Wilson Island Stories of the early 1900s

The Richard and Dorothy Felchlin Home at

665 E. Carmen Avenue

The Berkeley engineer and the fashion maven

In 1931 UC Berkeley professor Ernest O. Lawrence designed the first cyclotron, an invention that would have a major impact on the treatment of diseases. As a result, he became Cal’s first Nobel laureate in 1939 and the namesake of today’s Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. During the same period, Berkeley’s influence in the Central San Joaquin Valley was exemplified by contributions of three prominent Golden Bears living in the 600 block of Carmen Avenue in the Wilson Island. All three influenced the growth and development of the city but perhaps none more so than Richard Ferdinand Felchlin.

Felchlin was born in Stockton, California in October 1888 to German Swiss parents, Meinrad and Mary. He had an older brother, Rudolph, who was a self-employed sign painter, and a younger sister, Annie. His family relied on income from their restaurant where his father was also the cook.

Richard moved to Fresno in about 1912, but was later back in the Bay Area. When he registered for World War I military service in 1917 he had already been a cadet at Cal for two years where he was pursuing a degree in civil engineering. The San Francisco earthquake in April 1906 provided abundant opportunities for those interested in construction. It’s no surprise then that this tall, brown-haired young man of twenty-seven with grey piercing eyes was already a self-employed building contractor supporting his parents. By 1920, Richard had met and married Dorothy, ten years younger, whose family lived in San Francisco. Census records that year show them living in Fresno in an apartment building at 1047 N. Forthcamp (now Fulton). Another tenant in the building was, James Ryan, an Irish, Gaelic-speaking building contractor who was reported to be Richard’s business partner. At thirty-one, Richard Felchlin was setting out to make his mark on Fresno.

He and Dorothy led interesting lives that kept them in the Fresno spotlight. Upon his arrival in Fresno, R. F. Felchlin’s company of architects, engineers, and builders had secured impressive contracts. One of the smaller ones was the glass fronted building for the Superior Motor Sales Company, located on Van Ness between Tuolumne and Stanislaus streets, completed in December 1917. His most notable achievement was design and construction of the Pacific Southwest Bank Building still standing today at the corner of Fulton and Mariposa streets.

According to information gathered by building owners, the goal of the then Vice President of the Pacific Southwest Trust and Savings Bank was “… to give Fresno a banking home that architecturally…would be surpassed by no other bank on the Pacific coast…” He instructed Felchlin’s company “to create a monumental office and bank building which will become a landmark for Fresno and…will add to the beauty of Fresno’s skyline.” Felchlin and his architects, Raymond R. Shaw and Charles H. Franklin, made a special trip to New York to study the newest designs in office buildings and bank structures.

On January 19, 1925 the $1.2 million Fresno landmark opened to the public. The building towered 315 feet above the sidewalk to the top of the search light. But in an interview with Felchlin, he emphasized that their work was not finished. It would take another three months of checking accounts and invoices, and cleaning up the details of costs connected with the building. They had been working for five years before the first shovel hit dirt, preparing studies and sketches that alone took two men two months to complete. Richard would not be finished until about the beginning of summer 1925. But an adventure was in sight.

Sometime that summer, not long after Richard finally finished the clean-up work on the bank building, he and Dorothy set off for the Orient. The address they gave on the ship’s manifest was of an apartment at 1567 Wishon Avenue at the corner of McKinley. The trip may have been a combination of a well-deserved vacation and an opportunity for Richard to explore Asian architecture. They returned in August, departing from Yokohama, Japan on the Empress of Russia heading for Victoria and Vancouver, British Columbia before arriving in Seattle, Washington.

Five years later, in the fall of 1930, they packed up their next apartment at 1473 N. Wishon Avenue, just a couple doors south of Home Avenue, and headed for Europe. It was the first year of the Great Depression. Toward the end of October they departed Liverpool on the Britannia and arrived in Boston on November 3rd where they likely boarded a train for Fresno.

When they returned from Europe they found another apartment at 1098 N. Van Ness, still in the general vicinity of the lot on Carmen they would purchase five years later. It was during the 1930s that Dorothy became a frequent subject of the society pages in the Fresno Morning Republican. She often hosted the Midweek Card Club whose members included her friend and neighbor Dorothy Osborn, wife of the paper’s publisher Chase S. Osborn, Jr. Dorothy Felchlin was a competitive bridge player whose card activities routinely appeared on the society page.

