By 1922, Carl Fisher had left Indianapolis. He had a palatial Miami Beach home and his Indianapolis home had been leased to the Boys Preparatory School, later Park School for Boys. He had moved his office from Indianapolis to the Heckscher building at 57th Street and Fifth Avenue in New York City. While Miami Beach was delightful in the winter, the long, hot, humid summers had him longing for something cooler. When he took a trip to Montauk at the eastern end of Long Island in the late 1910s, he knew he had found the perfect spot in which to spend the summers. At the time, Montauk was a quiet fishing village with 150 fishermen, seven large summer homes built by Stanford White for New York financiers, and a lighthouse.
Around 1920, Fisher purchased 7.6 acres of property in nearby Port Washington where he built a Dutch Colonial home in Bayview Colony. The front door of the house leads into a grand, paneled entry with a sweeping staircase up to the main living area. It has a two-story stone fireplace in the great room. The house had commanding views of Lake Montauk, and the Atlantic Ocean. The property also had two private residences, one of which was a caretaker’s cottage. The home might have been influenced by George Washington’s home, Mount Vernon, as there is a photograph of Fisher in front of Mount Vernon. Fisher used the home as a place to bring potential investors and buyers.
Never content to sit back and enjoy life, Fisher saw this area as one that could be transformed, much like he had transformed the barrier island which became Miami Beach. Fisher established the Montauk Beach Development Company to develop the property and bought 10,000 acres of land. Soon after, he was involved in a dispute with Robert Moses, the Long Island State Park commission president. Moses began legal proceedings to acquire 1700 acres of land at Montauk Point for a state park. This followed an unsuccessful attempt to purchase the property from Fisher. A court would determine the value of the property. Fisher told the Brooklyn Daily Eagle on July 30, 1924, “The Commission now wants 1,700 acres with a beach front of approximately five miles and wants it for $75 an acre. As I paid $300 an acre for the entire tract, which includes the bottoms of several lakes and the marshes, I naturally won’t accept less for the section the Commission wants.”
Fisher was on a speedboat in Long Island Sound with a sizeable map showing the acreage he had purchased. With a pencil, Fisher pointed to where he wanted a hotel located atop Signal Hill, a second hotel on the lakefront and a third on the point on the opposite shore. He had grand plans for the property—not only three hotels, but also the Montauk Beach Tennis Club, the Montauk Beach Bathing Club, Montauk Hunt and Polo Club, and the Montauk Beach Casino (social area not for gambling), a yacht club, and a golf club where the membership fee is $2,500 plus references. Joining the other clubs would involve additional fees. Both Miami Beach and Montauk Point were marketed to wealthy individuals. Fisher promoted his developments with the slogan “Miami Beach in the winter, Montauk Point in the summer.”
Soon, the dirt began to fly. By 1926, significant progress was being made. He brought in a dredge to eat its way through from the ocean to Lake Montauk. The dredge would later deepen the lake. A new clubhouse was envisioned in the middle of the lake so Fisher had a seven hundred foot bridge built to it. To accommodate the workers, an Employees’ Village was established on Shepard’s Neck which initially included immense barracks and mess halls. Later, new houses, seven stores with apartments overhead and a theater were planned. Twenty miles of roads had been completed and another forty were projected.
Just as in Miami Beach, one of the keys to the development was the establishment of the hotels, the grandest of which was Montauk Manor at the top of Signal Hill. The Montauk Inn was built by the Long Island Railroad for $40,000 as part of their plan in the late 1890s to have a deepwater port at Montauk. The Montauk Inn was destroyed by fire in 1926 to make room for Montauk Manor, a 178-room hotel in the Tudor Revival style designed by Schultz and Weaver architectural firm. Montauk Manor opened in the spring on June 2, 1927. Fisher and his party, including Jack LaGorce (National Geographic Magazine) and millionaire sportsman Caleb Bragg, arrived from New York on his yacht “Shadow K, The grand opening had governors, mayors, prominent business men, and officials of the Long Island and Pennsylvania Railroads in attendance. The hotel opened to the public three days later. It soon became known for its international cuisine, croquet on the lawn, and tea served on the veranda.
Fisher also built a seven-story office building designed by Schultz and Weaver. The top floor was a penthouse with commanding 360-degree views of the area. Fisher planned to use the penthouse so that buyers could pick out their lots. The Montauk Beach Development Corporation maintained their offices on the first floor. The office building was completed in 1927. Near the office building, Fisher had smaller, mock-Tudor buildings built.
Fisher used his holdings on Miami Beach as collateral for the development of Montauk. After the Great Hurricane of September 1926, Fisher tried to continue his work at Montauk and to revitalize the seriously damaged Miami Beach. Additionally, in 1926 the real estate bubble in Florida burst and property values plummeted. Creditors became increasingly concerned about repayment. What the collapse of the Florida real estate market and the 1926 hurricane didn’t do, the Great Depression caused Montauk Point Development Company to file for bankruptcy in 1932.
By 1943, most of Montauk including the office building and Montauk Manor were used by the United States Navy. The Navy built barracks on the hotel grounds and used the hotel as additional military housing. They held dances in the ballroom and the well-appointed dining room served as a mess hall. The residents of the small fishing village on Fort Pond Bay were evicted so that the Navy could do torpedo testing.
After the war, the office building, which was abandoned in 1938, stood empty except for offices on the first floor. In 1980, a real estate developer bought the property and converted it into a 21-unit luxury condominium. The Montauk Manor was renovated. In 1964, Montauk Manor was closed down. About twenty years later, a developer turned the property into 140 luxury condominiums. The property has three tennis courts, an outdoor swimming pool and a spa. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
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