In the spring of 1986, students at Duke University *** the school's investment in South Africa's apartheid policy - built a shack in front of the University Chapel, a volcanic stone spire modeled after England's Canterbury Cathedral. . The nature of the *** prompted a university student to complain to the student newspaper. The shacks, she wrote, violated "our rights as students to have a beautiful campus."

For Duke sophomore Susan Cook, the letter was a call to action . She told only a few classmates that she was related to the designer of Duke Chapel, the architect of much of the original architecture on the school's neo-Gothic West Campus and Georgia East Campus. She had never met him, but she was sure that if he were still alive, he would be as wholeheartedly supportive of defunding *** as she was. So she wrote an emotional rebuttal. Duke's beauty, she wrote, was an example of "what opportunities a black man could create" who was "a casualty of the secession of this country" by Hyde, who had envisioned the Duke campus but failed because of the racial segregation that was being implemented in the South at the time. Jim Crow laws of segregation he had never seen. That an African-American designed Duke University, a white-only institution, before 1961 was news to almost everyone. As documents in university archives indicate, Abel's role was no secret. But it has never been admitted so openly. Cook's letter changed that. Now, an oil portrait of Duke’s first black architect hangs in the lobby of the Administration Building. Even the university's website has a page for him.

Recognition is long overdue. Abel was not America's first black architect, but he was probably the most accomplished of his time. In 1906, when he joined Horace Trumbauer's all-white Philadelphia Company, he designed or helped design approximately 250 buildings until his death in 1950, including Harvard The University's Winderer Memorial Library, Philadelphia's Museum of Art and Free Library, and many Gilded Age mansions in New York Harbor and New York City. Abel's race, combined with his unassuming personality, meant that he would not be widely known outside Philadelphia's architectural community during his lifetime. The habit of signing sketches with the name of the company rather than the name of the individual designer also makes credit card claims unwise. "The lines are all Mr. Trumbauer's," Abel once said of the Free Library, "but the shadows are all mine."

Born in 1881, Julian Francis · Abel was the youngest of eight children in a family of achievers that had long been a fixture in the lives of Philadelphia's African-American aristocracy. On his mother's side he could claim Absalom Jones, co-founder of the Free African Society, an early (1787) mutual support group of the city's free blacks. His brother Robert became a doctor. The other two siblings are successful logo makers. "Julian is not a rags-to-riches story," says Susan Cook, now a senior art director at the advertising agency Foote, Cone & Belding in New York City.

As a child, Abel attended the Institute for Colored Youth, a normal school founded by the Quakers. For his ability in mathematics, he received a $15 bonus. He was also selected to deliver the commencement address. His topic: the role of art in black life. After studying at Brown Preparatory School, the University of Pennsylvania, and the School of Industrial Arts, Abel entered the Department of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. From 1902 to 1903, he studied architectural design at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

The courses at the University of Pennsylvania emphasized the classical methods then popular at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, which were reflected in the United States in the architecture of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Abel hugs them. (The architecture of his palace would rely heavily on Greek, Roman, and Renaissance traditions while striving to harmonize with neighboring buildings.

)ngs and the surrounding landscape - this is a typical feature of the urban beauty movement, which was developed from the artistic method of beauty. ) During his senior year, he was elected president of the Student Architectural Association, the highest honor a fellow student can bestow, and he also designed a post office and a botanical museum, which earned him Student Awards. When he graduated from college in 1902, he was the first black man to do so. By then, 21-year-old Abel had been listed as an architect in the city directory for a year.

After graduation, Abel is believed to have been on record as traveling to Idaho to help his sister, Elizabeth, whose husband had recently accepted a position as a small-town postmaster. In 1906, Warren? Poppy? Warren "Popsy" Laird returns to Philadelphia, causing Horace? Horace Trumbauer, an architect whose firm was famous for building residential palaces for local industrialists and merchants. Initially, Abell was employed to assist Trumbauer's chief designer, Frank Seaberg, but after Seaberg left to start his own business in 1909, Abell replaced him.

