One of the most influential addresses in electric-guitar history is a modest storefront at 108 South Harbor Boulevard. Fullerton Public Library records that Clarence “Leo” Fender opened a radio shop there in 1945 and began developing electric guitars while working in the building. The brick storefront, about 30 feet wide and built around 1911, had already played another role in local history: Edgar Johnson operated Fullerton’s first newspaper there in 1891.
Fender’s repair experience gave him daily contact with amplifiers, speakers and musicians’ practical complaints. A city planning history notes that he introduced a solid-body electric-guitar prototype in 1951 that developed into the Telecaster. The shop’s significance is easy to miss from the sidewalk because the building remained an ordinary commercial space, now known as Ellingson Inc. Fullerton designated it Local Landmark HL-83 on July 23, 2013. The library’s landmark page gathers current and historical photographs, a 1949 shop entrance, planning records and a map of Fender sites around town. It turns one small downtown address into a useful starting point for tracing how repair work became an international musical sound.
