Paradise for Sale

by Nick Wynne

  His competitors on the island took a different tack, however, and advertised Miami Beach as a “fun” location. Not until the postwar years did Fisher adopt this viewpoint, but he finally decided that real success in selling Miami Beach would not come from convincing members of the “old wealth” families to buy property; instead, it rested with the new generation of “auto” magnates, manufacturers and the growing affluent middle class. These were the people with whom he was most familiar and whom he understood. Soon, many of the “gasoline millionaires,” men like Harvey Firestone, Harvey Stutz, Albert Champion, Edsel Ford and Frank Seiberling, bought land and built lavish homes along Collins Avenue.

  Once he clearly identified his target market, Fisher set the tone and the direction the new community would take. With the advent of the Roaring Twenties and the on-the-go attitude of younger Americans, he was determined that Miami Beach would capture the spirit of the era and project the image of never-ending fun. Carl Fisher aimed his community as a “vacation paradise,” a mixture of permanent homes and luxury hotels where visitors and residents could take advantage of polo fields, golf courses, beaches, nightclubs, fishing, high-speed boat racing and casinos.

  The American experience with German submarine warfare and the ill-fated voyages of the Titanic and Lusitania dampened enthusiasm for overseas cruising, while the social and economic dislocation caused by the war cast a pall on the idea of a European vacation. The war, which had fueled American industry, also left a burgeoning middle class that had extra money to spend. To ensure that Americans had the proper perspective of the high life in Miami Beach, Fisher spent hundreds of thousands of dollars advertising the pleasures of Miami Beach. Of all the Florida promoters, only George Merrick would spend more than he did.

  Of all the activities offered at his Miami Beach properties, Fisher spent the most money on polo. Determined to demonstrate that his developments rivaled ritzy Palm Beach, he concentrated on making them the center of polo, long considered the “sport of kings.” The first polo match in Miami Beach took place on February 20, 1919, at Fisher’s Flamingo Polo Grounds. According to biographer Mark Foster, one of Fisher’s associates estimated that he had spent more than $2 million on the sport by 1923. Always a competitive person, he learned to ride just so he could participate in the game.

  The Miami Beach casino was the center of life in Miami Beach. Here residents could gather to spend time on the beach, swim in a large freshwater pool, eat, play tennis or simply visit with other tourists and residents. Courtesy of the Florida Historical Society.

  When he first starting developing Miami Beach, Carl Fisher wanted to attract the same clientele as ritzy Palm Beach. He spent more than $2 million by 1923 on making his new town the epicenter of the sport of polo, which was often referred to as the “sport of kings.” Courtesy of the Florida Historical Society.

  Fisher, one of the original owners of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, was a fanatic about any machine that was fast. His love for speed fit nicely with the proximity of the Atlantic Ocean, and in 1915, he sponsored the first powerboat regatta in Miami. For the next several years, Fisher, in partnership with the American Power Boat Association, created a series of regattas that offered substantial monetary prizes, including the $5,000 Wood-Fisher Trophy. He called on his friends in the automobile and airplane industries to contribute additional prizes, as well as technical support for improved engines. Championship racer and boat designer Garfield A. “Gar” Wood, a friend of many years, credited him with being a major force behind the development of fast racing boats. In the October 1925 edition of American Motorist, Wood paid homage once again to Fisher for bringing “Florida and Miami beach more national prominence” than ever when he bought a fleet of eleven small runabouts, powered by one-hundred-horsepower marine engines and driven by nationally known race car drivers, to compete in a race that depended on skill. According to Wood, it provided “real competition, all of the boats being exactly the same mold and all the engines producing the same speed, there being less than one second’s difference in the speed of the fastest and slowest of the eleven boats.” For Fisher, powerboat races added to the allure of Miami Beach as a sunny playground because the race “gave the crowds which thronged the shores of Biscayne Bay a real thrill and interested thousands in boats because they were able to see what could be done with the small craft.”