The nature of the relationship between Trumbauer and Abel is ambiguous. Few records of the company have survived, and neither man kept a diary or preserved many personal letters. What is clear is that Trumball forged a self-improvement through apprenticeship, voracious reading, and a chance connection with Abel, a formally educated, classically educated black aristocrat. "You definitely get the impression that Everyone respects him." "You have to give Horace Trumbauer a lot of credit for having the courage to hire a black man and put him in such a responsible position."

Trumbauer opened his own company in 1890 , when he was only 21 years old. The next year, sugar refiner William Welsh Harrison hired him to expand his property in Glenside, Pennsylvania. In 1893, the estate burned and Harrison, engaged to Trumball, built a castle-like country house called Greytooth (now Acadia University). By the time Abel joined the firm, Trumbauer had already produced his iconic Lynnewood Hall, a 110-room Palladian mansion for public transportation tycoon Peter A.B. Built by Peter A. B. Widdener, and Elstowe Manor, an Italian palace built for Widner's partner William L. Elkins. In 1902, he built The Elm for coal magnate Edward J. Bowen. It was the first of several commissions in the "cottage" of Newport, Rhode Island, including the Clarendon Courthouse, which decades later would become the home of Claus von Bulow von Bulow allegedly injected his wife, Sunny, with a coma-inducing dose of insulin. (He was acquitted of attempted murder in 1985.)

White entrepreneurs and African American strivers shared a desire with their wealthy clients in a society where class, race and Religion is often more important than merit. "Trumbauer and Abel catered to these nouveau riche, who wanted a physical embodiment of success," said Inga Saffron, architecture critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer. "They wanted to create a past. If you build yourself a French chateau, you give yourself a pedigree.

James Buchanan Duke, founder of the American Tobacco Company ) is an example of this uniquely American brand. In 1909, Abel began working for Duke on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 78th Street. Three years later, Duke, his pregnant wife, and 14 servants. Upon moving into a white marble home modeled after a late 17th-century Bordeaux chateau, The *** rated the building (now New York University's School of Fine Arts) the "most expensive residence" on Fifth Avenue.

Duke followed in the company's footsteps and was particularly impressed by Harvard University's Widener Memorial Library, which was dedicated in 1915 to the memory of Harry Elkins Widener, who sank with the Titanic. In 1924, Austrian Carolina, dean of Trinity College in Durham, North Carolina, convinced the Duke to turn the school into a university of the same name, and Trump's office got the nod, with Abele leading the way. "KDSPE" "KDSPs" Over the next two decades, Eberly's designs expanded and unified Duke's small, existing east campus and helped create a new west campus a mile and a half away. The original plans for an artificial lake and fountain never came to fruition, but Abel kept busy with the library, religious institute, football field and gymnasium, medical school and hospital, faculty quarters and, of course, the chapel.

As well as Duke University and the Weidner Library, Abel's most important contributions were to the Free Library and Museum of Art in Philadelphia. The Library of Philadelphia was built in 1927 and is based on the two facades of the Ministère de la Marine and the H?tel de Crillon on the Place de la Concorde in Paris, reflecting Abel's In admiration of their designer, Ange Jacques Gabriel, chief architect of Louis XV from 1742 to 1774, it served as the backdrop for the famous staircase scene in the film "The Rockies", which resembled a The massive Greek temple sits on what was once the city's reservoir. Trumbauer entered into an uneasy design collaboration with another firm, Zantzinger, Borie and Medary. Although Trumbauer architect Howell Lewis Shay ultimately proposed an eclectic design for the building, Abel provided some of the building's most dramatic perspective views. Architectural historian Fiske Kimball, who served as the museum's director from 1925 to 1955, described Abel as "one of America's most sensitive designers."

