Remembering Miami Beach Pioneer Jane Fisher

Reflecting on the adventurous life of Jane Fisher, first wife of the father of Miami Beach, Carl Fisher.

Cover: Composite of portraits of Carl Fisher and Jane Fisher, along with the front page of the Miami Herald on December 7, 1968.

Jane Fisher passed away on December 6, 1968, at the age of 74, succumbing to a heart attack in the quiet comfort of her small gabled house at 3747 Sheridan Avenue in Miami Beach. She had been the first wife of Carl G. Fisher, the visionary who would transform a stretch of sand and mangroves into the glamorous playground now known as Miami Beach.

Jane’s life had begun with a marriage far from ordinary. At just fifteen, she wed Carl, then thirty-five, embarking on a journey that would take her from small-town beginnings to the burgeoning streets of Miami. In 1912, the young couple moved into a modest home on Brickell Avenue, witnessing firsthand Carl’s growing restlessness in retirement in search of his next project. Fisher had made millions when he sold his company Prest-O-Lite to Union Carbide in 1913. Following what was a very short-lived retirement, he went on to found, develop and shape Miami Beach into America’s winter playground.

During the heyday of the development of Miami Beach, Carl was always restless. He would later try to replicate his success in Montauk Point on Long Island, but circumstances, including the impact of the 1926 Hurricane on Miami Beach and later, the stock market crash of 1929, derailed that dream. By 1926, Carl and Jane grew apart and divorced.

Figure 1: Jane Fisher in 1947 signing her book ‘The Fabulous Hoosier”. Courtesy of June Thompson Morris.

Despite the divorce, the city and Carl’s legacy remained a part of her. She returned after Carl’s death in 1939 drawn back to the place they had once shared. She documented his life in the book Fabulous Hoosier and later shared her own memories in a series of articles titled “I Remember When” for the Miami Herald, preserving the story of a city in transformation through the eyes of someone who had known it at its very birth.

By the late 1960s, the Miami Beach Jane once knew had grown into something unrecognizable. Reflecting on the changes, she remarked with a tinge of sorrow, “Miami Beach has grown into a big, ugly city. I don’t think it is what Carl would have wanted.” In those words, lingered not just nostalgia, but the memory of a city and a life forever intertwined.

Figure 2: Jane Fisher in 1950 holding a Miami Beach flag to commemorate the city’s incorporation on March 26, 1915. Courtesy of Florida State Archives.

Resources:

• Jane Fisher on PBS.org