  What he did for sanctioned racing, he also did for the rumrunners who plied the route between the Bahamas and Florida. Prohibition agents determined to enforce the ban of liquor smuggled between the islands and the Sunshine State found that they faced an uphill struggle to keep up with the technological changes that generally kept the boats of the smugglers out of their snares. For Fisher, who hated Prohibition, providing expert advice and state-of-the-art equipment became just another way he could frustrate the enforcement of this odious law. Gar Wood alluded to Fisher’s assistance in developing “the runabout and cruiser, which are utility craft and adaptable to the uses of the man who enjoys both a boat for pleasure and commercial purposes…across the Gulf Stream to Bimini Island, Havana, and Key West.” Powerboat racing allowed him to indulge in a sport he considered exciting, but the bottom line was that it added to the mystique and exciting image of Miami Beach.

  Tennis was another sport that Fisher promoted in Miami Beach. An enthusiastic though relatively unskilled player, he realized that other Americans, fascinated by the game, wanted to play, and he included a number of tennis courts in all of his development plans. In addition to sponsoring tournaments that brought in the best amateur and professional players in the world—William “Big Bill” Tilden, his doubles partner Vincent Richards, Helen Wills (Moody) and Suzanne Lenglen—he provided free lodging for them to stay and fraternize with paying guests at his hotels. For a few guests willing to pay for the privilege, private lessons with these stars could be arranged. Just as he did with other sports, Fisher considered any investments he made to be just the cost of doing business in glamorous Miami Beach.

  Although not an avid golfer, Fisher was aware that this was the one sport that appealed more than any other to visitors to the Sunshine State, and he vigorously promoted it as well. By 1925, three private courses, including an eighteen-hole course at Fisher’s Miami Beach Country Club, were available for play.

  The City of Miami and the City of Hialeah offered municipal courses, while Merrick created the course in front of the Biltmore Hotel, the Coral Gables Golf Club. It was remarkable that Fisher, who had little aptitude for the game, nevertheless saw its value as a magnet to draw the rich and powerful to Miami Beach. James M. Cox, governor of Ohio and Democratic presidential nominee in 1920, and other politicians and business moguls joined the likes of Babe Ruth, Will Rogers, Jack Dempsey, Gene Tunney and countless movie stars in playing with the top amateur and professional golfers of the day. Always seeking to arouse more interest in the game (and to attract more patrons to his hotels), Fisher presented unusual golfing spectacles such as “archery” golf. Other Fisher-inspired golf events pitted skilled players in other sports—jai alai, tennis, baseball—against talented golfers. Even zoo animals were used as caddies in publicity matches, and Rosie the elephant proved to be an instant hit with the public.

  The same Florida sunshine that made the beach resorts so popular also made golf a year-round sport on the peninsula. “Sir” Walter Hagen, Gene Sarazen, Leo Diegel, Johnny Farrell and MacDonald Smith were among the most popular professional golfers to play Fisher’s courses on Miami Beach, and they also played other courses around the state. Bobby Jones, the most famous amateur player in the world, frequently joined his professional colleagues in tournaments and exhibitions.

  Although golf was just one of the many entertainments Fisher offered in Miami Beach, the golf craze swept the nation and the rest of Florida. From the simple two-hole course built by Colonel J. Hamilton Gillespie in the yard of his Sarasota home in 1886, virtually every established town and city in the Sunshine State boasted a course. Soon, entire
communities dedicated to the sport rose from the flat Florida plains to surround courses designed by such golfing luminaries as Donald J. Ross, A.W. Tillinghast, William Langford, Seth Raynor, Herbert Strong and John Duncan Dunn. By 1925, Florida counted more than 150 courses open to golfers of all skill levels.

  Although he was not an aficionado of the game, Fisher knew that golf was the postwar American sensation, and he included several courses in his Miami Beach development. This picture shows the putting greens in front of his Flamingo Hotel on Miami Beach, although the caption on the picture states that it was in Miami. Miami Beach and the city of Miami were often referred to as the same place. Courtesy of the Florida Historical Society.