Abell also made significant contributions to Whitemarsh Hall (completed 1921), a 147-room, 100-square-foot mansion in Springfield, Pennsylvania, for Dr. Drexel & Company banking house senior partner Edward T. Stoutesbury and the New York Evening Post building in Manhattan (1925 Completed and now home to luxury apartments). The question of who did what at Trumbauer has sometimes become a bone of contention in recent years, with those who say Abel designed nearly every major building the company produced after 1909 and those who claim all credit. All belong to Trumbauer himself. "Abel was a very talented man," said Michael C. Katherine, author of "American Splendor: The Residential Architecture of Horace Trumpbauer." But Trumpbauer was the man behind the company. Genius," said Derek Wilson, who is researching Abel's biography. Before Abel took over as chief designer, Trumbauer's buildings were "too fat and terribly unwieldy." When you look at Abel's buildings, They float on the water and appear lighter. “One person can’t design a building,” Saffron said. “It’s a team.

Architect J. Max Bond Jr., who worked on the design of the World Trade Center Memorial, would agree. "We tend to say, 'This is a building built by so-and-so,'" Bond said, "but many people don't The architecture and design contributed. ". "This is especially the case with Trumbauer and Abel. Trumball is not a force like Frank Lloyd Wright. [His designs are] the work of one company. ”

There are no records describing the workings of Trumbauer’s office design process, but in today’s companies there are typically three people in charge with complementary skills: a broker who advocates for the business, a designer and someone who translates concepts into blueprints.

Obviously, Trumpbauer mainly plays a "rain man", Abel plays the chief designer, and construction engineer William Frank plays a "mad man". Obviously, Drumbauer values ??Abel's talent. When Trumbauer was asked to be released from Abel's contract a year after he was hired (Abel had a job in California), he responded, "I certainly don't want to lose Mr. Abel."

Bearded and impeccably dressed, the 5-foot-8 Abel treats his race as a fact and a little more. Because of his light skin, some people are unsure of his ethnicity. Although several draftsmen in his office were apparently concerned about working under a black man, one colleague claimed to have never been aware that Abel was black; he simply thought of him as "someone else." "For all intents and purposes, Julian did not consider himself black," biographer Wilson said. "He was almost a race. He immersed himself in being an artist.

In fact, Susan Cook's hypothesis is that her great-grandfather never met Duke because of Jim Crow laws On college campuses, this assumption was repeated in countless newspaper reports, and it was likely wrong in the early 1960s when John H. ) told George Esser, then executive director of the North Carolina Foundation, that he recalled Abel visiting the campus during construction. What's more, in a 1989 interview, Abel's Henry Magazina, son of friend and Penn classmate Louis Magazina, recalled that Abel told him that a hotel in Durham, North Carolina, refused to give him a hotel room while he was traveling to college. room while also providing accommodation to his white colleague William Frank, while the South was more strict and Philadelphia had its own set of social rules that demeaned Pennsylvania in the 1930s. Before the law, seats in theaters and on public transportation were often segregated. Abel reportedly walked more than 10 blocks to work every day instead of sitting in the back of the city's segregated streetcars. > Little is known about his social life early in his career. Around 1906, his sister Elizabeth separated from her husband, and he took her and her three children with him, raising them as his own when he was 40. By many years, the children had largely grown up. Abel met Margaret Boulle, a white man from Paris and a predecessor of the famous French musician and conductor Nadia Boulanger. Abel spoke fluent French and soon arranged to compete with him. There was no doubt that Abel's ten-bedroom, two-bathroom home in Christian Street, a three-story townhouse in the heart of the Negroes, made a good impression. Nearby is the professional living area, which houses antiques, two paintings by Jean-Honorie Fragonard, a Baldwin grand piano, a sofa covered in needlepoint Abel and several black servants. The night before the couple married in 1925, Horace Trumbauer gave each of them a $1,000 bill as a wedding gift, the eldest, Julian F. Abele Jr. .) Baptized in Reims Cathedral while traveling abroad in 1929. Margaret Marie, known as Pacquette (Little Flower) in the family, died of complications from measles at the age of 5, and the youngest Nadia received the gift from her mother's tutor. Taking her name.

Cross-cultural, cross-racial unions can be difficult for any couple, but the Abels also have personality differences. and bingo, and Abel loved nothing more than retreating to his third-floor study after get off work to read opera and listen to "Amos Enandi" on the radio. However, it was a messy event that ultimately drove the Abels apart. While working as an accompanist at a Philadelphia radio station, Margaret met a young baritone named Jozep Kowalewski, who soon became a regular at the Christian Street House under the pretense of taking music lessons. By all accounts, the two of them fell hopelessly in love. When Margaret asked Abel for a divorce in 1933, he refused.

