Carl G. Fisher

Carl Graham Fisher was an American entrepreneur in the automotive industry, highway construction and real estate development.

Early life

Carl G. Fisher was born in Greensburg, Indiana on January 12, 1874. In his early life in Indiana, with family financial strains and a disability, Fisher became a bicycle enthusiast and opened a modest bicycle shop with his brothers. He became involved in bicycle racing, and many activities related to the emerging American auto industry. In 1904, he and friend James A. Allison bought an interest in the U.S. patent to manufacture acetylene headlights, a precursor to electric models that became common about ten years later. Soon, his 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 when Allison and he sold their company, Prest-O-Lite, to Union Carbide in 1913 for $9 million.
Fisher operated in Indianapolis what is believed to be the first automobile dealership in the United States, and also worked at developing an automobile racetrack locally. After being injured in stunts himself, and following a safety debacle at the new Indianapolis Motor Speedway, of which he was a principal, he helped develop paved racetracks and public roadways. Improvements he implemented at the speedway led to its nickname, "The Brickyard."
In 1912, Fisher conceived and helped develop the Lincoln Highway, the first road for the automobile across the entire United States. A convoy trip a few years later by the U.S. Army along Fisher's Lincoln Highway was a major influence upon then-Lt. Col. Dwight D. Eisenhower years later in championing the Interstate Highway System during his presidency in the 1950s.
Following on the success of his east-west Lincoln Highway, Fisher initiated efforts on the north–south Dixie Highway in 1914, which led from Michigan to Miami. Under his leadership, the initial portion was completed within a single year, and he led an automobile caravan to Florida from Indiana.
At the south end of the Dixie Highway in Miami, Florida, Fisher saw another opportunity. Fisher, with the assistance of his partners John Graham McKay and Thomas Walkling, became involved in the real-estate development of a largely unpopulated barrier island near Miami. They invested in land and dredging, promoted deed restrictions, and provided much-needed working capital to the earlier Lummus and Collins family pioneers to develop Miami Beach. For example, Fisher funded completion on the first bridge to link Miami to Miami Beach. The new Collins Bridge crossed Biscayne Bay directly at the terminus of the Dixie Highway. Cars were charged a toll to cross.
Fisher is one of the best-known promoters of the Florida land boom of the 1920s, which inculcated racial deed restrictions into Florida culture for decades. Prior to the hurricane in September 1926, he was worth an estimated $50–100 million depending on the source. This unforeseen storm reduced Miami Beach to rubble. Fisher's financial endeavors never fully recovered.
His next major project, Montauk, was envisioned as the "Miami Beach of the North." It was to be located at on the eastern tip of Long Island, New York. It was cut short by Fisher's losses in the Florida land-boom bust, the Great Depression of 1929, his divorce, and alcoholism.
After his fortune was lost, he lived in a small cottage in Miami Beach, doing minor work for old friends. He took on one more project, the Caribbean Club on Key Largo, intended as a "poor man's retreat." He was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in 1971. Just south of Miami Beach, Fisher Island is named for him and is one of the wealthiest and most exclusive residential areas in the United States. It is built on a parcel that is a combination of "the old Vanderbilt estate" bought from Fisher and a municipal trash dump.

Private life

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 also plagued Carl later in life, his father left the family when he was a child. Severely astigmatic, he had difficulty paying attention in school, as uncorrected astigmatism can cause headaches, eyestrain, and blurred vision at all distances. He quit school when he was 12 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, books, 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 gravel roadways, leading him to become one of the early developers of automotive safety features. A highly publicized stunt involved dropping a bicycle from the roof of the tallest building in Indianapolis, which brought on a confrontation with the police.
In 1909, while 35 and engaged to his fiancée, Fisher met and married 15-year-old Jane Watts. His ex-fiancée sued him for a breach of promise. Meanwhile, he and his new wife Jane went on a business trip for their honeymoon. In 1921, they had one child, who died a month later from pyloric stenosis. She adopted a four-year-old child in 1925; he disapproved and they divorced in Paris in 1926. She then married and divorced three men; after her last marriage she went to court to change her name to Jane Watts Fisher and falsely styled herself as his widow.
Fisher's second marriage, to his secretary, Margaret Eleanor Collier, lasted until his death. She then married Howard W. Lyon, his business associate.

