So picking up where I left off, I was in the office in Gladding, McBean, talking with Lori Pantel, and I told her I was writing a book about my grandfathers, one of whom worked there as draftsman in Lincoln. She’d never heard his name, and while I couldn’t just drive around the property I could pull up to the employee parking lot if I wanted to get a photograph of the iconic GMB building. But before we left the office, Lori let me know that GMB had just celebrated its 150th anniversary. She handed me a commemorative calendar in a sealed paper envelope. I tucked into my bag and we went on our way.
Here is that building, where Rufus most certainly worked:
I also was fascinated by this building that had clearly long ago been abandoned and taken over by trees:
While we were in Lincoln, I wanted to find a particular house at the corner of D and Fourth Streets, now McBean Park Drive. Countless hours of searching Newspapers.com turned up this clipping of a house that Rufus designed for one of his colleagues at GMB.
While the roofline has been altered—and after one hundred years, of course things have been updated—but the bones of the house are intact. The porch, the window placement including the bay window, the chimney. The flowery language of the newspaper clipping is a bit over the top, but it would have been fun to see the house in its heyday. Among the structures I have evidence that Rufus designed, there are the house he and his father lived in in South San Francisco, this house, The Rose Theater in Roseville, and his own house in South Gate.
As for who this man was that Rufus built a house for, P. O. Tognelli, M. F. Johansen (who would later replace Rufus as the head draftsman for GMB after Rufus resigned), and Chas Urich were copartners with Rufus in a business venture, the Nouveau Lamp Company. All four men worked for GMB. I don’t know much about these other men.
So the last piece of exciting revelation was this: When I later opened the calendar, I flipped through it hoping for more historic photos and was disappointed that most of them were contemporary. But when I took a closer look at the cover, I discovered that there was Rufus, sitting at a drafting table, arms folded.
I have since called Gladding, McBean and had a nice conversation with Jamie (whose office is in what was formerly the drafting room) and she is trying to track down the digital image for me. I hope to be able include it in my forthcoming book. In the meantime, here is the cover of the calendar, and a detail.
So that’s it for my Gladding, McBean journey for now. Next up: Carnegie.
