Mabel Welch - 1920 - Designed and Built Homes In El Paso, Texas

A wife and mother in her 20s. A widow and the sole owner of a construction business at 35. A University student at 46. A registered architect at 49. From the beginning, Mabel was an active part of Welch Construction Company. She did all the drawings for the houses her husband built, as well as the interior decorating. He built houses on Trowbridge Drive, Pershing Drive, Tularosa Avenue, Hastings Drive – all over Central El Paso – and in the Lower Valley, all of dark brick with white trim and black lines around screen doors. The couple would move into a newly built house until it was sold. In a 1960 interview Mabel said, “For five years we did not occupy the same house over two months at a time. My husband built them and I furnished them.” Welch also built huge homes on Rim Road for prominent families, including A. B. Poe, J. P. Kemp and F. P. Schuster, whose house was designed not in Spanish style but English Norman, based on ideas the Schusters had collected from various sources during a trip to Europe in 1927. The original recycler, Welch bought marble mantels and stair treads from the old U.S. Courthouse downtown when it was razed and used the marble in the Schuster “castle” in 1939. She was to use other salvaged materials in other houses during her career. In today’s American culture, women are encouraged to follow their dreams regardless of age. But for a woman who moved from Mississippi to Texas in 1900 in a covered wagon to marry late, have her first child at almost 30, run a successful business and go to a university in her 40s in the early part of the twentieth century was most unusual. Mabel Clair Vanderburg Welch never blinked an eye. As she once said, “Things had to be done, and I managed to get them done.” Welch died in December 1981 in California where her son and family lived. She was 91. In fall 2008, the El Paso County Historical Society inducted her into its Hall of Honor. Her son Elvin, retired and living in Yakima, Washington, attended the ceremony. He told Pat Worthington, curator for the Society, that his mother had made him promise to burn all her plans and papers in McKelligon Canyon after her death. Like a good son, Elvin did. What has not been destroyed, however, are all the marvelous Spanish homes in Manhattan Heights and other areas in town that Mabel Welch created for families, a concept that gave her such joy. http://epcc.libguides.com/content.php?pid=309255&sid=2891618

Area: Central / Austin Terrace

Source: El Paso Historical Society

Uploaded by: El Paso Museum of History