‘Architectural and engineering education is a tough field at best and it might be twice as tough for a Negro’ Professor of Architecture, 1909.

’ You can’t come here. We don’t have black folks here.’ Dean of a University, 1910.

Lifting the veil

African American Architects have contributed significantly, albeit often anonymously, to the architectural heritage of the USA. However, a veil of anonymity, made denser by racism and gender, has resulted in a dearth of documentation about their role as architects. The new dictionary will be of concern to architects on both sides of the Atlantic who are interested in enfranchisement within the architectural profession. This challenging volume is intended to correct the exclusionist tradition of American architectural history. The survey starts in 1865, the end of the Civil War and ends in 1945 after WW II. In theory, Black Americans had more control over their lives, work and education during this time. The presumption for setting 1945 as the end of the survey was that many post war Black Americans could gain college education after the GI Bill.

Relevance of racial identity to architectural advancement.

The relevance of racial identity to architectural advancement is controversial but it is carefully addressed by the editors. The authors use the descriptive term ‘African American’ to describe a racial group. The adjective ‘Black’ is used to characterize ancestry, not skin colour. Owing to the 100 contributors who submitted the 168 named entries the contextual terms ‘Negro’ and ‘coloured’ are used occasionally, not to be disparaging, but in an attempt to be historically synonymous. Most of the male architects and all of the female architects featured, felt that ‘race’ was crucial to their identity and relied on ethnicity to obtain clients. For some, race was seen as a negative factor in their professional advancement and therefore it was expedient to play down their ethnicity; for others it was a philosophical stance – they felt an emphasis on race was divisive to national unity.

Lives of Black Architects

Paul Revere Williams was the first architect to become a member of the AIA (American Institute of Architects). He had a lengthy career from 1913 to 1974 and he designed more than 3000 buildings. The majority of his work was in Los Angeles in the golden age of Hollywood; many movie stars were his clients including Will Hayes, Tyrone Power and Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson. In 1956 he even designed a house for Frank Sinatra in the Hollywood Hills.

Williams’s most recognisable project in the 1960’s was the Los Angeles International Airport Theme Building. Resembling a futuristic spaceship, it became a familiar cultural sight because movie producers used it as an ‘icon’ of Los Angeles.

The father of Golden Zenon was a sharecropper and Golden walked five miles each way to a one-room parish school house for Blacks. He went on to be an architect, expert in designing schools and he designed twenty different types. His Flanagan Alternative High School is an especially interesting brick building similar to Mies van der Rohe’s early brick houses.

John Louis Wilson was born in Mississippi and could trace his family lineage back to the American Revolutionary War. His grandfather was born a slave; in 1924 Wilson moved to New York. He is celebrated for his work on the highly acclaimed Harlem River Housing Project, New York’s first publicly funded housing, which was constructed during Roosevelt’s New Deal.

If racial prejudice restricted Black men entering the profession, then women, more so, had difficulties in throwing off the shackles of slavery. For the female Black Architects who were exposed to the International Style of Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe and Marcel Breuer at Harvard, the results were liberating.

Amaza Meredith’s earliest project was ‘Azurest South’. It was a one storey house for herself and a friend. Sited in a lush dell of a University campus, the house was in a bold International Style; white stucco finish, curved corners, industrial windows and bands of glass blocks. ‘Azurest South’ was filled with art and modern furniture that were carefully documented in Meredith’s sketchbooks. The intellectual courage exemplified in the design of this ground-breaking house cannot be overstated. In Virginia, the dominant Anglo-Colonial Revival Style, even now, has been consistently reaffirmed as architecture for the whites.

Beverly Green was the first Black female licensed as an architect in the USA. In 1955 she worked for Marcel Breur in New York. Green is credited with working on some of Breur’s major projects including the UNESCO United Headquarters in Paris.

Georgia Brown is believed to be the second African American women licensed in the USA. In 1938 she moved to Chicago and took a course taught by Mies van der Rohr at MIT. Later she settled in Brazil and she considered it a better place to practice architecture free of racial boundaries.

Liberating our Profession

This book could have been dedicated to Stephen Lawrence. African American Architects raises many questions about the history of discrimination in education and the architectural profession. It throws much light on the silent aspects of the architectural profession; in my mind, it raises questions for us in the United Kingdom.