Oakland Underfoot

Ensor Harrison Buel (1908-1992) was a prominent contractor in Berkeley for many years. Ensor was the maiden surname of his mother, Viola May Buel, and Harrison was the middle name of his father Emmanuel “Harry” Buel. His uncle was sidewalk maker W. E. Ensor, who also used a horseshoe stamp. He married Edna Potts (1917-?) in 1944, a schoolteacher. They had no children. They lived at 45 Edgecroft Road, up by the Arlington, but by 1980 he’d moved to Vacaville, where he’s buried.

Besides laying sidewalks, Buel constructed buildings and worked with Bernard Maybeck on several projects. He mastered the technique, advocated by Maybeck, of casting concrete walls containing lattices of glass bricks. Several examples survive in Berkeley, such as 1025 Carleton shown here (also 1007 University and 805 Camellia and around the foot of Bancroft Way).

He was a member of the Master Concrete Contractors Association in 1934, although I haven’t found an example yet of his Concrete Master number (3, 9, 10, 11 and 15 are unattested so far). His firm was prosperous enough to field a baseball team in the late 1930s.

I have documented Ensor Buel marks with dates from 1934 to 1949. At first his were hand-drawn scratches, but by the late 1930s he’d cultivated an elegant hand-drawn mark with distinctive flourishes.

In 1940 he adopted a horseshoe stamp similar but not identical to that of his late uncle W. E. Ensor. I’m sure there’s lots more of his work in parts of Berkeley I haven’t visited yet.

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