Biography
Youth 1862-1926
Frank Wolfe was born in September 1862 in Green Springs, Ohio. He and his younger brother, Ernest Linwood Wolfe (1870-1953) learned carpentry from their father, Jeremiah Bell Wolfe (1838-1919) and their uncles. In the mid 1880s Frank married Nellie Crockett, just before moving with his family to Newton, Kansas. Their stay in Newton was short, but long enough for Frank to gain some experience working for architect W. L. Ross and for the birth of his only son, Carl Jeremiah Wolfe (1888-1931), who would later join his father’s architectural practice. In the spring of 1888 the Wolfe family moved further west, this time to San Jose, California.
Early Years 1888-1897
As Frank Wolfe was trying to establish an architectural practice in San Jose, he worked as a carpenter alongside his father Jeremiah and brother Lin. Soon he was buying empty lots in neighborhoods surrounding the downtown and designing and building houses as a speculative developer. In addition to the income this produced, it also gave Wolfe the opportunity to show his fellow citizens what he was capable of designing in the way of single family homes. His architectural career was also helped by Joseph McKee, one of San Jose’s elder architects of the time. When McKee retired in 1894, Wolfe took over his office and kept on his draftsman, Charles S. McKenzie (1874-1957.) After moving into new office space, the 35 year-old Wolfe and 23 year-old McKenzie formed a partnership.
Wolfe & McKenzie 1897-1910
The office of Wolfe & McKenzie was the most prolific and one of the most prominent architectural practices in turn-of-the-century San Jose. Unlike most of the local firms that only reluctantly did residential work, Wolfe & McKenzie relished the opportunity, and designed seemingly endless variations on the theme of the single family detached home.
Wolfe & McKenzie quickly developed a signature style. Their designs frequently featured hipped or gabled roofs with deep overhangs and small centrally located dormers. Upper floors often featured a balcony, functional on larger designs and decorative only on smaller ones. Exterior materials were usually narrow shiplap siding, shingles or stucco. Feature windows often included simple leaded glass patterns, or were given a cameo, capsule or arabesque shape. The design element that is most closely associated with Wolfe & McKenzie’s houses is the cantilevered corner window box with tightly spaced brackets below.
Their work in the Naglee Park subdivision (1902) did more for their notoriety than anything. Frank Wolfe and/or Charles McKenzie designed a good portion of the 100s of homes built in this subdivision. They attempted to follow up their success in the Hanchett Residence Park (1907) where they designed many of the classic Craftsman and Prairie style bungalows that were built there.
One of the highlights of the Wolfe & McKenzie partnership was their publication in 1907 of a pattern book of house designs. Their “Book of Designs” featured 96 houses that they had designed over the previous twelve years. This book helped to promote their work to an even wider audience and was one of the factors that contributed to their buildings being published in other books and magazines. A reprint of this book that identifies the locations of most of the buildings was published in 2004.
Although they are known primarily for their residential designs, Wolfe & McKenzie also designed a fair number of civic, educational and commercial buildings including the Santa Clara County Hall of Justice (1905) and following the 1906 earthquake, the Market Street Fire Station (1906), the Santa Clara County Hospital (1907) and the Grant Grammar School (1907).
F. D. Wolfe 1911-1918
Although Frank Wolfe operated his architectural practice during these middle years as a sole practitioner, his son Carl was listed as an associate from 1912 to 1915. It was during that period that the Wolfes came under the influence of the Midwestern Prairie School of design. Wolfe’s work not only shows the influence of the movement’s leader, Frank Lloyd Wright, but also of other Prairie School architects including Walter Burley Griffin and Henry Trost. Wolfe designed as many as 100 Prairie style buildings throughout California; most of them are one-story flat-roofed bungalows with deep overhangs and stucco finishes. This architectural grammar has been described as the “West Coast” style of the Prairie School.
Although Wolfe began designing schools when he was partners with Charles McKenzie, most of his school designs were commissioned during this period of his career. He was a pioneer in the development of open-air school designs, many of which were designed around open courtyards.
The last major subdivision that Wolfe was involved in was the Palm Haven subdivision (1913) near where the Wolfe families lived in Willow Glen. Palm Haven did not get off to as quick a start as Naglee Park, particularly with the outbreak of war in Europe, but it eventually was completed and today is one of the most desirable neighborhoods in San Jose.
Wolfe’s work had been published occasionally in The Architect and Engineer, the architectural journal published in San Francisco, but in February 1914 the magazine included a fourteen-page feature on Wolfe and his work. The Prairie style designs that were included in this issue caught the attention of the editors of The Western Architect, which at the time was actively promoting the work of the progressive Midwestern architects. Wolfe’s Prairie style designs made several appearances in the journal between 1914 and 1916. Wolfe received more attention from the architectural press during this period than any other in his career. Still, it is difficult to know precisely what Wolfe’s motivations and intentions were with his architectural designs as no writings or interviews of his have surfaced.
Wolfe & Higgins 1918-1926
In the Spring of 1918, Frank Wolfe entered into a partnership with William E. Higgins (1875-1936) of Santa Clara. Wolfe & Higgins continued designing schools, apartments and houses as well as some early gas stations. They worked primarily in the Colonial and Spanish revival styles. Occasionally, evidence of Wolfe’s Prairie School influences would emerge. In 1920 Frank and Nellie moved into a new Dutch Colonial house he designed for them in Palm Haven. This was the last home they would live in. Frank Wolfe developed cancer and died in the Lane hospital in San Francisco in August 1926.