Automobile businesses

In 1904, Fisher was approached by the owner of a U.S. patent to manufacture acetylene headlights. Fisher's firm soon 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 when partner James A. Allison and he sold their Prest-O-Lite automobile headlamp business to Union Carbide.
Fisher also entered the business of selling automobiles, with his friend Barney Oldfield. The Fisher Automobile Company in Indianapolis is considered most likely the first automobile dealership in the United States. It carried multiple models of Oldsmobile, REO, Packard, Stoddard-Dayton, Stutz, and others. Fisher staged an elaborate publicity stunt in which he attached a hot-air balloon to a white Stoddard-Dayton automobile and flew the car over downtown Indianapolis. Thousands of people observed the spectacle and Fisher triumphantly drove back into town, becoming an instant media sensation. Unbeknownst to the public, the flying car had had its engine removed to lighten the load, and several identical cars were driven out to meet it, to allow Fisher to drive back into the city. Afterward, he advertised, "The Stoddard-Dayton was the first automobile to fly over Indianapolis. It should be your first automobile, too." Another stunt involved pushing a car off the roof of a building and then driving it away, to demonstrate its durability.

Indianapolis estate

"Blossom Heath" was Fisher's estate in Indianapolis. Completed in 1913, it was built on Cold Spring Road between the estates of his two friends and Indianapolis Motor Speedway partners, James A. Allison and Frank H. Wheeler. The house included portions of an earlier house on the site and featured a 60-foot-long living room with a 6-foot-wide fireplace where logs burned all day. The house had twelve bedrooms and a huge glass-enclosed sun porch. Fisher built a house for his mother on the southern part of the estate. The estate also included a five-car garage, an indoor swimming pool, a polo course, a stable, an indoor tennis court and gymnasium, a greenhouse, and extensive gardens. A newspaper article dated February 2, 1913, described the simple dignity of the house. Unlike some of his friends and neighbors, Fisher built a large but simple house decorated primarily in yellow, his favorite color. It did not contain exotic woodwork, elaborate carvings, or extensive decoration.
In 1928, after Fisher moved permanently to Miami Beach, the Fisher estate in Indianapolis was leased and later purchased by the Park School for Boys. The Fisher mansion was damaged by fire in the 1950s and the rear portion of the house was demolished and replaced with a classroom wing during 1956–57. The property was sold to Marian College in the 1960s and combined with two nearby estates into one campus. Today, none of Fisher's original buildings remain on the Marian College campus.

Auto racing

In 1909, Fisher joined a group of Indianapolis businessmen in a new project. Arthur C. Newby, Frank H. Wheeler, James A. Allison and he invested in what became Indianapolis Motor Speedway, which is now surrounded by the city of Indianapolis. The first automobile race in August 1909 ended in disaster. The loose rock track led to numerous crashes, fires, terrible injuries to race-car drivers and spectators, and deaths. The race was halted and cancelled when only halfway completed.
Undeterred, Fisher convinced the investors to install 3.2 million paving bricks, leading to the famous nickname "the brickyard". The speedway reopened, and on Memorial Day, May 30, 1911, 80,000 spectators paid the $1 admission and watched the 500-mile event, the first in a long line of races known as the Indianapolis 500.

Lincoln Highway

In 1913, foreseeing the automobile's impact on American life, Fisher conceived and was instrumental in the planning, development, and construction of the Lincoln Highway, the first road across America, which connected New York City to San Francisco. Fisher estimated the highway, an improved, hard-surfaced road stretching almost, would cost $10 million. Fellow industrialists Frank Seiberling and Henry Bourne Joy helped Fisher with their promotional skills, together creating the Lincoln Highway Association. Much of the highway was paid for by contributions from automobile manufacturers and suppliers, a policy bitterly opposed by Henry Ford.
Former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt and Thomas A. Edison, both friends of Fisher's, sent checks, as well as the then-President Woodrow Wilson, who has been noted as the first U.S. president to make frequent use of an automobile for what was described as stress-relief relaxation rides.
In 1919, as World War I was ending, the U.S. Army undertook its first transcontinental motor convoy along the Lincoln Highway. One of the young Army officers was Dwight David Eisenhower, then a lt. colonel, who credited the experience when supporting construction of the Interstate Highway System when he became President of the United States in 1952.