Carl Fisher’s Montauk Resort

 

Carl Fisher’s Montauk Resort

In 1925, Carl Fisher bought Montauk Peninsula on Long Island, New York. He believed that the 10,000 acre peninsula was the perfect location for a northern tourist haven like Miami Beach. Fisher’s wildcatting on Montauk appeared to be a brilliant strategy – by luck he was leaving Miami Beach before a devastating hurricane in 1926 stalled the real estate momentum there.

As with Miami Beach, Fisher worked full throttle to construct roads, commercial buildings, and homes between 1926 and 1932. He also brought in Steve Hannagan to help sell the ‘new Miami Beach.’ Fisher paid Hannagan with stock that he never traded and was a worthless investment when Hannagan’s estate tried to sell it.

As part of Fisher’s blueprint to make Montauk a destination for New York travelers, he planned a wharf at Montauk large enough to dock Trans-Atlantic steamers. The passengers would disembark at Montauk and then travel by rail to Manhattan. Docking at Montauk would save a day’s time in both directions. However, Fisher’s Trans-Atlantic scheme never came to fruition.i

Fisher’s main problem at Montauk was that his vision of a resort on Montauk Point fell victim to the Great Depression. Furthermore, Steve Hannagan and others told Fisher that Montauk had a very short tourist season compared to Miami Beach and that the weather was lousy the rest of the year. Even during the summer season wind and rain could bl0w onto the peninsula at gale force. Even the cold and snow of winter attracted few tourist because the upper echelons in New York City did not see Montauk as a winter resort If they wanted a winter resort, they traveled to Hannagan’s other project that opened in 1937 – Sun Valley.

Nevertheless, Fisher and Hannagan pushed the Montauk resort as the place to be in the summer. Their marketing slogan paraphrased their successful campaign for Miami Beach, “Miami in the winter; Montauk in the summer.”ii

In other words, Fisher and Hannagan were swimming upstream as they tried to promote Montauk as a resort for the rich and powerful on the far end of Long Island. Fisher’s resort went belly-up by the middle 1930s leaving him destitute. Fisher returned to Miami Beach to live off the good will of his friends. He died an impoverished alcoholic in Miami Beach in 939.

Now that Carl Fisher’s time has long passed, Montauk is becoming the place for the very rich to build magnificent homes and buy what is left of Fisher’s buildings as elegant locations for their lifestyle.

Advertisement for Montaukiii

The poster for the Montauk Resort leading the article covers the main points of the publicity campaign. Since the resort was a summer resort, the poster emphasized that it was “125 miles out in the Cool Atlantic,” a powerful message for New Yorkers seeking to beat the summer heat and humidity. There are also images of activities at or nearby to resort – deep-sea fishing, archery, golf, tennis, horse and coaches, sailing, and aviation. The images make it clear that Fisher’s Montauk is appealing to the wealthy and not the day tripper crowd.

Tour of Carl Fisher’s Montauk

Montauk Tower

The Montauk Tower opened in the 1920s and was originally known as the Carl Fisher Office Building. The building housed the headquarters for Fisher’s development project

Montauk Toweriv

Montauk Manor

In 1927, Carl Fisher opened the Manor as a ‘grand centerpiece’ to his Montauk Resort. It was filled with hotel rooms, outsized ballrooms, restaurants serving internationally acclaimed cuisine, tea room, and a broad Croquet lawn overlooked the peninsula.v

Montauk Manorvi

Carl Fisher’s Home in Montauk

Carl Fisher’s home was designed by the same architect Schultze & Weaver that designed the Pierre Hotel in New York City. The house has six bedrooms and a guest house. The floors in the main house are timbered with stone fireplaces, paneled ceilings, and arched windows.vii In 2015, Fisher’s home was put up for sale for $10.5 million.

