Laurence “Laurie” Seabrook Wylie

Laurence “Laurie” Seabrook Wylie

17 May 1887

10 January 1962

Architect, Civil Engineer

Laurence Seabrook Wylie, who went by “Laurie,” was born in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, on 17 May 1887 to Sarah Seabrook Mitchell and Samuel Brown Wylie III. The family lived in Beaver Falls until Samuel Brown Wylie III died in 1890, when Laurie was three. Laurie’s mother died nine years later. He and his siblings grew up in the Wylie House, where they were cared for by their grandparents and aunt. Laurie attended Indiana University for a time until poor health forced him to seek a drier climate. He traveled to Arizona in 1908 and eventually moved there permanently. On 30 June 1914, he married Ethel Marion Goshert (1891-1965) of Warsaw, Indiana. For the first few years of their marriage, the couple lived in Tucson, Arizona, where Laurence worked as a rancher and as a machinist for the Southern Pacific Railroad Company. In 1920, the family moved to Alhambra, California, and Laurence began working as a draftsman for the architecture firm W. A. O. Munseil. He progressed in the field and went on to become an architect and then a civil engineer. He and Ethel had five children and lived in Alhambra for the rest of their lives. Laurence died on 10 January 1962 and is buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.