Fisher Island Hotel History
Once a one-family island home of the Vanderbilts, and later several other millionaires, Fisher Island off South Florida, was sold for development in the 1960s. A black construction laborer, Dana Albert Dorsey, who worked as a carpenter for Florida’s East Coast Railroad recognized the need to provide housing for black workers. With rental houses as it’s foundation, this grew into the first black-owned hotel in Florida – the Dorsey Hotel in Overtown.
Fisher Island is in Miami-Dade County, Florida, located on a barrier island of the same name. As of 2015, Fisher Island had the highest per capita income of any place in the United States. The CDP had only 218 households and a total population of 467.