldfield, according to the Lost Indiana website. ^*). The Fisher Automobile Company in Indianapolis is considered most likely the first automobile dealership in the United States. It carried multiple models of Oldsmobiles, Reos, Packards, Stoddard-Daytons, Stutz, and others.

Auto racing: the "Brickyard"

In 1909, Fisher and several other Indianapolis businessmen invested in what would become the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, which is now located in Speedway, Indiana. The celebration of the first race quickly turned into a disaster due to the loose rock track. There were terrible injuries to the race car drivers and spectators. Cars caught fire, there were deaths, and the race was halted and canceled when only halfway completed.

Undeterred however, Fisher convinced the investors to pave the now famous "brickyard" track with 3.2 million paving bricks. Attracting 80,000 spectators to the first 500 mile (800 km) race on Memorial Day May 30, 1911, at $1 admission, the Speedway reopened and hosted the first in a long line of five hundred mile (800 km) races known as the Indianapolis 500.

Early highways

In 1912, foreseeing the automobile's impact on American life, Carl Fisher was instrumental in the planning, development, and construction of the Lincoln Highway, the first U.S. transcontinental highway, connecting New York City to San Francisco in time for San Francisco's Panama-Pacific International Exposition in May 1915. Fisher estimated the highway, an improved, hard-surfaced road stretching almost 3,400 miles (5,472 km), would cost ten million dollars. Fellow industrialists Frank Seiberling and Henry Bourne Joy helped Fisher with their promotional skills, so much of the highway was paid for by contributions from automobile manufacturers and suppliers, a policy bitterly opposed by Henry Ford.

Carl Fisher next turned his attention to creating the Dixie Highway, a network of north-south routes extending from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to southern Florida, which he felt would provide an ideal way for residents of his home state to vacation in southern Florida. In September 1916, Fisher and Indiana Governor Samuel M. Ralston attended a celebration opening the roadway from Indianapolis to Miami.

Miami Beach

The future City of Miami Beach became Fisher's next big project. On a vacation to Miami around 1910, he saw potential in the swampy, bug-infested stretch of land between Miami and the ocean, and in his mind transformed the 3,500 acres (14 km²) of mangrove swamp and beach into the perfect vacation destination for his automobile industry friends -- he called it "Miami Beach". He and his wife bought a vacation home there in 1912 and he began acquiring land.

The Collins Bridge across Biscayne Bay between Miami and the barrier island that became Miami Beach was built by John S. Collins (1837-1928), an earlier farmer and developer originally from New Jersey. Collins, then 75 years old, had run out of money before he could complete his bridge. Fisher loaned him the money in trade for 200 acres (0.8 km²) of land. The new 2 1/2 mile (4 km) wooden toll bridge opened on June 12, 1913. It replaced an old ferry service and connected Miami Beach and the mainland, providing a critical link between the established city of Miami and the new town. The Collins Bridge was awarded the title of being "longest wooden bridge in the world."

Fisher financed the dredging of Biscayne Bay to create its vast residential islands. He later built several landmark luxury hotels including the famous Flamingo Hotel and attracted the wealthy and celebrated to visit the community, several of whom took up permanent residence there. At the south end, he built a huge hotel-casino with Roman swimming pool and a Dutch windmill. But, while wealthy people came to vacation, only a few were buying land or building homes. The U.S. public was apparently slow to catch on to the vacation land and homes Carl envisioned for Florida. Fisher's investments at Miami Beach were not paying off, at least not until he again utilized his promotional skills which had worked so well years earlier in Indiana.

Ever the innovative promoter, PBS tells of his efforts to draw attention to Miami Beach. Carl had acquired a baby elephant named "Rosie" who was a favorite with newspaper photographers. In 1921, he got free publicity all across the country with what we would call today a promotional "photo-op" of Rosie serving as a 'golf caddy' for vacationing President-elect Warren Harding. Billboards of bathing beauties enjoying white beaches and blue ocean waters appeared around the country. Fisher even purchased a huge illuminated sign proclaiming "It's June in Miami" in Times Square in New York City.

Real estate sales took off as Americans discovered their automobiles and the paved Dixie Highway, which through no coincidence led to the foot of the Collins Bridge. There were less than 1,000 year-round residents of Miami Beach in 1920. In the next 5 years, the resident population of the Miami Beach area grew 440%.

The art of the swap, which helped fund the Collins Bridge, was apparently the source of great satisfaction to Carl Fisher. He had bought another 200 acres (0.8 km²) that now form Fisher Island from Dana A. Dorsey, South Florida's first African American millionaire, and had begun some development there in 1919. He traded Fisher Island to William Kissam Vanderbilt II of the famous and wealthy Vanderbilt family in exchange for a 250 foot yacht in 1925. Vanderbilt used the property to create an enclave even more luxurious and exclusive than many of Miami Beach's finest.

