William Baker Faville (1866-) San Francisco, California (F.A.I.A.)

William Faville was born in San Andreas, California, in 1866, to Charles and Emma Baker Faville. His father was a '49'er who had come to California as a miner and then worked for Wells Fargo Express Co. in San Andreas. When Faville was two years old, his family moved to Buffalo, New York, where he attended public schools. He enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he studied architecture and received several honorable mentions for his work. Upon graduation in 1896, he went to work for the architectural firm of McKim, Meade and White. There he met his future partner, Walter Bliss.

After their apprenticeship in New York, Bliss and Faville came to San Francisco, setting up their architectural partnership in 1899. In 1911, Faville was appointed one of three original members of the Executive Architectural Council for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. The Exposition, held in San Francisco in 1915, was the world's celebration of the opening of the Panama Canal. It was the third exposition of its class held in the United States and the twelfth in the history of expositions. Ground was broken October 14th, 1911, and the exposition was structurally complete three months before it opened. The $50,000,000 enterprise opened February 20th, 1915, and ran until December 4th, 1915.

Faville, besides his duties on the Architectural Council, had one of the most difficult design problems of the Exposition, the continuous outer facade of the whole central group of eight palaces (exhibit halls), which had to be bonded into one composition. He solved the problem of continuity by decorating the wall to mark the various epochs in architecture.

From 1922-24 Faville was president of the American Institute of Architects of Washington, D.C., as well as one of its directors for eight years. In addition, he served as president of the Northern California chapter of the American Institute of Architects and as a lecturer in architecture at the University of California at Berkeley in 1924-25. He was affiliated with the Pacific Union Club, San Francisco Architectural Club, Marin County Golf Club, the Mechanics Institute, San Francisco Art Association, and the League of Nations Association of San Francisco. Faville and his wife, the former Ada Cobaine, appeared in the San Francisco Blue Book of 1925. Additionally, Faville was included in Who's Who in America in 1949.