Mabelle Selland: Love for Fresno compelled her to seek preservation of its history
For decades, Mabelle Selland devoted her time and attention to Fresno’s historic preservation. A recap of her titles and accomplishments attest to her significant contribution to the place she loved and called home.
Her famous last name suggests her connection to Fresno, the Selland Arena, named for Mayor Arthur Selland, her husband Bud’s brother. However, Mabelle Selland leaves a legacy as one devoted to the preservation of her community’s history.
Born in Chicago in 1926, Selland moved to California with her mother to Pasadena where she lived until age 19, then settled in San Francisco and studied to become a keypunch operator. With the encouragement of friends, she moved to Fresno for a position as a keypunch operator for PG&E. Saving every cent she could, she chose Fresno State College for her education. “I chose to go to Fresno State College because it was the cheapest opportunity to get an education,” Selland said.
She met Bud, her husband to be, at Fresno State. After his studies to become a pharmacist, they bought a home and settled in Fresno. Their marriage lasted 55 years until his death in 2006. She sold their home of 58 years in 2013.
After completing requirements for a master’s in Asian history at Fresno State, Selland served as executive director of the Fresno City and County Historical Society from 1973 to 1979. During her tenure, she created seven ethnic history exhibits; restored costume collections; exhibited more than 200 pieces; received a State Historic Preservation Grant to restore Kearney Mansion and entered the Kearney Mansion on the National Register of Historic Places.
In 1973, dismayed to learn the Old Administration Building on the original campus of her alma mater, Fresno State, was scheduled for demolition, her preservation efforts turned to saving the building (now a landmark at Fresno City College). She enlisted the help of historian Ephraim Smith, who she said did the hard work. Thirty-eight years after her initial suggestion, the building, fully restored, reopened in 2011.
From 1980-93, Selland worked as the cultural arts manager for the city of Fresno’s Cultural Arts Office, coordinating a number of ethnic festivals, including obtaining a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to research and produce three different documentary videos on the Basque, Germans from Russia, and Sikhs from India. Additionally, she founded the Memorial Auditorium Restoration Society, served on the Fresno Arts Council, and Meux Home Board as well as serving on the Fresno County Historic Records and Landmarks Commission.
After retiring in 1994 from the city, Selland wrote Southeast Asian histories, created brochures featuring ethnic churches and tour brochures on buildings on Fulton Mall, now Fulton Street. In 2003, she founded Heritage Fresno with her friends in historic preservation, Chuck and Midge Barrett.
Fascinated with Asian histories, she researched and wrote the book, “From China to Fresno: A Love Story.”
Five years later, Selland wasn’t ready to put aside her desire to contribute to historic preservation. She attended a fundraiser by the Armenian Cultural Conservancy, an organization formed under her tutelage at Heritage Fresno, to save the old Vartanian House, a last remaining remnant of old Armenian Town. Threatened with demolition, the conservancy’s goal is to finance moving the home from its current location at the Fresno Rescue Mission in downtown to a location suitable for use as a museum. Rather than lose this historic structure to another wrecking ball, Selland yet again, turned her attention to preservation.
She once said, “To know where we’re going, we have to know where we’ve been. Historic preservation is so much more than just saving beautiful old buildings. It has to do with neighborhoods and so many other things.”
The last event Selland attended was the city of Fresno Retirees’ luncheon in December. She passed away on New Year’s Day.
This story was originally published March 18, 2021 at 11:43 AM.