Curtis J. Moody, FAIA

Curtis J. Moody is president and CEO of Moody/Nolan Ltd., Inc., a Columbus-based architectural and engineering firm with offices in Cincinnati and Nashville. He is a registered architect in 25 states.

Moody received his B.S. degree in architecture in 1973 from what is now the Austin E. Knowlton School of Architecture at The Ohio State University. After apprenticing for several Columbus design firms, he formed his own firm in 1982, joining with engineer Howard Nolan two years later. Serving as principal-in-charge for more than $1 billion in construction, Mr. Moody has led the firm to becoming the largest minority-owned architectural firm in the nation.

Moody’s commitment to excellence in the design of higher education facilities is clearly evident on Ohio State’s campus. He has served as principal architect for the Jerome Schottenstein Center, the Jesse Owens Memorial Stadium, the Dreese Laboratory addition, the Library Book Depository, and the Marion Campus Library and Classroom Building. He is currently working on the Larkins Hall Student Recreation Center replacement project. He continues as a strong supporter of his alma mater, helping to sponsor and mentor architecture students. In 1989 Moody used his design fees for Ohio State’s Frank W. Hale Jr. Black Cultural Center to establish an endowed scholarship for an outstanding minority student enrolled in architecture. He has served on the Knowlton School’s Alumni Board of Governors, the Athletic Council, and the National Major Gift Committee for Columbus.

His many other projects in Columbus include The Martin Luther King Jr. Complex for Cultural & Performing Arts, the Mall at Tuttle Crossing, the Smith Brothers Hardware renovation, and expansion of facilities at Port Columbus International Airport. In addition, he has worked as principal or associate architect on numerous projects for universities and communities throughout Ohio and the nation.

Moody’s expertise has been recognized on the local and national levels with numerous design awards from the Columbus and Ohio chapters of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and the National Organization of Minority Architects. In 1997, he received one of the profession’s highest honors by being named to the College of Fellows of the national AIA. He is also the recipient of the AIA’s 1992 Whitney M. Young Jr. Award to an outstanding minority architect.

http://www.osu.edu/news/newsitem203

Louis E. Fry Jr.

Louis Edwin Fry Jr. (1928-2006), an architect who designed many buildings on the campuses of historically black colleges and universities, died from cancer earlier this month. He was 77 years old. Fry was a native of Prairie View, Texas. His father also was an architect who served as chair of the architecture departments at Tuskegee Institute and Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri. The elder Fry designed the Founders Library and Douglas Hall at Howard University. Louis Fry Jr. was a 1947 graduate of Howard University and six years later earned a second bachelor’s degree at Harvard. After graduating from Harvard he studied architecture in the Netherlands on a Fulbright scholarship. In 1962 Fry earned a master’s degree in urban design at Harvard.

http://www.jbhe.com/latest/index033006_p.html

Robert T. Coles

Robert T. Coles, who received his Master’s Degree from MIT in 1955, is President of the firm Robert Traynham Coles, Architect, established in 1963. It is the oldest African-American owned architectural firm in New York State and the Northeast. Coles received his Bachelor from the University of Minnesota. He received the AIA’s Whitney M. Young Jr. Citation in 1981 for his contributions to the cause of social justice. He has received numerous other awards including the AIA New York State Chapter in 2004 to recognize a lifetime of notable contributions by an architect to the profession. The work of the firm includes such major commissions as the Frank Reeves Municipal Center in Washington DC, the Ambulatory Care Project for Harlem Hospital, and the Frank Sedita Middle School in Buffalo. Coles is also an educator. He was the Langston Hughes Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at the University of Kansas in 1989 and between 1990 and 1995 an Associate Professor of Architecture at the Carnegie Mellon University.

http://architecture.mit.edu/ara/

Sharon E. Sutton, Ph. D., FAIA

Professor Sutton has been an architecture educator since 1975, having held positions at Pratt Institute, Columbia University, the University of Cincinnati, and the University of Michigan where she became the first African American woman in the United States to be promoted to full professor of architecture.