 

Carl Fisher’s Home on Montauk Pointviii

Carl Fisher’s Montauk Homes for the Rich and Famous

Fisher dotted his resort plantation with great homes designed in the Great Gatsby style. These homes were not modest in size, detail, or cost. In the last several decades, celebrities and high finance investors have taken a shine to exclusivity of the Montauk peninsula.ix

The Harry Bruno Homex

The Ringwood Housexi

For More Information on Carl Fisher’s Montauk Resort go to the article in Dan’s Papers; Wild Developer Who Tried to Build a Resort at Montauk; the link to the article is: http://www.danspapers.com/2014/06/carl-fisher-wild-developer-who-tried-to-build-a-resort-at-montauk/

 

End Notes

i Rawson, Kenneth J.; “Carl Fisher’s Montauk Plans”; New York Times Blog (Retrieved March 30, 2018); https://www.nytimes.com/1985/02/03/nyregion/l-carl-fisher-s-montauk-plans-014626.html.

 ii Tuma, Debie; (August 11, 2002) Montauk Embraces Its Legacy; New York Times; (Retrieved March 30, 2018); https://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/11/nyregion/montauk-embraces-its-legacy.html.

 vii London, Carey; “Carl Fisher’s Home for Sale (Retrieved March 30, 2018); http://www.27east.com/news/article.cfm/Montauk/118584/Carl-Fishers-Former-Home-In-Montauk-Is-For-Sale,

 ix Eichblatt, Sam; Photograph of the Harry Bruno Home; “A Jazz Age Inventor’s Quest to Turn Montauk into Miami Beach” (Retrieved April 3, 2018); https://www.curbed.com/2015/4/22/9975144/a-jazz-age-inventors-quest-to-turn-montauk-into-miami-beach.

 x Eichblatt, Sam; Photograph of the Harry Bruno Home; “A Jazz Age Inventor’s Quest to Turn Montauk into Miami Beach” (Retrieved April 3, 2018); https://www.curbed.com/2015/4/22/9975144/a-jazz-age-inventors-quest-to-turn-montauk-into-miami-beach.

 xi Eichblatt, Sam; Photograph of the Harry Bruno Home; “A Jazz Age Inventor’s Quest to Turn Montauk into Miami Beach” (Retrieved April 3, 2018); https://www.curbed.com/2015/4/22/9975144/a-jazz-age-inventors-quest-to-turn-montauk-into-miami-beach.

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Steve Hannagan Promotes Puerto Rico Boxing Match

Steve Hannagan

Promotes Puerto Rico Boxing Match

As part of Steve Hannagan’s publicity campaign for Puerto Rico, he promoted a bantam weight prize fight between Sixto Escobar, a local fighter, and Harry Jefra of Baltimore. The fight was held on February 20, 1938, at El Escambrón Baseball Park in Puerta de Tierra. The fight was a rematch between the two. Jefra won the previous fight.

Hannagan convinced boxing promoter, Mike Jacobs that the fight would be a money maker because Escobar was a hometown favorite. However, Hannagan did not know that the two boxers had fought before. Escobar wanted the fight because if he won he had a shot at the bantamweight title fight.

Sixto Escobari

Harry Jefraii

To maximize the gate, Hannagan scheduled the fight to coincide with the arrival of the U.S. Navy’s Atlantic Fleet. He expected to draw a large number of officers and enlisted men looking for a rousing fight to start shore leave. However, Steve made a major mistake by inviting photographers to a dinner with both fighters; who rather than glaring at each other through dinner pictures showed them to be the best of friends. Sailors did not want a fight between friends, they wanted rabid enemies pummeling each other into bloody pulp. The result was that the sailors stayed away in droves. However, the locals did come, and they saw Escobar outpoint Jefra in fifteen rounds. The next year Escobar won the bantam weight title.iii

Statue of Sixto Escobar in front of the Stadium Named for Him

In San Juaniv

End Notes

i Photograph of Sixto Escobar (retrieved November 13, 2017); https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=ZHcYw1iV&id=AFDFB6B958E99DB317DD6FF29E52138E214AEE49&thid=OIP.ZHcYw1iVnCBgfIwOQ_ErIADuEs&mediaurl=http%3a%2f%2fboxinghalloffame.com%2fwp-content%2fuploads%2f2012%2f10%2fSixto-Escobar.jpg&exph=402&expw=320&q=sixto+Escobar+&simid=607995761289989155&selectedIndex=4&ajaxhist=0.

iii Ross, Edward Ellis; Hannagan Research Document; source: New York University Archives; pp. 199–200.

iv Photograph of the Sixto Escobar Statue in front of the stadium named for him (retrieved November 12, 2017); https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixto_Escobar.

