Harry Wurzel is manager of the Peninsula Upholstering & Drapery Company at 730 Lighthouse avenue, New Monterey, and is one of the most progressive merchants of the state, combining with business and executive ability, a rare appreciation of all that is tasteful and artistic in house furnishings and decorations. He was born In Hungary, December 13, 1884, and at thirteen years of age began to learn the trade of upholsterer and decorator.
In 1904 Mr. Wurzel crossed the ocean to New York and in the eastern metropolis he worked at his trade with Messrs. Potes & Styrnes, the exclusive interior decorators located at Forty-second street and Lexington avenue, and enviably known from the Atlantic to the Pacific. They supplied antique furniture and draperies to many of the finest homes in New York city and many other sections, and frequently made special designs such as no one else had had before. They even enjoyed the patronage of art-loving and wealthy Europeans, so that Mr. Wurzel employed by that firm for several years, acquired a thorough knowledge of high class decorating and home-furnishing.
Coming west to California in 1909, Mr. Wurzel settled in Los Angeles and was associated with the Potter-Park Studio, leaders in its line in the southland.—-Removing to Santa Barbara, he established the upholstering department of the Gift Shop and designed and installed the decorations in the Country Play House at Montecito, a truly beautiful theater amid the elegant residences of the fashionable millionaire colony there. He had full charge of the work, privileged to give free play to his own ideas, which fact speaks for itself and indicates what he had to offer Monterey and vicinity when in 1921 he came here. His work is now to be found in many of the beautiful homes on the Peninsula—in Monterey, Pacific Grove, Carmel, Pebble Beach and elsewhere. His reputation thus having been once and for all time well established, he is kept busy with unsolicited work. His establishment presents a fine showing of antiques, tapestry, furniture, etc., and such is his artistic nature that he gets much personal satisfaction from handling high-class stock of this character. Considering that Mr. Wurzel came here practically unknown to the community, the progress he has made in gaining the confidence of a public experienced and accustomed to ask for the best, and to accept only what it wants, is complimentary in the extreme. He is glad that he decided to locate in Monterey county, and the Peninsula people are equally pleased that he did not establish business elsewhere. He has the leading business of the kind in this section of California. He carries an extensive line of antiques, tapestry furniture and objects d’art and his wise counsel and advice have been a valuable element in the tasteful furnishing of many of the beautiful homes of this part of the state.
Mr. Wurzel has four children : Margant, Victor, Joseph and Irma June. He belongs to the Knights of Pythias, where he is one of the ever-welcomed, as his own good-fellowship contributes to the welcoming of others.
Source: History of Monterey and Santa Cruz Counties, California : cradle of California’s history and romance : dating from the planting of the cross of Christendom upon the shores of Monterey Bay by Fr. Junipero Serra, and those intrepid adventurers who accompanied him, down to the present day. Chicago: S.J. Clarke Pub. Co., 1925.