Sutton teaches an undergraduate design studio in architecture (ARCH 400), offers graduate seminars on the ethics of professional practice (ARCH 577) and community leadership practices (ARCH 576), and advises doctoral students in social work and education. She convenes an annual interdisciplinary design charrette at the beginning of spring quarter that involves 50-60 practitioners, faculty, and students in developing alternatives for a local urban design problem.

Sutton's research focuses on youth, culture, and the environment. Her book, Weaving a Tapestry of Resistance: The Places, Power, and Poetry of a Sustainable Society, is based on a three-year evaluation of the Urban Network, a K-12 urban design program she founded while at the University of Michigan. Her research has been funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Hewlett Foundation, Tukwila School District, the University of Michigan, and the University of Washington. Sutton is a frequent distinguished lecturer at colleges and universities, and has keynoted professional conferences in art education, architecture, interior design, landscape architecture, planning, and psychology.

Melvin Mitchell, FAIA

Melvin Mitchell, FAIA was born in New Orleans, La. and educated in the public schools of the Watts section of South Central Los Angeles. Melvin entered Howard University in 1962. Upon graduation in 1967, Melvin worked as a community planner in the "War on Poverty" program during the era of black consciousness and urban rebellions in DC.

In 1969, Melvin entered the Master of Architecture program at Harvard and returned to DC in 1970 as an assistant professor at Howard. After seven years Melvin left Howard to concentrate on his growing housing practice. In 1987, Melvin resumed full-time teaching at the University of the District of Columbia. In 1997, Melvin became the head of the fledgling architecture school at Morgan State University in Baltimore. Melvin became increasingly alarmed by several things which led to his writing this book.

As an architect during the 1970-1998 Marion Barry-Black Power era in Washington, DC, Melvin saw riot torn black neighborhoods partially rebuilt but with minimal gains for the "black economy" or black cultural re-integration across class lines. A few black architects, Melvin included, received lucrative professional contracts from Barry to design isolated low-income public housing projects and public schools but nearly all of the hundreds of millions of municipal and federal dollars spent for black community redevelopment and construction flowed immediately out of black communities.

Mitchell is the author of "The Crisis of the African-American Architect: Conflicting Cultures of Architecture and (Black) Power". it is an opening attempt to find what role trained black architects played (or failed to play), the role of the HBCU (historical black colleges universities) architecture programs, and what changes of course are required in the 21st century.

Walter Blackburn, FAIA

Walter Blackburn (1938 - 2000) developed over the span of his career a dynamic firm, which has consistently garnered praise and awards for the quality of its designs. Blackburn, a prominent civic leader, devoted his entire career effectively combining sensitivity, social consciousness, and professionalism to preserving neighborhoods, rebuilding the Inner City, and creating beauty where there was blight.

Blackburn created a succession of critically acclaimed , award-winning buildings and developments that permeate the fabric of the city of Indianapolis. Blackburn's commitment to quality education led him to serve as a visiting professor at Ball State University and member of the board of Managers for Rose Hulman Institute of Technology.

Blackburn's exceptional and consistent leadership, earned him a U.S. Presidential appointment to the General Services Administration Review Board, a U.S. Presidential appointment to the National Institute of Building Sciences, and twice accorded the highest civilian honor in the State by the Governors of Indiana. His national recognition for extraordinary service and his humanistic approach to architecture as a social responsibility have made an indelible impression on the public.

Centennial Hall : R.L. Brown

Centennial Hall, 1750 Kings Road, The historic black college was founded in 1866 and was Florida's first independent institution of higher learning for African-Americans. Centennial Hall was built by Rev. R.L. Brown in 1916 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. The building originally housed the college's high school department, printing plant and cafeteria. The renovated building is now the site of the college library and houses a unique collection of African art. The college was accredited in 1979 by the Southern Association of Schools and Colleges and is listed on the National Register of Historic Sites.

M. David Lee, FAIA

David Lee, one of the most original of today’s black designers, has found, as he goes about seeking new business for the firm, how exposed he is to the trials of owning and running a black firm in our time. He looks with longing, but without resentment, at the cutting-edge design breaks afforded majority firms thanks to the power, independence, and big budgets of their patrons. He has found that most private clients still gravitate to majority design firms, and without many of the constraints on budgets and innovation of the typical public client, give their architects a freer hand in stretching the design envelope.