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Puerto Rico and Winship

Puerto Rico Calls Steve Hannagan

In 1937, Steve was vacationing on the banks of the Wabash, when his New York office called saying that General Blanton Winship, the Governor of Puerto Rico, wanted to meet with him immediately.i Winship was the Territorial Governor of the Island and saw the job as a retirement posting.ii Unfortunately for Puerto Rico, Winship was a ham-handed Governor with little tact who landed at a time when the Island was torn between Nationalists who wanted independence from the United States and those who wanted the island to remain a territory.

Governor Blanton Winship

Veteran of the Spanish-American Wariii

Territorial Governor General Blanton Winship and the San Juan Protest

General Blanton Winship was the man on the job and on the spot in Puerto Rico. President Roosevelt and Secretary Ickes1 held Winship’s diplomatic skills in low regard and thought that he might not be the best person to deal with political dissent. However, they determined that it was not politically wise to abruptly remove him from office. Roosevelt’s and Ickes’s reluctance to deal with Winship’s shortcomings would come to haunt Washington’s relations with Puerto Rico.

For Winship, the nadir of his governorship took place when the Nationalists petitioned the Mayor of Ponce, the second largest city in Puerto Rico, for a permit to conduct a rally on March 21st.iv The Mayor gave approval, and citizens from throughout the Island converged on the city. As soon as Winship heard of the rally, he ordered the Mayor to cancel it. Winship saw the rally as a treasonous step toward revolution. Despite the Governor’s order, the rally took place and as the protestors stepped out, the police opened fire for fifteen minutes killing nineteen and wounding two hundred.v The rally and shootings have gone down as the Massacre of Ponce.

New York Times Headlinevi

Washington Unhappy

Although Winship issued a statement justifying his decision and the action of the police, the Washington administration saw the problems on the Island differently. Both Secretary Harold Ickes and President Roosevelt were offended by the pictures that they saw of the massacre. Moreover, Congress denounced Winship and the response of the police.

Winship Calls Hannagan

After the riot Winship realized that he had to act quickly to improve his image and the image of Puerto Rico. Winship’s first step was to ask the legislature to impose a tax on salt to fund an Institute of Tourism. Next, Winship arranged to meet with Steve Hannagan in New York to launch a campaign to attract tourists to Puerto Rico.

Winship told Hannagan at their meeting about “the natural beauty of the Island, its ‘picturesque’ citizens, and…its ideal climate…its winter temperature [which] averaged 73 degrees with a summer average of 76 degrees.…[Winship] also said that he had coined this slogan: ‘You may not find a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but you can always find a garden of flowers [in Puerto Rico].’ Winship’s [project] sounded fascinating to ’Mr. Miami Beach.’”vii

Hannagan Takes the Puerto Rico Job

Steve Hannagan on accepting the project immediately assigned his chief associate, Joe Copps, to open the Puerto Rico News Bureau in the offices of the newspaper El Mundo.viii Steve’s first directive to Copps was to establish the firm’s trademark news bureau.

Soon after arriving on the Island, Copps surveyed the quality and quantity of hotel rooms for tourists. Based on the report by Copps, Hannagan flew to the Island where he and Copps told Winship that more hotel rooms were needed. Next, Hannagan went to work on a press campaign that ignored recent negative press coverage.

Hannagan and Copps dropped Winship’s slogan and replaced it with “Puerto Rico–the Honolulu of the East.” They selected the new slogan after their research showed that Puerto Rico’s temperatures were comparable to Honolulu’s temperatures. The new slogan suggested that tourists could get the Honolulu climate without a costly trip to the Hawaiian Islands.

Hannagan and Copps then flooded news editors from Florida to Maine with press releases extolling the Island’s benefits and featuring their favorite symbol of beach tourism – a swimming suit model.