She told Abel that she was "dead" as a wife and had moved into a separate bedroom. In 1936, Margaret became desperate after learning that Kowalewski was pregnant. Her solution was to marry Kowalewski in October 1936 at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. Perhaps she believed that her “marriage” to Kowalewski (a fellow Catholic) would be sanctified by the church, if not the state. A month later, she finally left Abel, who insisted on raising the child. Jozep and Margaret's first child, Jeanne, was born in January 1937. (They eventually had two more children.) From then on, Abel only had contact with his wife at family events, although he allowed young Julian and Nadia to visit her. Abel, wearing a coat and tie, continued to host the formal Sunday dinner. During the summer, he put his children and nanny in a rented cabin in the segregated beach community of Wildwood, New Jersey, arriving by train every Friday night and returning on Sunday evenings. Even on hot days, the dashing Abel can be seen striding across the boardwalk in a suit and straw hat.

Thanks to ongoing projects such as the Duke University campus, Trumbauer was initially less affected than most of the 1929 financial crisis. But when mansions requiring dozens of servants became a thing of the past, Trumbauer did it in many ways. By the mid-1930s, the once-thriving practice was reduced to a key trio: Trumbauer, Abel and Frank. The years of poverty took their toll on the alcoholic Trumbauer. In 1938, at the age of 69, he died of cirrhosis of the liver. Worried about changing the company's identity at such an uncertain time, Abel and Frank took over what their letterhead called the offices of Horace Trumbauer, whose names are listed below. Finally freed from anonymity, Abel began signing drawings under his own name and became a member of the American Institute of Architects in 1942.

Continued construction on the Duke campus filled much of Abel's final decade. He signed the drawings for Cameron Indoor Stadium (completed in 1940), where the Duke Blue Devils now play basketball; later, he worked on a library and a physics building. Abel died of a heart attack in 1950 at age 68, before the company completed construction of the Allentown Building, and 40 years later his portrait hangs in Duke's office. Margaret, like a widened one, attended his funeral at the house in Christian Street. A three-paragraph obituary in the Philadelphia Inquirer noted Abel's long association with Trumbauer but did not mention any buildings he designed.

Abel, who focused more on art than finance, died without a will. Because he and Margaret never divorced, by law she and all children born during the marriage, including her and Kowalewski's three children, were heirs to his estate. Margaret reportedly dropped her personal claims, but a court appointed a guardian to represent the interests of Kowalewski's minor children. In 1956, a trust fund was established for the three Kowalewski children, to be distributed when each of them turned 25. Abel's surviving children, Julian Jr. and Nadia, divided the remainder of the estate.

The Trumbauer Company produced two additional buildings for Duke University before finally folding in 1968. In 1982, the Philadelphia Museum of Art honored Abel for his role in the museum's design; in 2002, the Free Library hosted a weekend of events to celebrate the architect's 75th anniversary at the library. . His son Julian said: "I'm sure he would have been honored. "But he didn't like speeches and he wouldn't be honored by it. ”

Architecture, not speech, is Abel’s legacy. His life inspired the growing number of African-American registered architects in the United States, an estimated 1,500 of the 101,000 architects. Black. Abell also passed on his love of his profession to his son and nephew, Susan Cook's grandfather, Julian Abell Cook Sr., who later became a construction engineer.

Susan Cook’s brother, Peter, graduated from Columbia University’s architecture department and is now the principal of KGP Design Studio, an architecture and urban design firm in Washington, DC. He clearly remembers the first building he saw was a building designed by his great-grandfather. In the late 1970s, he and his family visited Duke University, drove around the campus and then drove the long way to the church. "Suddenly out of this deep green forest emerged the iconic image of Duke," he said. "It's one thing to have a building that moves you away, but my great-grandpa built it! As a practitioner, it's an incredible legacy to live up to