Poorer communities generally rely on public sources for funding. “Often the agencies that underwrite these projects impose design requirements that are inflexible and not suited to reinterpretation to fit a particular ethnic culture,” argues Lee. “The HUD requirements we often worked within did not vary whether one was building on a Hopi reservation or in Harlem.”

On private-sector work and typically on public work, too, black-owned firms have to prove themselves every time. Lee remembers in earlier years how frustrated he and partner Donald L. Stull, FAIA, were when they would show a past project to a client prospect, only to have the client ask: “OK, now what part of that project did you do?” He said: "No, we were the architects of record. The whole thing was ours."

Lee concedes that with his track record he often gets an easy bye in the first round of selection. Having served as president of the Boston Society of Architects, taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and, along with Stull, having judged a host of design award programs—all this has raised the firm’s profile and made things a little easier.

Nonetheless, he points out: “Are we where, perhaps, we should be, given our track record? I'm not certain that we are. If you really look hard, even where we have had breakthroughs—and some of our clients are majority clients—it has been in those places where there was a minority angle in some way, shape, or form.” Work in the majority private sector is still the exception.

Wendell Campbell, FAIA

Wendell Campbell was born on April 27, 1927, in East Chicago, Indiana. Three months after he graduated from high school as a National Honor Society scholar, he was drafted into the U.S. Army. Campbell eventually received his B.A. in architecture and city planning from the Illinois Institute of Technology, where he was offered a full-tuition scholarship from Commonwealth Edison, in 1957.

He worked as an architect from 1956 until 1966, when he became president of Campbell & Mascai, an architectural and urban planning firm. In 1966, he became the CEO of Wendell Campbell Associates, which since changed its name to Campbell Tiu Campbell to reflect the contributions of partners Domingo Tiu and Campbell's daughter, Susan. Noted projects for the firm include the DuSable Museum of African American History, the McCormick Place expansion, the King Drive Gateway, redevelopment plans for the city of New Orleans and the new Bronzeville Military Academy.

Campbell was a founder and the first president of the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA), established in 1971. He has served on the board of the Illinois Chapter of NOMA, the Cosmopolitan Chamber of Commerce, Mercy Hospital and Medical Center, the Black Ensemble Theater, the Chicago Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, the Chicago Architectural Assistance Center and the South Side YMCA. He is also a member of the Chicago's Capital Improvement Advisory Council and the city's Committee on Standards and Tests.

Campbell is dedicated to improving the quality of affordable housing in metropolitan centers through the design of "smart homes," housing that brings twenty-first-century technology to the varied needs of today's urban families.

Campbell married June Crusor Campbell in 1954. They live in Chicago and have two daughters, Susan Campbell Smith and Leslie Campbell.

John A. Lankford

John A. Lankford, architect, and designer of the True Reformer Hall 1200 U Street, NW, lived and worked at this location on Q Street.

The subject of this sketch was born in Potosi, Washington County, Mo., December 4, 1874. His parents were poor, but his father, Andrew Lankford, was known throughout Washington County as an excellent farmer and miner, and a man of high integrity. His mother, Nancy Lankford, was of some of the best blood of the State, and a woman who was known in the community to possess refinement, culture and exceptional natural ability. She was a devout Christian and temperance worker.

Young Lankford spent his early life in the mines and on the farm, except when he was in the public schools of his native town, which were very meager at that time. After finishing the public schools, he left his home and went to Crystal City, Mo., to work in a plate glass factory in order to obtain enough money to pay his way to Jefferson, where he was to enter Lincoln Institute, the State College, and School of Mechanical Arts, for the Negroes in the State of Missouri. He had only been there a short time, before he received a letter from Prof. I. E. Page, President of Lincoln Institute at that time, stating that he would give him work on the school campus as one of the assistant janitors, which job would give him sufficient money to pay his board. Young Lankford had scarcely made enough money to buy his school books and comfortable clothing for a school year, but being full of energy and will power, he set out to find a way to fill his new position. He went to St. Louis and was lucky enough to meet a porter, who was running from St. Louis through Jefferson City. When he arrived at the Institution, Prof. I. E. Page gave him work as promised as the assistant janitor. Under these circumstances he began his college career; working as assistant janitor to pay his board; as an agent of the Plymouth Rock Pant Co., to procure his clothing, and a solictor for a steam laundry to get his laundry done.

