1674-26 Carl FisherCarl Graham Fisher
Biographical Note
1874 (Jan. 12) Born in Greensburg, Indiana to Albert H. and Ida
Graham Fisher
1886 Drops out of school in the 6th grade due to poor
eyesight. He is, in fact, half -blind. Goes to
work in a grocery store.
1886-1891 Works as messenger for a bank, clerk in a book-
store, and selling peanuts, magazines and books
to train passengers.
1891 Moves to Indianapolis, and, with $600 in savings,
opens a bicycle repair shop with his two brothers,
Roily and Earle. Promotes bicycling by organizing
two bicycle clubs, racing professionally through-
out the Midwest, and by spectacular stunts, such
as riding a bicycle across a tight rope stretched
between two tall buildings, and making a 20 -foot -
high bicycle and riding it through town, etc.
1893 Is, given a bicycle dealership and $50,000 worth of
stock without security by a leading manufacturer
who recognizes his precocious promotional talents,
which often succeed in bringing advertising to the
level of news.
1903 Becomes an automobile dealer, opening the Fisher
Automobile Co. (agent for Reo, Packard, Stoddard -
Dayton). As he did earlier with bicycles, he
promotes car. sales by racing, and getting free
publicity with sensational acts, such as riding a
Stoddard -Dayton hanging from a balloon, dropping
one from the roof of a tall building, etc.
1904 Sets world's speed record for automobiles (2 miles
in 2:02 minutes) in the Harlem dirt track in
Chicago.
104
Organizes Prest-O-Lite Corporation of America to
manufacture carbyde gas headlights for automobiles
(in partnership with James Allison, future
designer of the Allison aircraft engine).
1905 Goes to Europe with the American team to compete
in the James Gordon Bennett Cup Races. The Americans
make a poor showing, due to the inferiority of
their cars.
1909 Builds tha Indianapolis Motor Speedway, a profitable
business venture as well as an invaluable testing
ground. He wants to make American cars supreme
and Indianapolis the center of the industry.
Carl Graham Fisher P.2
1909 (Oct. 23) Marries Jane Watts, 15, of Indianapolis.
1910 (Jan.) Visits Miami for the first time. He and Jane
stay only a week, but plan to return and buy a
winter home.
1911 Sells Prest-O-Lite Corp. to Union Carbyde for
$9,000,000.
1912 Buys his first Miami residence, "The Shadows",
on Brickell Avenue through the mail.
1912 Impressed with John Collins' half -finished
wooden bridge across Biscayne Bay, loans him
$50,000 to complete it. As part of the agree-
ment, he acquires from Collins 200 acres of
beach and mangrove swamp. Loans $150,000 to the
Lummus brothers for their Ocean Beach development
and acquires from them 210 acres and a mortgage
on all low lands west of what will be Washington
Avenue.
1912 (Oct.) Convinces leaders of the automobile industry to
raise $10,000,000 to build the first inter-
continental paved road, "a coast-to-coast rock
highway", to be known later as the Lincoln Highway.
•1913 (June 12) Collins Bridge is inaugurated. Fisher is in
Indianapolis preparing to go with the "Trail
Blazers" motorcade along the proposed route of
the Lincoln Highway.
1913 Lincoln Highway Association organized, with
Arthur B. Joy as president and C.G.F. as vice-
president.
1913 Announces that he will spend the next two years
and $250,000 to develop his section of the Beach
into a winter resort city, "a tropical garden",
with electric lights and telephones by 1914 and
city water and sewarage by 1915.
1915 Lincoln Highway is completed. It will help
selling automobiles beyond the wildest hopes of
its backers in the industry.
1915 Begins campaign to build the Dixie Highway, which,
besides further stimulating motor transportation,
will bring tourists and settlers to Florida by
the millions.
1915 (Mar. 16) Miami Beach is incorporated as a town, with J.N.
Lummus as its first mayor.
1915 (Oct.)
Arrives in Miami at the head of the Dixie Highway
Pathfinders' Tour caravan from Chicago, through
Indianapolis, Louisville, Nashville and Chattanooga.
Carl Graham Fisher P.3
1'915 Buys J.N. Lummus' land west of Washington Avenue
for $500,000 in partnership with James Allison,
A.C. Newby and James A. Snowden, and organizes the
Miami Ocean View Co. to handle its development.
1915 Begins building another residence, also called
"The Shadows", this time on Lincoln Road in Miami
Beach.
1916 Builds Lincoln Hotel, a 32 unit apartment hotel
to accommodate overflow guests from "The Shadows",
Cocolobo Club, a millionaires' fishing club on a
small key near Ceasar's Creek, and the Roman
Pools, for some time the social center of Miami
Beach.
1916 Sells a few lots ($40, 000) .
1917 (April) U.S. declares war on Germany. C.G.F. proposes
using Speedway as a military airfield. His
proposal is rapidly approved and he is appointed
to the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics,
and made chairman of the Landing Fields and
Flying Routes Subcommittee of the Civil Aerial
Transport Committee.
