Mabel Welch

Welch was born Mabel Clair Vandenburg in Panola County, Mississippi, in 1890 and grew up on her grandfather's plantation until her family moved to northeast Texas in 1899. She learned the building trade from her husband and took over the company after his death in July 1927. She also urged El Pasoans to landscape with native plants. Her work reached Chihuahua City, Ciudad Juárez, Dallas, Deming, Las Cruces and Marfa. Manhattan Heights, where her houses set off the neighborhood's Spanish revival, became El Paso's first designated historic neighborhood in 1979. She died in Redondo Beach, California, in December 1981.

What the plaque says

Mabel Welch Mabel C. (Vanderburg) Welch, El Paso's first certified female architect, is credited with reintroducing Spanish-style architecture to the city. Early El Paso residents built with adobe bricks, a method common to the region. After the arrival of the railroad in 1881, El Paso grew into a thriving city, and this regional architecture disappeared, replaced by styles and building techniques that reflected the traditions and experiences of those who settled here. Within four years of their 1916 arrival in El Paso, Mabel and Malcolm Welch began designing and constructing homes. When Malcolm was hospitalized with tuberculosis, Mabel completed the construction of a home that her husband had begun. She subsequently assumed the entire design and construction process for his other projects, and continued to work on her own after his death. Through 1926 and into early 1927, Mabel designed and built nine houses in the 3100 block of Wheeling Ave. Trips across the southwest during this period introduced Mabel to the Spanish archtectural style, which she believed was more in keeping with the Spanish-Indian heritage of El Paso than the red brick bungalows that lined the city's streets. Upon her return she designed exclusively in the Spanish Colonial Revival style. Welch continued her work in El Paso and throughout the region into the early 1950s. Examples are located in the Manhattan Heights historic district, the Castle Heights addition and along Rim Road. The state of Texas certified Welch as an architect in 1939. She designed as many as 1,500 homes in El Paso and across the southwest during her career. (2009)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Chamizal National Memorial — 1.6 mi
  A park on land the Rio Grande once put in dispute, where a century-old border quarrel between the United States and Mexico was settled by treaty and a new concrete channel.
• Magoffin Home State Historic Site — 2.3 mi
  A U-shaped adobe of the 1870s in central El Paso that joins Mexican building to an Anglo plan, closed for restoration through 2027 while its visitor center stays open.
• Ysleta Mission (Corpus Christi de la Ysleta del Sur) — 10 mi
  The Tigua mission church at Ysleta, rebuilt in 1908 around the walls, bell and Santo Entierro that came through fire, its interior painted with rain clouds and corn.
• Franklin Mountains State Park — 11 mi
  Almost 27,000 acres of desert mountains inside El Paso, with the oldest rocks in Texas, more than 100 miles of trail and campsites in the Tom Mays Unit.

More markers nearby

• Memorial Park — steps away
• Dr. Lawrence A. Nixon — 0.7 mi
• Henry O. Flipper — 0.7 mi
• John Wesley Hardin — 0.8 mi