His commercial building designs played a major role in reshaping Seattle architecture in the late 19th century and many still survive as part of the Pioneer Square Historic District.

Russell & Co.,[3] and the year after as a moulder for Smith, Parker & Co.[4] He continued his journey west, arriving in Denver, Colorado, around 1880[ii] where after first working as a foreman for a sash & door factory,[5] began trading as an architect as well as a carpenter and builder with partner J.H.

[1] Around this time he received his first major commissions in Seattle including the first Korn Block (1888, Destroyed) and 1st Regiment Army Hall (1888, Demolished), giving him a foothold in the competitive architectural scene there.

[9] While the first few months of 1889 were some of Fisher's busiest, he and every other hopeful architect in the city would be given a clean slate when the Great Seattle fire of June 6, 1889, wiped out the majority of the business district.

Many of Fisher's recent commissions were either outside of the burnt district or were only in the excavation stages at the time of the fire and despite common belief, many of his most famous buildings would have been built whether Seattle burned or not.

[14] Fisher spent the next year running the Abbott House Hotel at the Southeast corner of Pike Street and 3rd Avenue in a building that he had previously designed and built.

[15] In early 1893, mere months after his marriage to Charlotte M. Willey (They would divorce by 1900),[16] a former mistress that Fisher had traveled with from Colorado to Victoria brought a civil suit against him claiming to be his true wife.

In Los Angeles he struggled to re-establish the career success he had enjoyed in Seattle, which had less to do with his reputation and more as a result of the Panic of 1893 which halted building projects across the nation.

Fisher's early commercial designs were of Victorian and Italianate influence and were typified by exposed brick with corbelling, selective exterior plastering and massive Aedicular window surrounds; motifs were reused to the extent that several buildings built between Victoria, Vancouver and Port Townsend in the mid-1880s were nearly identical.