By 1926, Fisher was worth an estimated $100 million, and could have been financially secure for life. However, Carl Fisher was always known for moving from project to project, and success had never stopped him from attempting something new. When she had earlier hoped that he would slow down at some point, in her 1947 book, his ex-wife Jane Watts Fisher quoted him as replying "I don't have time to take time."

Montauk, Long Island

In 1926, Fisher began working on a "Miami Beach of the north". His project at Montauk at the eastern tip of Long Island in New York was to provide a warm season counterpart to the Florida development. He and four associates purchased 9,000 acres (36 km²) and built a luxurious hotel, office building, marina, and attractions. The project built roads, planted nurseries, laid water pipes and built houses.

However, a land "bust" in Florida, followed by a devastating hurricane in September 1926 which wiped out much of Miami Beach, hit Fisher's investments hard, and tourism dropped off severely. His financing for the Montauk project was dependent upon income from the Miami properties. Then, the Stock Market Crash of 1929 struck, and the Montauk project went into receivership in 1932.

Decline, final project: a poor man's retreat

The losses in his real estate ventures and the Stock Market Crash of 1929 left Fisher virtually penniless. Always a man whose lifeblood seemed to be new dreams and projects, by the mid 1930s, he was living in a small cottage on Miami Beach and received a States Dollar|US$" target="_blank" >^*500 per month salary from his former partners to do promotional work.

Shortly before his death, as what turned out to be his last project, Fisher developed and built Key Largo's Caribbean Club, a fishing club for men of modest means, "a poor man's retreat." Ever the promoter, Fisher would probably have appreciated the value as about 8 years after his death, the Caribbean Club became famous as the filming site for the 1947 film Key Largo starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. In 2006, filled with Bogart memoriablia, it is still in business as a tourist attraction.

Carl G. Fisher died July 15, 1939 at age 65 of a stomach hemorrhage in a Miami Beach hospital, following a lengthy illness compounded by alcoholism. He was interred at the family mausoleum in Indianapolis.

Legacy

Will Rogers remembered Carl Fisher as a Florida pioneer with these words:

"Fisher was the first man to discover that there was sand under the water . . . ^* that could hold up a real estate sign. He made the dredge the national emblem of Florida."

Howard Kleinburg, an author and Miami Beach historian described Fisher:

"If you look at Fisher's entire life, it's a marathon. It's a race. It was a race to achieve the top of whatever field he was in at the time. Everything he did he went into it with his heart, his soul, his money, and he would not stop until he reached the end. He wanted to be there the quickest and first..."

In 1947, Jane Fisher, his ex-wife (who married him in 1909 and was divorced in 1926), wrote a book about his life. Fabulous Hoosier was published by R.M. McBride and Co. She wrote:

"He was all speed. I don't believe he ever thought in terms of money. He made millions, but they were incidental. He often said, 'I just like to see the dirt fly.'"

In 1971, Carl Graham Fisher was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame.

In 1998, PBS produced a program about Carl Fisher titled Mr. Miami Beach a part of the American Experience series. The title carries such local prestige that it has been adopted by the current mayor.

Carl Fisher's legacies include promotion and distribution of sealed beam headlight bulbs in the U.S. auto industry, his early automobile dealership, the Indianapolis 500, and a national system of paved highways in the United States which followed the trends established by the National Auto Trails and the transcontinental east-west Lincoln Highway and the north-south Dixie Highway.

In modern times, Montauk on the eastern tip of Long Island (with the huge Tudor-style hotel he built now a condominium project) remains a small but popular tourist destination. The Miami Beach area has some of the most valuable real estate in the world, home of the revitalized South Beach area with its restored art deco buildings and Fisher Island at the southern tip. And, at Speedway, Indiana, just outside Indianapolis, each Memorial Day, the race cars still pound the famed "brickyard" at the Indianapolis 500.

Today, Fisher's life story may also be regarded as an inspiration and source of hope and resourcefulness for persons with disabilities.

References

Books

Fisher, Jane (1947) Fabulous Hoosier R.M. McBride and Co.; New York, New York
Fisher, Jerry M. (1998) The Pacesetter: The Untold Story of Carl G. Fisher Lost Coast Press; Ft. Bragg, California
Foster, Mark S. (2000) Castles in the Sand: The Life and Times of Carl Graham Fisher. University press of Florida; Gainesville, Florida

Internet

External links

1874 births | 1939 deaths | Businesspeople | Automotive pioneers

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