  Carl Fisher enjoyed welcoming his friends on the golf course with Rosie, the elephant that would caddy the round. Rosie was an instant hit with the public and was used in other publicity stunts. Courtesy of the Moorhead Collection.

  In 1924, Fisher used a plot made up of more than two million cubic yards of sand dredged from Biscayne Bay to create La Gorce Country Club, named in honor of his friend Rockwell La Gorce. In 1928, despite the declining economy of South Florida and the bust, he hosted the first La Gorce Open Golf Tournament with a purse of $15,000 to boost sagging property sales and decreasing tourist revenues. Despite its claim to be “the biggest money golf tournament” ever and the participation of the most famous professionals of the era, the open had a minimal impact on land sales. The simple fact was that the boom in Florida land was over, not to be revived until the 1960s.

  What Fisher pioneered, other promoters copied. To ensure that the public knew about the hoopla surrounding the activities in Miami Beach, he employed a staff of publicity agents who made sure that newspapers and magazines received articles, pictures and other interesting tidbits. The classic Carl Fisher story about his quest for publicity came when, immediately after a strenuous game of polo, his friend, Julius Fleischmann, died of a heart attack. Although upset, he took the time to remind one of his publicity men that any reports of the tragedy in the nation’s newspapers should bear the dateline of Miami Beach. Everything provided grist for the Fisher publicity mill. Polly Redford, in Billion Dollar Sandbar: A Biography of Miami Beach, quotes Carl’s ex-wife Jane on how the scantily clad bathing beauty (by the standards of the 1920s) became the symbol of Miami Beach:

  It was at the Roman Pools [a bathing pavilion on Miami Beach owned by Fisher] that Jane caused a scandal by appearing without the long black stockings that were standard swimming attire at the time. She claimed that this is how bathing beauties began on the Beach. For when a Miami minister used her bare knees as a living example of the depravity of Modern Woman, Carl said, “By God, Jane, you’ve started something! Why, dammit, I’ve been trying for months to think up an idea for advertising the Beach. We’ll get the prettiest girls we can find and put them in the goddamndest tightest and shortest bathing suits and no stockings or swim shoes either. We’ll have their pictures taken and send them all over the goddamn country.”

  The Flamingo Hotel, Carl Fisher’s grand hotel on Miami Beach, offered guests the latest amenities, sports and the opportunity to moor their yachts at the hotel’s docks. Efforts to transplant a flock of exotic African pink flamingos on the grounds of the hotel met with only marginal success. Courtesy of the Florida Historical Society.

  The modest swimsuits of the 1920s cannot compare in any way with the thongs and topless bikinis of today’s bathing beauties, but the movement from the demure top-to-bottom attire of the earlier 1900s created a sensation. Nothing guaranteed more attention than “half-dressed” women, and nothing promised more fun than the prospect of cavorting with them under the Florida sun.

  Fisher poured more than $100,000 a year in promoting Miami Beach and considered it money well spent. Still, Fisher argued that his publicity efforts, which certainly stressed Miami Beach, produced results for all developments in the Miami area, and he proposed the creation of a single agency, with staffers paid by a consortium of developers, to handle marketing for them. Such a joint effort would be cost effective by reducing any duplication of efforts. Although his proposal received little backing at the local level, it did produce some limited results nationally when magazines and newspapers commissioned articles about the boom.

  According to T.G. Weigall, George Merrick outdid Fisher in generating publicity for his Coral Gables development and employed a publicity staff that kept mimeograph and teletype machines operating twenty-four hours a day spitting out “news” to the nation’s media. In 1925, the Miami Herald bragged about being the largest newspaper in the world when it produced an edition consisting of twenty-two sections and 504 pages, most of which were advertisements for Coral Gables, Miami Beach, Hialeah/Opalocka and other smaller developments.

