Who is America's Premiere Unknown Black Architect?
Julian Francis Abele was one of the major American architects, but he never signed his work and it was not publicly acknowledged. The reason is that his firm did not want it known that its chief designer was African American. As a result, Abele's name and achievements remain little known today.
Born in Philadelphia in 1881, Abele was educated at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Fine Arts and at L'ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. He worked with Horace Trumbauer and Associates in Philadelphia, and succeeded Trumbauer as head of the firm. His specialty was modernizing classic architectural forms.
Abele designed some of the nation's great buildings, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Free Library of Philadelphia, Widener Library at Harvard, and the chapel and other major buildings at Duke University. Abele never visited Duke, he didn't join the American Institute of Architects until 1941, and he received no recognition until the Philadelphia Museum of Art honored him in 1982, 100 years after his birth and 40 years following his death.