Fisher, Avery Robert

(b. 4 March 1906 in Brooklyn, New York; d. 26 February 1994 in New Milford, Connecticut), audio equipment executive, entrepreneur, and patron of the arts for whom Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center is named.

Fisher was the youngest of the six children of Charles Fisher, an owner of a clothing store in Manhattan, New York, and Mary Byrach, a homemaker. His parents had immigrated to New York from Kiev, then a part of Ukraine in 1905. Fisher graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School in New York in 1924 and entered New York University that same year as a prelaw student, but later changed to biology and English. He graduated with a B.A. degree in 1929.

After graduation, the six-foot, stocky Fisher worked at an advertising agency that counted book publishers among its accounts. He left the agency in 1932 for employment with G. P. Putnam’s Sons, a publishing company. In 1933 he left Putnam’s to become a graphic designer for Dodd, Mead and Company, another publishing organization, for eighteen dollars a week. Leaving that company in 1943, he described book design as “my first love,” and he continued to work on projects for Dodd, Mead through the subsequent years. He designed, among other works, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples by Sir Winston Churchill (1956) and The American Seasons by Edwin Way Teale (1976). Fisher gave his fees for those projects to charities because he felt that “looking at a beautiful typographical design is like listening to music.”

In 1937 Fisher established his first entrepreneurial organization while continuing to work as a graphic designer. The Philharmonic Radio Company grew out of his hobby of building radios so he could get better sound than that available with the ready-made models then in use. He made significant improvements in amplifiers, tuners, and speakers. He later remembered that “a number of friends asked me to make for them the kind of equipment I was constructing… and before I knew it I had the beginnings of a business.”

Fisher sold his first company in 1945 and started Fisher Radio the same year. That company entered the high-fidelity market with a line of components at premium prices. Audio fans acclaimed his products as the “Rolls-Royce of sound equipment.” On 8 September 1950 Fisher married Janet Cane; they had three children. Fisher Radio brought out the first transistorized amplifier in 1956 and offered the first stereophonic radio and phonograph combination in 1961. Fisher assembled the engineering staff by hiring the best audio technicians from European companies. “Whenever another company needed an engineer, the first place they came to try to steal somebody was my company. I didn’t blame them. I got my engineers from Europe,” he said.

Fisher was an amateur violinist whose love of music prompted him to build high-quality radios and phonographs. He considered himself a musician who independently manufactured high quality high-fidelity equipment for music connoisseurs. He had become fascinated with music as a child through his father’s large record collection and because everyone in the family played a musical instrument. Among his other amusements, he enjoyed tinkering with old automobiles.

Fisher sold Fisher Radio to Emerson for just under $31 million in 1969, when the audio market began to turn toward mass merchandising. The company was eventually sold to Sanyo of Japan. Fisher became a consultant to both companies and, in spite of having no financial interests, regularly attended the annual sales meetings.

After he sold his company Fisher devoted his time to philanthropy. He endowed the Avery Fisher Listening Room in the Bobst Library at New York University, and he donated $10.5 million to Lincoln Center in New York City. Lincoln Center’s Philharmonic Hall, built in 1962, was renamed Avery Fisher Hall in his honor in 1973. He initially intended the gift as an endowment fund that would use eighty percent for the maintenance of the hall and the remaining twenty percent for the creation of the Avery Fisher Artist Program. The program offers two different prestigious awards. The larger is the Avery Fisher Prize of $25,000 for young American musicians in recognition of their valuable contributions to their profession. The other prize is the Avery Fisher Career Grant of $10,000 intended to assist with musicians’ career-related expenses. Up to five grants are awarded every year. Avery Fisher Hall underwent modifications to address echoes in some areas and dry sound that did not resonate. Fisher became a member of the Board of Directors of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in 1975. The following year Avery Fisher Hall was reconstructed to fix its acoustical problems. Of the original gift from Fisher, $4 million was redirected to pay the cost of the reconstruction, which entailed the addition of panels to the ceiling to enhance the acoustics. Fisher took an active, if unofficial interest in the process, conferring with the architect and those responsible for the acoustics as the interior was planned. The renovation solved a number of the original problems.

In 1984 Fisher was elected a director emeritus of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. He also sat on the boards of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the Marlboro Festival in Marlboro, Vermont. He died in New Milford Hospital of complications of a stroke and was cremated. He had homes in Manhattan and Washington, Connecticut. Fisher’s audio designs and philanthropic activities notably contributed to American artistry.

An obituary is in the New York Times (27 Feb. 1994).

Martin Jay Stahl