Alameda County Biographies

FRED D. VOORHEES

Transcribed by Kathy Sedler

This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm

 
 
        Among the foremost architects and engineers of Oakland is to be numbered Fred D. 
Voorhees, who for about twenty years has practiced his profession in this city. Buildings 
which owe their origin to his genius can be found on every hand in the city, but of late Mr. 
Voorhees has more closely confined himself to specializing in school buildings and also acts 
as consulting architect. A native of Rockford, Illinois, he came with his parents to 
California when but six years of age and was educated in the Oakland and Vallejo schools. 
He began his career as an employe of the Mare Island navy yard at Vallejo in the civil 
engineering department. In 1893 he began his private practice in Oakland as civil engineer 
and architect. Among the early buildings for which he drew plans are the Reed block on Clay 
street, the Havens block, the Blake block on Eleventh street and the Woodman building on 
Twelfth street, also the Tutt building on Thirteenth street, the M. C. Chapman home and the 
famous home of W. Sharon at Piedmont. His later work includes the Pacific building on 
Sixteenth and Jefferson and the Powell hotel on Thirteenth and Webster streets. Of late 
years he has made a specialty of school buildings, having drawn the plans of the Manzinita 
school at Oakland and the Grove Street school, also of this city. He also made the plans for 
the addition to the Lafayette, Piedmont and Elmhurst schools and the Park and Division school 
and the Fifty-fourth and Market Street school. He also acted as architect for the Centerville 
and Vallejo high schools and also for schools in Richmond, California. On account of his 
ability along these lines he is often chosen as consulting architect by his fellow workers 
and also by intending investors and by public bodies, and has done work in that connection on 
the Lodi high school of Lodi, California, and the Elks building at Richmond, as well as for the 
supervisors of Alameda county. For a number of years he was architect for the Fruitvale school 
district.
        Mr. Voorhees was united in marriage to Miss Nellie Hungerford Lewis. He is prominent in 
the Masons, being a Knight Templar, a Shriner and a Scottish Rite Mason. He is also a member of 
the Elks at Oakland and a charter member of Oakland camp of the Woodmen of the World. He is a 
member of the Oakland Commercial Club and the Chamber of Commerce and his professional 
affiliation is with the American Institute of Architects. A man of progressive tendencies and 
public-spirited in the truest meaning of the word, he interests himself as deeply in matters of 
public import as in his own success, and his labors have been of distinct advantage to Alameda c
ounty and the city in which he makes his home.
 
Past & Present of Alameda County, California � Vol II, S. J. Clarke Publ. Co., 1914, p. 208