1917 (May)
1917
1917-1918
Miami Beach is incorporated as a city.
Sells $52,000 worth of lots.
Builds Star Island, first completely artificial
island in Biscayne Bay.
1918 Sells $132,000 worth of lots.
1919 Sets up the Miami Beach Bay Shore Co. in partner-
ship with the Collins family (Fisher 51%; Collins
49%) .
1919 (Aug.)
Buys a 30 -acre island south of Government Cut
and sets up a new corporation, Peninsula Terminal
Co. with the idea of enlarging the island and
making a deepwater seaport. This plan is bitterly
opposed by E.G. (Ev) Sewell and the Miami Chamber
of Commerce. The controversy continues through
the 20's and 30's and isn't settled until 1965.
1919 Sells $3;,J,OO:1 worth of lots, after deliberately
raising prices by 10% and announcing that he will
continue to raise prices at least 10% each year.
"We try to give our customers an investment...
that substantially and steadily grows in value."
1920 Builds the 150 -room, $2,000,000 Flamingo Hotel.
The building of the Flamingo and the completion
of the County Causeway account for the high volume
of sales ' almost S2,000,000) during the year of
tight *nonethat preceded the 1921 depression.
Carl Graham Fisher P.4
x921 (Jan.)
President-elect Warren Harding spends a weekend
in one of the Flamingo's luxury cottages as his
personal guest. The genial Harding obliges posing
for publicity pictures on the golf course with a
baby elephant for a caddy and with game fish at
Cocolobo Club, where C.G.F. takes him in his
yacht, Shadow K.
1921 (June) Albert H. Fisher dies.
1921 (Nov. 13) After 12 years of marriage a son is born to the
Fishers. The child dies 26 days later. C.G.F.
and Jane drift apart. Begins to drink heavily.
1922 Sells "Blossom Heath", his Indianapolis home
and buys a house in Port Washington, Long Island,
N.Y. Also rents an office in Manhattan to be
near "where the big money is".
1922 Agrees, then declines, to adopt a 3 -year-old boy.
Jane adopts the child on her own.
1922 His funds nearly exhausted by years of dredging,
clearing the mangroves, filling the swamps, bulk-
..heading.the new shorelines, creating artificial
islands, building roads, utilities, golf courses,,
polo grounds, yacht clubs, hotels, schools, a church,
a theatre, homes, sponsoring sporting events, etc.,
his great gamble begins to pay off: lots begin to
sell well. The Florida real estate boom is on.
1923 Builds the luxurious 189 -room Nautilus Hotel at
a cost of about $2,000,000.
1923 Sells $6,000,000 worth of lots.
1924 Sales reach $8,000,000.
1925 Sales reach $23,000,000 despite the fact that,
unlike many Florida boom realtors and speculators,
he adheres to a conservative, scrupulously honest
sales policy. By now his fortune is estimated at
$50,000,000 to $100,000,000.
1925 Looking for a new, bigger challenge, buys 10,000
acres on the sandy eastern end of Long Island, N.Y.,
with the idea of developing Montauk, "the Miami
Beach oZ the North", as a summer resort a.ad
deep -water transatlantic port.
1925
1926
1926 (Sept.)
Ida Graham Fisher dies.
Florida real estate boom collapses.
Hurricane causes severe damage to Miami Beach_
properties. C.G.F. halts all work in Montauk and
proceeds to clean up and reconstruct Miami Beach.
Carl Graham Fisher P,5
1926
Jane goes to France and divorces him.
1927 Sells Indianapolis Motor Speedway to a group
headed by Eddie Rickenbacker.
1927 (June) Marries his private secretary, Margaret Collier.
Drinks heavily, grows fat, health begins to fail.
1929 Stock market crashes. C.G.F.'s main source of cash,
payments on contracts and debts, fails as notes
mature and go unpaid. Montauk bonds come due.
Rather than letting down his friends and fellow
investors, he makes good from the proceeds of
sale of Speedway and Miami Beach funds.
1930-31
1932
1934
Various schemes to refinance Montauk fail.
Montauk bonds go unredeemed.
Montauk Beach Development Corporation goes into
receivership.
Bankruptcy proceedings are filed.
1935 The Carl G. Fisher Co., a holding company comprising
..21 other Fisher corporations is taken over by
creditors. Personal bankruptcy is avoided, but he
is no longer a wealthy man. The Bayshore Co.,
controlled now by the Collins family, gives him
a salary of $50,000 a year, later reduced to
$25,000, then to $10,000. Personal property (houses
automobiles, yachts, club membc_rships) are all
sold to meet obligations.
1935 Separates from Margaret and moves to small house
on 51st Street. Continues to drink, despite a
deteriorating liver condition which requires
painful weekly tappings of about 20 pounds of
excess fluid from his abdomen.
1939 (July 15) Dies at St. Francis Hospital, Miami Beach, from
a massive gastric hemorrhage.