William Raymond Yelland (1890-1966)

William Raymond Yelland was born in Saratoga, California in 1890. His father was a prune rancher, and the family lived on the prune ranch. His mother was a physician who received her degree from the University of California in 1886. Yelland trained at UC Berkeley, graduating with a B.S. in Architecture in 1913 when John Galen Howard was the program’s director. He then spent a year at the University of Pennsylvania. During World War I, Yelland was stationed in France, and his time spent there influenced his architectural esthetic. He is believed to have worked in the offices of Bernard Maybeck and Walter Ratcliff after graduation. Licensed in California in 1916, Yelland joined the Oakland office of Miller and Warnecke in 1920. By 1924 he had set up an independent practice at 1404 Franklin Street in Oakland, where he remained for his career.

In 1930, Yelland married Edna Holroyd, a poet and librarian, and traveled to Europe and Asia. Afterwards, he exhibited his sketches in local galleries and published them in the San Francisco Chronicle. He and his wife collaborated on Christmas cards and booklets—he did the illustration and she wrote the poetry.

Yelland’s architectural style has been characterized as Medieval Revival, particularly the French Norman Mode. He described his style as vaguely “rural.” Examples of this style can be seen in the Richards House of 1926 (in the Claremont section of Berkeley) and the Thornburg (or Normandy) Village of 1926-28 (also in Berkeley). After World War II, however, his style broadened to include California ranch houses and modernism.

In the early 1950s Yelland moved to Milan, and died there in 1966.

Source: Winter, Robert, ed. Toward a Simpler Way of Life: The Arts & Crafts Architects of California, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.