Sedgwick County KS Archives Biographies.....McCune, Fred G. 
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Joy Fisher sdgenweb@yahoo.com April 5, 2007, 4:01 pm

Author: O. H. Bentley (1910)

   Fred G. McCune, of Wichita, did not begin his business life as an architect,
but it must have been foreordained that he should become one. He is one of the
high art architects of the city, whose tastes, training and temperament
peculiarly fit him for his profession. Mr. McCune was born at Corydon, Wayne
county, Iowa, his parents being W. E. and Mary Jane (Kirk) McCune. His early
education was obtained in Corydon, Iowa, and he later graduated from
Architecture College. After leaving school he was engaged in carpenter and steel
construction work. Twenty-six years ago, in 1884, he came to Wichita, and for
several years was employed in an executive capacity with the Rock Island and
Santa Fe railroads, in the department of maintenance and construction. Nine
years later, in 1893, he took up his permanent residence in the city, having
left the employ of corporations and entered the field of contracting and
architecture on his own account. It was then a field of meager pickings, most of
the buildings that men were putting up in those days being constructed with a
jack knife, a hammer and a handsaw. Architecture was then exceedingly primitive.
But Mr. McCune stuck to it, and today some of the largest jobs in the city of
Wichita and beyond its gates have been planned and the work of construction
carried to successful culmination by him. Aside from architecture Mr. McCune's
only hobby may be said to be fine horses, which he loves and usually owns. He is
a member of the Order of Elks and the Knights of Pythias among the fraternal
orders, and is also a member of the Chamber of Commerce. Mr. McCune was married
in 1893 to Miss May Walter, of Kingman, Kan. From this union six children have
been born, viz.: Nellie, Guy, Howard, James, Fred, Jr., and Dorothy May.

   He has under construction the Grow Street School. He built the College of
Music, also dormitory for girls for same building, Whitlock Block, South
Emporia; the Ratcliffe Block, at Cunningham, Kan.; Thomas Kirse Block, Medford,
Okla.; furnished plans for schoolhouses at Spivey, Kan.; Sawyer, Kan.; Hazelton,
Kan., and Mays, Kan., and residences innumerable. He built the fine $25,000
residence of W. F. Kuhn, on University avenue, one of the finest in the state.
He also built the Bolte Block, on South Lawrence, also the apartment house of A.
W. Stoner, on Ninth and Market streets.


Additional Comments:
Extracted from 

History of Wichita and Sedgwick County: past and present, including an account
of the cities, towns and villages of the county

Editor in chief: O. H. Bentley
Chicago: C.F. Cooper & Co. (1910)


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