Her attendance at the Sunnyside Country Club Valentine’s event in 1938 made the news. In a playful assignment of women to dress for the male role as Valentine’s partners, Dorothy and her partner, Eva Walker, wife of newspaper managing editor Ben Walker, were among those featured that day.

Her drives up to the foothills for an occasional lunch were also society news. One March she was seen heading to the Coarse Gold Inn dressed in a “jaunty red hat matching a bunch of cherries on her shoulder.” Her colorful attire attracted attention again on a stormy day in January 1940 when the newspaper reported she “sauntered forth in a white cravenette raincoat, red scarf and red umbrella for color accent, brightening an otherwise gloomy day.”

Come November, when Berkeley grads celebrate Big Game Day, the famous football competition with the opponents down the peninsula who wear Cardinal garb, Dorothy’s attire made the news again. To celebrate the blue and gold of her husband’s alma mater, she attended the Big Game party one year wearing a “… gold crepe dress with a sage green velvet trimmed small hat.”

While Dorothy was garnering the attention of Fresno’s high society, Richard was a high profile businessman expanding his company during the lowest points of the Depression. He was the president of the Grant-Service Rock Company with corporate offices downtown in the T.W. Patterson building. His company was the result of a merger in 1929 of the Grant Rock and Gravel Company with the Service Rock and Gravel Company involving an estimated $750,000 (equivalent to over $11 million in 2018). In 1937, Felchlin acquired the Thompson Construction Company which had operated in Fresno and the San Joaquin Valley for the last thirty years. In fact, the founding brothers were his neighbors Claude and Eugene Thompson (at 600 E. Carmen and 1475 N. Echo respectively). The Thompson Brothers Company had supplied material for several of Fresno’s largest structures, and ninety percent of the paving on Fresno streets. They also provided the sidewalks on some of the Wilson Island streets. This acquisition brought with it two asphalt plants, transit mixing plants, a fleet of trucks, and approximately twenty acres of land surrounding the company headquarters at G and Divisidero Streets.

In 1935, as the New Deal’s Public Works Administration building program was providing work for architects, contractors, and building workers Felchlin bought the lot at 665 E. Carmen and had their first home built.

He and Dorothy remained in the apartment at 1098 N. Van Ness until their home was finished the following year. As they were moving in, construction began on the last two empty lots near them in the 600 block of East Carmen – the one next to theirs to the west and across the street on the corner.

When the summer heat arrived, Richard and Dorothy were on the move. For years they left Fresno in April or May, not returning until September. Their destinations varied but were always to cooler climates and the trips were recorded on the society pages. Sometimes travels included lengthy visits with their parents in San Francisco. In September 1940 they attended the Golden Gate International Exposition. Occasionally they went north… Yosemite, Lake Tahoe; and Orleans, Oregon. And once in a while to Los Angeles.

They never had any children so when Richard died in January 1960, notable Fresno attorney Milo Rowell became the trustee of his estate. Dorothy continued to live in the house on East Carmen until she passed away seventeen years later in December 1977. Sadly, she suffered from dementia in her later years and required a caregiver, Margorie Rabe.

In a mysterious twist Margorie is linked to the house on the northeast corner across the street at 701 East Carmen. Architect Howard Schroder lived there. Legend has it that Howard had no heirs with whom he was on speaking terms and wanted to leave his house to someone other than the state. So in 1969 he talked Margorie into marrying him. She was 62 and he was 77. However, Margorie Rabe Schroder continued to live with Dorothy Felchlin. Howard died in 1975 allegedly of a heart attack in the hallway of the house at 701 E. Carmen after phoning Margorie for help in the middle of the night. The deed reverted to Marjorie who sold the house following year.

For two more years, Margorie remained with Dorothy in the Felchlin home as her caregiver until Dorothy passed away. When the Felchlin house changed owners in 1978 shortly after Dorothy’s death, Margorie was forced to relocate. The Felchlin home has gone through numerous transitions since then, including replacement of a shake roof with the tiles you see today; and the addition of the iron work around the main front window. Though Dorothy’s sartorial elegance has long been forgotten, her husband’s architectural contributions still dominate Fresno’s downtown skyline just as the then bank vice president envisioned.

Sources include city directories, public records, and newspaper articles of the period. Other resources: History of the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL) is found at: https://history.lbl.gov/ History of Pacific Southwest Bank Building: http://www.1060fulton.com/index.php?n=18&id =15 Biography of Richard F. Felchlin: http://www.historicfresno.org/bio/felchlin.htm Prepared by Jeannine Raymond, Ph.D. February 2019