In the College and Industrial work he had little difficulty in out-stripping his fellow students as his mind was ever on the alert to seek out the little, yet the important facts that distinguish the extraordinary from the ordinary personages, and at the end of six years he had finished a course in mechanical drawing; as a machinist, blacksmithing, woodturning, carpentry, engineering and a course in natural and chemical science with an enviable record. Ever anxious to be his own master, young Lankford opened a blacksmith shop after leaving college. Although his shop was in an excellent part of St. Louis, he saw that he did not have the opportunity to demonstrate the great knowledge that he had worked so hard for in college, so he decided to look for other fields.

At this time he received a letter from Dr. Booker T. Washington of Tuskegee, making him an offer. Ever ready to grasp an opportunity, Mr. Lankford accepted. He finished two trades at Tuskegee Industrial School, Tuskegee, Ala., 1896, also took a special course in Physics and Chemistry. He took a course in Architectural and Mechanical Drawing at Scranton, Pa., 1897. Mr. Lankford received a degree of Bachelor of Science at Shaw University, Raleigh, N. C., in 1898, Master of Science, Morris Brown College, Atlanta, Ga., Master of Science, Wilberforce College, 1902, Wilberforce, Ohio. He was at one time superintendent of the blacksmith department of the Foulton Cotton Mills, Atlanta, Ga. He was the head engineer of the National Ice Co., which made all the ice for the National Exposition. He was elected superintendent of the machine department and instructor of architectural and mechanical drawing of the Agricultural and Mechanical College, Normal, Ala., and was master mechanic of the Coleman Cotton Mills, Concord, N. C., in which he put over $80,000.00 worth of cotton mill machinery. He was elected superintendent of the industrial department of Shaw University, Raleigh, N. C., also instructor of natural and chemical science, Shaw, Raleigh, N. C., 1900. In 1902 The Grand United Order of True Reformers of Richmond, Va., employed him as a designer and supervising architect for the construction of True Reformers' Hall, located in Washington, D. C., which building is said to be the largest in the country designed, owned and built by Negroes.

He established an architectural and builders office on one of the principal business streets in the city of Washington some six years ago and to-day he has branch offices in thirteen different states, and at present has under construction the largest, finest, and most expensive churches, office buildings and dwellings owned by Negroes. In the State of Virginia alone, he has more than three hundred thousand dollars worth of work under way. Some of his best work in Virginia is the St. Johns A. M. E. Church parsonage, Norfolk, Va., and the overhauling and beautifying and decorating of the large St. Johns Church, where the great General Conference will be held in 1908. It is said that this parsonage is the most artistic, costly and largest in the connection. At Portsmouth, Va., he is overhauling and decorating Emanuel A. M. E. Church; in Richmond, he has under construction three, three-story flats and a twenty-six room residence, belonging to Dr. W. L. Taylor, Grand Master and President of The True Reformers bank and order. This is the largest and most costly Negro residence in the United States. He also has in Richmond, Va., the office and business building for the Southern Aid Insurance Company, and many other buildings in Virginia and throughout the country.

Mr. Lankford stands to-day as the most known and famous Negro architect and builder of the race. He is not only an architect andbuilder of National reputation, but a public spirited business man. He organized the Local Negro Business League of the District of Columbia and has been its president for the past three years. He is a life member of the National Negro Business League and at the last meeting of the League which was held at Topeka, Kan., in 1907, Mr. Lankford was elected one of the vice presidents of that great National organization. He is a past officer and prominently connected with the True Reformers, and St. Luke's organizations; the largest stock-holder and treasurer of the Columbia Benefit Association of Washington, and a director of the Colored Y. M. C. A., also a business man who has accumulated quite a deal of property, having designed and built several houses and flats in the District of Columbia for himself. He is a man of great energy, ability and personality. In 1901 he married the refined and cultured grand-daughter of Bishop H. M. Turner, in this union one daughter was born, Miss Nancy Josephine Turner Lankford.

