FISHER ISLAND CONDOS
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FISHER ISLAND CONDOS
Fisher Island is a census-designated place of metropolitan Miami, Florida, located on a barrier island of the same name. As of the 2010 census, Fisher Island had the highest per capita income of any place in the United States. The CDP had only 226 households and a total population of 132 persons. A relatively small part of the northern part of the island is incorporated as a part of the city of Miami Beach.
Named for automotive parts pioneer and beach real estate developer Carl G. Fisher, who once owned it, Fisher Island is three miles off shore of mainland South Florida. No road or causeway connects to the island, which is accessible by private boat orferry. Once a one-family island home of the Vanderbilts, and later several other millionaires, it was sold for development in the 1960s.
FISHER ISLAND CONDOS: History
The island was created in 1905 by a dredging and land reclamation projects in and around Miami Beach. Construction of Fisher Island began in 1919 when Carl G. Fisher, a land developer, purchased the property from businessman and real estate developerDana A. Dorsey, southern Florida’s first African-American millionaire. In 1925 William Kissam Vanderbilt II traded a luxury yacht to Fisher for ownership of the island.
FISHER ISLAND CONDOS
After Vanderbilt’s death in 1944, ownership of the island passed to U.S. Steel heir Edward Moore. Moore died in the early 1950s, and Gar Wood, the millionaire inventor of hydraulic construction equipment, bought it. Wood, a speedboat enthusiast, kept the island a one-family retreat. In 1963, Wood sold to a development group that included local Key Biscayne millionaire Bebe Rebozo, Miami native and United States Senator George Smathers and then former U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon, who had promised to leave politics. During his subsequent presidency from 1968–1973, and during the Watergate scandal, Nixon maintained a home on nearby Key Biscayne known as the “Key Biscayne Whitehouse” that was the former residence of Senator Smathers and next door to Rebozo, but none of the three ever resided on Fisher Island.
The Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science (RSMAS) of the University of Miami maintained the Comparative Sedimentology Laboratory on Fisher Island from 1972 to 1990 under the leadership of Robert Ginsburg.
After years of legal battles and changes in ownership, further development on the island was finally started in the 1980s, with architecture matching the original 1920s Spanish style mansions. Although no longer a one-family island, in 2005, Fisher Island still remains somewhat inaccessible to the public and uninvited guests, and is as exclusive by modern standards as it was in the days of the Vanderbilts, providing similar refuge and retreat for its residents. The island contains mansions, a hotel, several apartment buildings, an observatory, and a private marina. Boris Becker, Oprah Winfrey, and Mel Brooks are among thecelebrities with homes on the island.