Classic Hannagan Ad for Puerto Rico Featuring

a Young Woman in a Swimsuit

Just Like His Miami Beach Adsix

As Steve’s press campaign unwound, Puerto Rico tourism increased 300%.x They found new hotels along with dude ranches in the mountains, docks for deep-sea fishing boats, and golf courses in lush tropical environs.

Milwaukee Journal Praises Hannagan’s Puerto Rico Campaign

The Milwaukee Journal burnished Steve’s image with its headline about Puerto Rico that said the success of the Island press campaign [in bringing in more tourists] was due to “Steve the Stupendous!” xi

Endnotes

1 The Governor of the Territory of Puerto Rico reported to the Secretary of the Interior.

i Ross, Edward Ellis; Hannagan Research Document; source: New York University Archives; p. 191.

ii Ross, Edward Ellis; Hannagan Research Document; source: New York University Archives; p. 191.

iii Photograph of Blanton Winship (retrieved November 2, 2017; Blanton Winship; Wikipedia; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanton_Winship.

iv Ross, Edward Ellis; Hannagan Research Document; source: New York University Archives; p. 192.

v Ross, Edward Ellis; Hannagan Research Document; source: New York University Archives; p. 193.

vii Ross, Edward Ellis; Hannagan Research Document; source: New York University Archives; p. 194.

viii Ross, Edward Ellis; Hannagan Research Document; source: New York University Archives; p. 195.

ix 1938 Puerto Rico Tourism Travel (retrieved November 12, 2017); https://www.periodpaper.com/collections/tourism-bureau/products/1938-ad-peurto-rico-tourism-travel-swimsuit-cocktails-630-fifth-avenue-new-york-196919-ytr1-063

x Ross, Edward Ellis; Hannagan research document archive; source: New York University Archives; p. 201.

xi Ross, Edward Ellis; Hannagan Research Document; source: New York University Archives; p. 201.

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Hannagan Observations on Politics

Steve Hannagan’s View of Politics

Steve Hannagan’s take on politics were based on his broad experience as a press agent and his displeasure with the Presidential campaigns of Wendell Willkie and Thomas Dewey. Hannagan worked with both candidates during their presidential campaigns.

Losers on Parade

Wendell Willkie Presidential Candidate in 1940 (top)i

Tom Dewey Presidential Candidate in 1944 and 1948 (bottom)ii

Hannagan’s Rules on Political Campaigns

  • Even if a candidate appears to hold the same values as the publicist that does not mean that they will be good campaigners. Wendell Willkie and Thomas Dewey were miserable campaigners.
  • Neophytes may look good prior to the campaign, but they may be abject failures as campaigners. Wendell Willkie was a sad example of this maxim.
  • Politics and straight-forward advice do not mix.
  • Being a campaign adviser is a waste of time if the candidate does not allow the publicist into the inner circle of campaign management. He found that he was on the outside on the few campaigns that he chose to help. The inside versus outside violated his business rule that he had to have direct contact with the decision maker.
  • Money is not everything, if the publicist or the candidates managers or the party do not follow the publicist’s recommendations, the integrity and reputation of the publicist may be undermined.
  • In summary, be wary of political campaigns because the candidate and managers will ignore common sense advice. Hannagan’s experience was that he did not have access to the candidate and that the candidates usually had too many assistants advising caution rather than forceful campaign strategies.

Reality of Politics to Steve Hannaganiii

END NOTES

i Picture of Wendell Willkie (retrieved February 27, 2018); http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/intelligencer/2016/06/20/20-wendell-wilkie.w529.h352.jpg.

iii Puck Cartoon of Political Platforms of the Two Parties (retrieved November 20, 2017); pahttps://www.google.com/search?biw=1366&bih=662&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=m5MXWtWJM4bZjwS-m7L4BA&q=puck+cartoons&oq=puck+cartoons&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0j0i7i30k1l3j0i5i30k1.12844.13163.0.14876.2.2.0.0.0.0.94.164.2.2.0….0…1c.1.64.psy-ab..0.2.162…0i7i5i30k1.0.vVhz4RSEHhE#imgrc=ZFuOOQtF6k8KaM.

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