Carmel Magazine

The Man Who Built Carmel M.J. Murphy Lumber & Hardware Celebrates 110 Year s B Y M I C H A E L C H AT F I E L D P H OTO S F R O M T H E M . J . M U R P H Y F A M I LY C O L L E C T I O N deser ving of his sobriquet, Murphy is that man. Today, the company that bears his name is located in Carmel Valley Village and is run by Murphy's grandson, Tom Gladney. "My uncle Frank (Michael's son) ran the business for many years," Gladney says. "He asked me and my four cousins if we were interested in taking over for the reins, but we all said no." Gladney was studying civil engi- neering at Heald Engineering College in San Francisco and had no desire to run a family business. Eventually the young man had a change of heart. "I woke up one morning and thought 'OK. I'll take the job.'" He and his wife Judy packed up and lit out for Carmel Valley. That was 43 years ago. "My grandfather was hired by Frank Devendorf (co-founder of Carmel) to assemble pre-fabricated houses shipped from San Francisco," Gladney relates. Being an enterprising sort, Murphy soon began building houses from scratch. His initial effort, an 800-square-foot home for his mother and sister constructed in 1901—when Murphy was just 17—has been com- pletely and faithfully restored down to the paint scheme and leaded glass windows and is today used by the Carmel Heritage Society as a welcome center and museum, located at 6th and Lincoln in Carmel-by-the-Sea. A natural-born businessman, Murphy grasped the concept of vertical integration early on. Soon, he was designing structures in a distinguishing C A R M E L M A G A Z I N E • S U M M E R / F A L L 2 0 1 4 215

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