  The building boom reached such a frenzy by 1925 that developers found it difficult to attract and employ enough contractors to complete projected buildings. Often they placed advertisements in major magazines urging contractors to come south—with their laborers. Courtesy of the Florida Historical Society.

  In addition to spending vast sums advertising Miami Beach, Fisher continued to invest heavily in hotels and land. Although he owned the small Lincoln Hotel—which he warned guests in advance was an ordinary and unpretentious little establishment—he realized that other more elegant lodgings were required for the thousands of winter visitors, all of whom were potential customers for his residential developments. In 1919, he announced the construction of the magnificent 200-room Flamingo Hotel at the astronomical cost of $1.5 million. By 1921, the demand for rooms had exceeded the capacity of the hotel, and Fisher decided that more hotels were needed. Since no other investor would step forward, he announced the construction of three new hotels over the next three years—the 189-room Nautilus (1923); the King Cole (1924); and the Boulevard (1925). Within two years, however, other investors decided the market was ripe for more hotels. Arthur Pancoast opened the 110-room Pancoast Hotel in 1923, followed by J. Perry Stoltz’s Fleetwood Hotel in 1924. Newton Baker Taylor Roney announced plans for his $2 million Roney Plaza in 1924 and opened it in 1926, just in time for the devastating hurricane that year. By 1925, Miami Beach counted 4,000 available rooms spread among fifty-six hotels, in addition to nearly two hundred apartment buildings offering longer-term rentals. Enough? Not quite. The October and November 1925 American Motorist magazines carried advertisements from the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce seeking contractors and builders to build an additional one hundred hotels and three hundred more apartment buildings. “New Hotels and Apartments are being erected, but not half enough to accommodate the people flocking here. There is work for everybody in the building line and contractors are urged to bring their workers here with them.”

  President-elect Warren G. Harding was an inveterate golfer and, so the rumors went, a social drinker. When Carl Fisher persuaded him to come to Miami Beach in 1921 for a few rounds of golf and some good liquor, he came. His visit proved to be decisive in boosting sales on the beach. Courtesy of the Moorhead Collection.

  The investments Carl Fisher made in hotels, golf courses, polo grounds and other assorted entertainment/activity amenities were secondary to his major goal of improving the value of his real estate. Although he originally purchased his Miami Beach property in 1913, it took him almost eight years to realize any kind of profit. In 1920, for example, sales of Fisher properties totaled only about $500,000, and as late as the 1921–22 winter season, he was forced to borrow money just to pay the quarterly installment of his income tax. He was, to put it bluntly, land rich and cash poor.

  In January 1921, Fisher persuaded President-elect Warren G. Harding and his wife to spend a few days playing golf in Miami Beach. Although a frequent visitor to Florida (he had in-laws in Rockledge), this was his first trip to the Sunshine State as the next president of the United States. Whether or not the attendant press coverage, augmented by the contributions of Fisher’s own publicity agents, made the visit decisive in boosting land sales, Ha
rding’s Miami Beach visit dominated the front pages of the nation’s newspapers and directed the attention of the American public on this small spit of Atlantic coastline. Perhaps engaging in hyperbole, Fisher alleged that his company showed a profit for that season of “about $9,000,000.” It is doubtful, however, that this was true, since this was the year he was forced to borrow money to pay his taxes.

  Within a year, the “boom” kicked in and Fisher’s fortunes changed dramatically. Although it is difficult to find absolutely reliable figures—given the hype and exaggeration that accompanied newspaper reports of the period—1923 land sales reached $6 million for Fisher properties alone in Miami Beach, followed in 1924 by an additional $8 million. At the peak of the boom in 1925, his companies reported some $23 million in sales. The boom spread across the Sunshine State, and developers, many of whom had started with little or nothing in their wallets a year or so before, now tossed about similar sums with an air of complete indifference. “Estimates of his fortune at the peak of the boom ranged from $50 million up to $100 million,” Mark Foster wrote. “Nobody really knew, including Fisher. He had very little liquidity. His fortune was mostly on paper, and he was a lousy record keeper.”