The firm of J. A. Lankford & Bro., is located at 317 Sixth street, N. W., Washington, D. C. Mr. A. E. Lankford, his brother, is connected with the firm and is a mechanical engineer and an excellent architect.

Sources:
Paul Kelsey Williams, “John Anderson Lankford (1874-1946)” in Dreck Spurlock Wilson, ed., African American Architects: A Biographical Dictionary, 1845-1965 (New York: Routledge, 2004), 253-255.
Sandra Fitzpatrick and Maria R. Goodwin, The Guide to Black Washington, rev. ed. (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1999), 168-169.
http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/butt/butt.html

Albert Irvin Cassell

Albert Irvin Cassell was born in Towson, Maryland on June 25, 1895, the third child of Albert Truman Cassell and Charlotte Cassell. Albert Cassell began his education in the segregated Baltimore public school system, but moved to New York in 1909 where he began attending Douglas High School. At Douglas High, Cassell studied drafting under Ralph Victor Cook. With Cook's assistance, Cassell was admitted to the Cornell University architecture program in 1915. After completing two years at Cornell, Cassell's studies were interrupted by service in the US Army in World War I. He served in France, but not in combat, and was honorably discharged in 1919 as a second lieutenant in the 351st Heavy Field Artillery Regiment. In 1919 Cassell was awarded his degree from Cornell University, and began his career working with architect William A. Hazel. In 1920, Mr. Cassell joined in the Architecture Department of Howard University as assistant professor. Just two years later, in 1922, Cassell had become University Architect and head of the Architecture Department at Howard.

Campbell Ave Church, Washington, DC, 1917
Carver War Public Housing, Arlington, VA, 1942
Catholic Diocese, Washington, DC
Corinthian Baptist Church, Washington, DC
Crownsville Hospital Housing & Recreation Center, Crownsville, MD, 1950
Glenarden City Hall, Glenarden, MD
Howard University Armory, Washington, DC, 1925
Howard University Baldwin Hall, Washington, DC, 1951
Howard University Chemistry Building, Washington, DC, 1936
Howard University College of Medicine, Washington, DC, 1927
Howard University Crandall Women's Dormitory, Washington, DC, 1931
Howard University Dining Hall, Washington, DC, 1922
Howard University Douglas Men's Dormitory, Washington, DC, 1936
Howard University Founders Library, Washington, DC, 1937
Howard University Frazier Women's Dormitory, Washington, DC
Howard University Greene Stadium and Football Field, Washington, DC, 1926
Howard University President's Home, Washington, DC
Howard University Truth Women's Dormitory, Washington, DC
Howard University Wheatley Hall, Washington, DC
Howard University Women's Gym, Washington, DC
James Creek Public Housing, Washington, DC
Mayfair Garden, Washington, DC
Morgan State College (various buildings), Baltomore, MD
Odd Fellows Temple, Washington, DC and Baltmore, MD, 1932
Provident Hospital, Baltimore, MD, 1928
Seaton Elementary School, Washington, DC
Soller's Point War Housing, Dundalk, MD
St. Paul's Baptist Church, Baltimore, MD
Tuskegee Institute Trade Buildings, Tuskegee, AL
Virginia Union Hartshorn Dormitory, Richmond, VA, 1928
Wheatley YMCA, Washington, DC

"Albert Cassell," Roper Library, Morgan State University Archives, manuscript collection.
http://www.howard.edu/library/Development/Cassell/Founders.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Cassell

Julian Francis Abele

Julian Abele was born on April 29 in 1881. From South Philadelphia, Julian Francis Abele was the son of Charles R. and Mary A. Abele. He was educated at the Institute for Colored Youth before entering the University of Pennsylvania in 1898. He was the first African-American to graduate from the Pennsylvania School of Fine Arts and Architecture in 1902. That year he was asked by Horace Trumbauer to join his firm, which had been exclusively white up to that point. Trumbauer sent Abele to Paris to study at L'Ecole des Beaux Arts.

