Question: What's the history of the Rowell Building in downtown Fresno?

-- Robert Liera, Fresno

Answer: When the six-story Rowell Building was built at Tulare and K (later Van Ness) streets, it was the tallest building in Fresno and the first with steel framing.

Physician and newspaperman Chester Rowell and business partner Wilber Chandler -- who donated the land for the Chandler Airport -- began the office building at the site of Rowell's home in 1912. Rowell planned to live in a suite of rooms to be built on the top floor but died before the structure was completed in 1913.

Initially called the Rowell-Chandler Building, the outside walls along Tulare and K streets were faced with brick. A glass awning wrapped around the two sides. Sixth-floor windows were decorated with terra cotta details. Inside, marble wainscoting lined the hallways. In the 1960s, the first-floor exterior was remodeled.

The Rowell family owned the building until 1999, when it was sold to businessmen Spalding Wathen, Don Burgess and Marvin Smith, who restored the building to its original design, including green canvass awnings over the windows.

Rowell, a popular and well-respected doctor, started the Fresno Weekly Republican in 1876. The paper became the daily Fresno Morning Republican in 1887. The newspaper office was across the street from Rowell's house, later the site of the Rowell Building.

The Republican was operated by Rowell's nephew, Chester H. Rowell. (The Bee bought the Republican in 1932.)

Two years after Rowell died, friends raised donations to pay for a statue of him in Courthouse Park, across from the Rowell Building. The statue was placed at an angle to face his newspaper office. The newspaper office was bought by a furniture company and extensively remodeled. It sat vacant for many years and was torn down in 2004.

Today, the Rowell Building houses offices.

Q: How did Van Ness Avenue in Fresno get its name?

-- Don Van Ness, Clovis

A: Fresno's Van Ness Avenue takes its name from the Van Ness in San Francisco, which was named for James P. Van Ness, the seventh mayor of the city.

When Fresno began to grow northward, developers named subdivisions as they wished.

It's not clear when the street was named, but according to a 1936 story in The Bee, one developer "who had a subdivision out on the plains north of Divisadero Street named one of his streets Van Ness Avenue ... after the San Francisco street."

In 1915, K Street in downtown Fresno was renamed Van Ness Boulevard because it curved into Van Ness Avenue. But the section was renamed "avenue" the next year, "the term boulevard having been found cumbersome," a Bee story said.

According to the 1974 obituary of William Van Ness Jr. in The Bee, he was part of the family for whom the San Francisco - and later Fresno - street was named. According to a 1919 Fresno history by the late Paul Vandor, Van Ness' father, William H. Van Ness, was born in San Francisco in 1860 and came to Fresno in 1885.