Sacramento
County
Biographies
JAMES
SOMERVILLE DEAN
James Somerville
Dean, architect, was born in Belton, Bell County, Texas, on December 27, 1885;
the son of John A. and Eudora M. (Ware) Dean.
His education was obtained in the
public grade and high schools; Texas Agricultural and Mechanical College, from
which he received the B.S. degree in Civil Engineering in 1906; attended
Massachusetts Institute of Technology for three years as a special student,
1907, 1909, 1910. Member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, M.I.T.
(college fraternity).
From 1899 to 1901 Mr. Dean was jack-of-all-jobs
in a railroad construction camp in Durango, Mexico; spent two summers with a
maintenance engineering crew, Santa Fe Railroad, at Temple, Texas, 1904-1905;
instructor in drawing at Texas Agricultural and Mechanical College from 1906 to
1911; architect in Waco, Texas, in 1911.
Mr. Dean was deputy state architect
for State Department of Architecture, State of California, at Sacramento, 1912
to 1920; member of the firm of Dean and Dean, architects, at Sacramento from
1920 to 1930; city manager for City of Sacramento, California, from 1930 to
1943; deputy director of finance for State of California from 1943 to 1944 and
has been director of same since 1944, Sacramento, California.
Member of State Board of
Architecture from 1925 to 1930; past member of American Institute of
Architects; member of International City Managers Association; Republican;
Episcopalian. Member of Sutter Club of Sacramento; Sacramento Lodge No. 40, F.
& A. M.; Sacramento Consistory, Scottish Rite; Ben Ali Temple of Shrine; Royal
Order of Jesters; and Fraternal Order of Eagles.
Mr. Dean married Minnie Ruth Cook in
Arizona in 1911. In 1945 he married (2d) Grace Radcliff Taylor in Sacramento.
He has one daughter, Charlotte Eudora (Mrs. Robert Dollar II, San Francisco and
Cathay, California); three grandchildren: Alice Virginia Dollar, age 11; James
Dean Dollar, age 9; and Ruth Agnes Dollar, age 7.
Home: 2908 Twenty-fourth Street, Sacramento,
California.
Offices: 5100 State Capital, Sacramento, California.
Transcribed By: Cecelia M. Setty.
Source: “Eminent Californians 1953”,
by Lee E. Johnson & C. W. Taylor. Pages 465-466, C. W.
Taylor Publ., Palo Alto, California, 1953.
© 2014 Cecelia M. Setty.
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