By 1908, Abele was the chief designer in the firm of Horace Trumbauer & Associates and owns a list of buildings that is impressive. In addition to Widener Library, he designed Philadelphia’s Free Library and Museum of Art, the chapel and many other buildings of Trinity College in Durham, N.C. (which was later renamed Duke University) and the James B. Duke mansion on Fifth Avenue and 78th Street in New York City (now NYU’s Graduate Institute of Fine Arts). Abele's role in the firm of Horace Trumbauer was neither a well-kept secret nor a well-publicized fact.

The histories of Widener Library to date only mention the firm of Horace Trumbauer and never make mention of Abele himself. It was Mrs. Widener’s choice of this Philadelphia firm to design the library that would bear the name of her son, and it is unclear whether she knew Abele or just Trumbauer. In any case, his work stands and society and scholarship are catching up in order to give him the proper credit he deserves. Julian Abele died on April 23, 1950, after designing the Allen Administration Building at Duke University. He is considered the first major African-American architect in the United States.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/issues/2005/february/shadow.php
http://www.lib.duke.edu/archives/history/julian_abele.html

Wallace A. Rayfield

Wallace A. Rayfield (born Macon, Georgia around May 10, 1874—1941) was the second formally educated practicing African American architect in the United States.
Rayfield graduated from Pratt Institute, Columbia University in 1899 with a Bachelor of Science in Architecture. Upon graduation, he was recruited by Booker T. Washington to the Directorship of the Architectural and Mechanical Drawing Department at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. In 1907, Rayfield opened a professional office in Tuskegee from which he sold mail-order plans nationwide. He also advertised "branch offices" in Birmingham, Montgomery, Mobile and Talladega, Alabama and Atlanta, Savannah, Macon and Augusta, Georgia.
He left Tuskegee Institute and moved to Birmingham in 1908 to focus on his young practice. He was elected as Superintending Architect for the Freedman's Aid Society and Connectional Architect of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.

One notable example of his work is the 16th Street Baptist Church - a large, predominantly African American Baptist church in Birmingham in the U.S. state of Alabama. It was the target of the racially-motivated 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing that killed four girls in the midst of the American Civil Rights Movement. The present building, a "modified Romanesque and Byzantine design" by the prominent black architect Wallace Rayfield was constructed by the local black contractor T.C. Windham in 1911. The cost of construction was $26,000. In addition to the main sanctuary, the building houses a basement auditorium, used for meetings and lectures, and several ancillary rooms used for Sunday school and smaller groups.

Notable works
16th Street Baptist Church, Birmingham, Alabama, 1911
32nd Street Baptist Church, Birmingham, 1924
6th Avenue Baptist Church, Birmingham
Trinity Baptist Church, Birmingham
Metropolitan A.M.E. Zion Church, Birmingham
Ebenezer Baptist Church, Chicago, Illinois
St Paul's Episcopal Church, Batesville, Arkansas
Trinity Building, South Africa
Mt. Zion Baptist Church, Pensacola, Florida
Morning Star Baptist Church, Demopolis, Alabama
Marlinton Methodist Church, Marlinton, West Virginia
Marlinton Presbyterian Church, Marlinton, West Virginia
Mt. Pilgrim Baptist Church, Milton, Florida
Madame Clisby Residence, Birmingham
Dr A. M. Brown Residence, Birmingham
R. A. Blount Residence, Birmingham

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Rayfield

Robert Robinson Taylor

Robert Robinson Taylor, born in Wilmington Virginia, was the son of a white slave-owner and black mother, and as such had been allowed enough freedom before the Civil War to go into business for himself. He developed a prosperous career as a contractor and builder, constructing cargo ships that plied trade routes between the United States and South America via the Caribbean. Also active in building construction, he erected a number of commercial and residential edifices in the Wilmington area and elsewhere. He went to Boston in 1888 to study and MIT, receiving his degree in 1892. During that period, Taylor met Booker T. Washington, the prominent black educator and race leader from Tuskegee, Alabama, who in 1881, had founded Tuskegee Institute--a black school that started as a normal (teacher training) school, but that within a couple of decades became one of the best-known African-American schools in the nation. Taylor arrived at Tuskegee in the fall or winter of 1892 and with the exception of a brief period from 1899-1902, when he returned to Cleveland to work on his own and as a draughtsman for the architectural firm of Charles W. Hopkinson, his entire career was spent at Tuskegee. There he served as instructor in architectural drawing and as architect to the institution and eventually as the director of "mechanical industries" (sometimes referred to simply as "industries" or as "industrial training") until his retirement in the mid-1930s. He built several buildings on campus and elsewhere and was noted as a strong promoter of other African-American architects.

