PAUL WILLIAMS

Paul Williams in was an African-American architect. From his student days at the Polytechnic High School in Los Angeles, Williams aspired to be an architect, but was told, "Who ever heard of a Negro architect?" Williams worked his way through the University of California by teaching art until he became a certified architect in 1915. He continued his studies at the Los Angeles School of Art and Design and the Beaux Arts Institute of Design in New York. Following graduation, Williams was the only African-American licensed west of the Mississippi as early as the 1920s. Williams worked for large architectural firms until he gained sufficient experience in all branches of his profession to open his own office. Williams's firm took on projects both large and small, working in a mixture of architectural styles, much of his firm's work was residential. Williams not only designed mansions for film stars such as Lon Chaney, Lucille Ball, and Tyrone Power, but also planned thousands of small houses in developments throughout California and Nevada. Second Baptist Church he designed in 1924. Paul Williams died in 1980.

JULIAN ABELE

Julian Francis Abele was an African-American architect from Philadelphia. He was the first African-American to graduate from the Pennsylvania School of Fine Arts and Architecture in 1904. 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, from which he graduated in 1906. 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 became head of the firm four years after Traumbauer’s death. Julian Abele died in 1950.