Los Angeles County
Biographies
OCTAVIUS MORGAN
MORGAN, OCTAVIUS, Architect, Los Angeles, California, was born in Canterbury, England, on October 20, 1850. Giles Chapman Morgan was his father and Caroline Tyler (Adams) Morgan was his mother. Mr. Morgan was married in 1884 to Margaret Susan Weller Offenbacker, and two children have been born of the union, Octavius Weller and Jessie Carline Morgan.
Mr. Morgan was educated at Kent House Academy, at the Thomas Cross Classic School, and at the Sydney Cooper Art School in Canterbury.
It was during his preliminary education that he began the study of his profession, as he was at the same time employed in Canterbury in the office of F. A. Gilhaus, an architect and contractor of high repute in England. He followed this practical study for five years, when he decided to seek his fortune in a new country, and selected the United States as the scene of his efforts.
He arrived in this country in 1871, coming via Canada and locating in Denver, Colorado, where he found employment for a time in the office of a Mr. Nichols, who, as was the practice in those days, combined the work of an architect with that of a builder and contractor.
Denver was at that time in an incipient stage of development and architecture was about the least thing in demand; the city only had a population of four thousand and at the time he was there Mr. Morgan saw two thousand Ute Indians camped in the Platte River bottoms.
Mining was the absorbing occupation then, and Mr. Morgan soon quitted the office for the mountains and traversed the greater portion of Colorado, Wyoming Idaho, Utah and Nevada, seeking on his golden quest, illusive fortune; finally he came to California, still mining, and secured a claim on Lytle Creek in San Bernardino county; but his attention was soon called to the rapidly growing Los Angeles, and he abandoned his pan and rocker and made his home in that city. He reached Los Angeles in June, 1874, having been three years on his journey from Denver.
He immediately saw the professional possibilities of the city and associated himself at once with R. F. Kysor, a pioneer architect; this firm continued until 1888, when Mr. Kysor retired from business and since that time the concern has been Morgan and Walls. Mr. Morgan has incessantly followed his vocation excepting a time spent in 1878-80 in a tour of the East, and again in 1898-90, when he traveled in Europe.
To Mr. Morgan belongs the proud record of having up to a few years ago done fully one-third of all the architectural work of the city; even now, when the building operations have grown from the $600,000 which it was when he began his professional career, to the enormous total of $12,000,000 per annum, he continued to do ten per cent of the work.
Some of his principal works have been, the city’s first modern hospital, the Sisters of Charity hospital and the first high school, on the site of the present Court House. More recent buildings are the Farmers and Merchants’ Bank edifice, the Van Nuys and the W. P. Story buildings; he built the original residences on both the Kerckhoff and the I. W. Hellman lots, tearing them down in the course of time to replace them with the present modern business blocks.
His activity has always been displayed in city affairs, and he has invariably been with the progressive elements of the community; in 1898, and again in 1900, he served as a member of the Freeholders’ Charter Board.
He is a member and a past president of the Engineers and Architects’ Association, the Southern California Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, and the California State Board of Architecture; a member of the California and Jonathan clubs, a Mason and an Odd Fellow.
Transcribed 4-23-09
Marilyn R. Pankey.
Source: Press
Reference Library, Western Edition Notables of the West, Vol. I, Page 240, International
News Service, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston,
Atlanta. 1913.
© 2009 Marilyn R. Pankey.
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