From 'Tech' to Tuskegee: The Life of Robert Robinson Taylor, 1868-1942
Clarence G. Williams
http://libraries.mit.edu/archives/mithistory/blacks-at-mit/img/rrt-002.gif

Ray Huff, Huff + Gooden Architects

Ray Huff has successfully combined teaching and practice to engage questions of architecture and design. This symbiotic relationship has been critical to his work and study for over twenty years. Prior to his founding the firm with partner Mario Gooden, he conducted design studios for twenty-five years in South Carolina and was the founding director of the Clemson Architecture Center (CAC) in Charleston. He continues to hold the position of Assistant Professor of Architecture at the CAC. His professional experience included a mentorship with noted Florida architect Donald Singer.

In addition to teaching at the CAC, Mr. Huff held the distinguished Bishop Chair at Yale University's Graduate School of Architecture and he has lectured at numerous educational institutions. He has also been a keynote speaker at AIA conventions in Minneapolis, Minnesota, San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Nashville, Tennessee. He was also the keynote speaker for the design symposium at Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus, Germany hosted by the German Theorists Cloud-Cuckoo-Land.

Publications regarding Mr. Huff’s work include Architecture Record, Architecture, Progressive Architecture, A+U, Cree, Hauser, Metropolis, New York Times, and other periodicals and newspapers. His work is also featured in Beach Houses, Archispeak, South Carolina Architecture 1970-2000, and numerous other books. In 2001 Ray Huff and Mario Gooden were recognized by the Architectural League of New York with the distinguished honor of "Emerging Voices." Huff + Gooden Architects was simultaneously recognized by Architectural Record Magazine as one of six leading firms practicing exceptional architecture outside the "...Centers of Fashion." Awards have included numerous American Institute of Architects awards the most recent having been firm honor and merit awards for Mary Ford Elementary and the Herbert Hasell Aquatic Facility. He presently serves as a PEER professional with the GSA’s Design Excellence Program.

Ivenue Love-Stanley, FAIA, NOMA

Ivenue Love-Stanley, FAIA is the first African American female to graduate from the Georgia Institute of Technology College of Architecture as well as the first African-American licensed female architect in the Southeastern United States. Ivenue also is the second female in the State of Georgia to be elevated to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects.

She currently serves on the following boards: City of Atlanta - Urban Design Commission, the State of Georgia Board of Architects and Interior Desinger, the Ebenezer Charitable Fund, the Midtown Improvement District, The Robert Ferst Center for the Arts at Georgia Tech and the Community Housing Research Center.

She is an active member of the Metropolitan Atlanta Coalition of 100 Black Women, The Junior League of Atlanta, the NAACP, the Urban League, the American Institute of Architects (AIA), The Links, Inc., Leadership Atlanta's Alumni Association, the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA) and St. Paul AME Church, where she is the president of the Board of Trustees.

Twenty-seven years ago, she and her husband, William J. Stanley, III, FAIA, NOMA started their architectural practice, Stanley, Love Stanley, P.C. Their firm is one of the largest African American architectural practices in the country.

http://gtalumni.org/news/magazine/fall95/lovestan.html
http://www.stanleylove-stanleypc.com/ivenue.cfm

William J. Stanley, III, FAIA, NOMA

William "Bill" J. Stanley, III, FAIA, NOMA was the first black graduate of Georgia Tech's College of Architecture! Bill and his wife, Ivenue Love-Stanley, FAIA, NOMA have developed an award-winning architectural practice, which began in 1977. He is Principal for Design and Business Development while Ms. Love-Stanley is Managing Principal is responsible for programming, contract administration and production. Stanley, Love-Stanley, P.C. is one of the largest African-American design practices in the country concentrating in architecture, planning, program management and interior design throughout the U.S. and abroad.

