Butte County
Biographies
ALBERT A. PLAGGE
ALBERT A. PLAGGE.—A man of large affairs, a very successful contractor and builder in Oroville, and a thoroughly progressive and up-to-date ranchman, is Albert A. Plagge, who was born at Wellsville, Allegany County, N. Y., on November 13, 1884, the son of Ernest W. Plagge, a carriage-maker in that town until his death. Mrs. Plagge was Dorothea Rheineke before her marriage, and she is also deceased. She was the mother of three children, the youngest of whom—the only one in California—was Albert A. Plagge, the subject of our sketch.
Brought up in New York and attending the excellent country schools there, Albert, when seventeen, began the study of architecture, pursuing a course in the International Correspondence Schools at Scranton, Pa. When nineteen, he came to California and found employment in San Francisco as a carpenter. At the same time he completed his studies as an architect at the night school, which was opportune, for he was in San Francisco at the time of the great fire, and continued there for a year to assist in rebuilding.
In 1908 Mr. Plagge came to Oroville to work by the day as a carpenter, and then to do architectural work; but he soon saw that there was a better field in contracting and building, and taking up that enterprise, he has followed it ever since. While preparing his own plans, he has designed and constructed the Gardella Building, the plant of the Olive Products Company—the largest olive processing plant in the world—the Gardella Theater, the Northern Electric Depot, and many of the finest residences here, as well as various residential and business structures in other parts of the county. He has also built county bridges, and most of the sidewalk curbing and gutters of Oroville. At Gridley and Biggs, also, Mr. Plagge’s superior workmanship is well known.
Mr. Plagge is also interested in agriculture and horticulture, and he owns two hundred acres of choice fruit land, where he is specializing in fig culture, growing the Smyrna figs, to which he has given much study and research. A broad-minded man of business affairs, Mr. Plagge is also a decided Independent in matters of politics, and does his own thinking and acting when it comes to voting.
Transcribed
by Sharon Walford Yost.
Source: "History of
Butte County, Cal.," by George C. Mansfield, Pages 1271-1272, Historic Record Co, Los Angeles, CA, 1918.
© 2009 Sharon
Walford Yost.
Golden Nugget Library's Butte County Biographies