Background
Carl Werner was born in 1875 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States.
Carl Werner was born in 1875 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States.
He studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and following graduation at the age of twenty.
In 1898 Mr. Werner opened an office for practice in San Francisco, and over a period of three decades continued active in planning schools, residences and a number of buildings for the Masonic Order.
He is credited with the design of more than three-fourths of the educational buildings erected in northern California prior to the 1906 disaster, with the Sequoia Union High in San Francisco and the Alameda High among the most important. He also acquired for clients a number of well-to-do citizens for whom he designed palatial homes on Nob Hill, all of which were destroyed in the conflagration that ravaged San Francisco following the earthquake of 1906. Later, in collaboration with other architects, Mr. Werner was active in reconstruction work, and among other buildings he aided in rebuilding was the Alameda County Court House.
During more recent years he attained a reputation in designing Masonic buildings, notable examples of which were Temples of the Scottish Rite in Bakersfield, Sacramento, San Francisco and other cities.