Bill is a Fellow in the American Institute of Architects (FAIA), the President of AIA Georgia and the 1995 recipient of the Whitney M. Young, Jr. Citation given as one of the Institute's highest honors to the country's most socially conscious architect. For the years 2006 - 2009, he will represent the State of Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina as the South Atlantic Regional Director to the National Board of AIA. Bill was one of the founders of Georgia Tech's Dual Degree Engineering program with the Atlanta University Center (AUC) and taught in that program for seventeen years.

In 1999, AIA Georgia bestowed upon him the Bernard Rothschild medal - State's highest award. He also is the past National President of the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA); past President of the 100 Black Men of Atlanta; Architectural Record Magazine's Advisory Board; Georgia Institute of Technology's National Advisory Board and its Alumni Association Board of Trustees; the National Board of Planned Parenthood Federation of America; Secretary of the Morris Brown College Board of Trustees; Southwest YMCA Board; St. Paul A.M.E. Church Trustee and Steward Boards; Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity Kappa Boulé; Chairman of the Herndon Foundation Board; Atlanta Life Financial group Board; and numerous other affiliations.

http://www.stanleylove-stanleypc.com/william.cfm

Rod Knox, Architect

Professor Knox received his Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Architecture degrees from The Cooper Union (1970, 1975) and his Masters of Architecture from Harvard University (1976). Professor Knox is a registered architect and has taught in the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture since 1977, as a Visiting Critic at City College (1980 to present), and was a visiting Professor at SUNY Purchase in 1982.

Professor Knox teaches ARCH 205 Advanced Concepts, ARCH 185 Crossings, and ARCH 190 Structures Elective, and has taught ARCH 151 Thesis Design Studio, ARCH 141 Fourth Year Design Studio, ARCH 131 Third Year Design Studio, ARCH 121 Second Year Design Studio, ARCH 111 Architectonics and ARCH 114 Freehand Drawing. His recent work includes: Proposal for Rebuilding WTC (2002); Moorish Influences in Gothic Architecture (2000); Vesica Pisces and the Pointed Arch (1999); Caravaggio (1998); UN-City: 600 Acre East River Project (1997).

http://www.rodknox.com/

Architecture Race Academe: MIT Conference

This conference-workshop will touch on a range of significant issues about race, ethnicity, blackness and professionalism, but with architectural academe as its central focus. The conference does not aim for a comprehensive overview on the subject, but rather hopes to ask how we can bring the issue more into the mainstream of architectural discussions. Understanding why and how the black architect is seen, especially through their educational and professional journey, from all vantages - student, client, designer, and critic - will allow us to appreciate what we have taken for granted and nurture what is unique. It will also allow us to discuss how to be more proactive in the face of this problem. The conference brings together a group of noted educators and practitioners as catalyst for the discussion, and is organized around the topics of "work," "education," and "profession."

March 16, 2007 5:30p–7:00p

http://architecture.mit.edu/ara/

Roberta Washington, FAIA

(l–r): Roberta Washington, Carlton Brown, and J. Max Bond

Washington is owner of the 10-person New York firm Roberta Washington Architects PC, which opened in 1983. It is the largest continuously operated female-owned, African-American architecture firm in the country. Washington is used to "firsts." She is the first American to work for the postindependence government of Mozambique, for example. And she and/or her firm have worked on countless major projects - from the Jazz and Negro Baseball Hall of Fame in Kansas City to renovating 50 abandoned townhouses and apartment buildings in Harlem to designing a new eight-story, 128-unit condo unit in Central Harlem to a new subway station in Brooklyn. Many of the firm's earliest projects were conceived for populations with special needs, including housing for adults with AIDS and a project to help unite former female prison inmates with their children.

Washington, who earned a bachelor's degree in architecture from Howard University and a master's in the same subject (with emphasis on hospital and health-facility design) from Columbia University, tries to live by the words of Calvin Coolidge: "Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not. Nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not. Unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not. The world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent."