Honoring Black Ancestors : Paul R. Williams

[cherryblossom]

Paul Revere Williams, FAIA (February 18, 1894 – January 23, 1980) was a Los Angeles-based, American architect. He practiced largely in Southern California and designed the homes of numerous stars including Frank Sinatra, Lucille Ball/Desi Arnaz, Lon Chaney, and Charles Correll. He also designed many public and private buildings.


Childhood and academic career
Orphaned at the age of four, Williams was the only African American student in his elementary school. He studied at the Los Angeles School of Art and Design and at the Los Angeles branch of the New York Beaux-Arts Institute of Design Atelier, subsequently working as a landscape architect. He went on to attend the University of Southern California, School of Engineering designing several residential buildings while still a student there. Williams became a certified architect in 1921, and the first certified African American architect west of the Mississippi.

He married Della Mae Givens on June 27, 1917, at the First AME Church in Los Angeles. They had three children: Paul Revere Williams, Jr. (born and died June 30, 1925, buried in Evergreen Cemetery, Los Angeles); Marilyn Frances Williams (born December 25, 1926); and Norma Lucille Williams (born September 18, 1928).

Career
Williams won an architectural competition at age 25 and three years later opened his own office. Known as an outstanding draftsman, he perfected the skill of rendering drawings "upside down." This skill was developed so that his clients (who may have been uncomfortable sitting next to a black architect) could see the drawings rendered right side up across the table from him.


>>>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Williams_(architect)

 

[cherryblossom]

Paul R. Williams was one of the most well known 20th Century African American architects. Early in his career, Williams designed mostly houses, but in the 1950s and 1960s he designed some of the most distinctive public buildings in Los Angeles. Williams’s best-known building is probably the Theme Building at Los Angeles International Airport, which he designed with William Pereira.


....After the war, Williams continued to design homes for wealthy European Americans, but he also designed numerous public and commercial buildings. As modernism came to dominate public architecture after the war, Williams modified his more traditional plans. He characterized the style of some of his buildings as “conservative modern.” He designed houses and hotels in Colombia as well as the buildings of landmark black-owned Los Angeles businesses such as the Angelus Funeral Home, Golden State Mutual Life Insurance, and Broadway Federal Savings and Loan. He also designed a new home for Los Angeles’s First A.M.E. Church, of which he was a member.

In 1957 Williams was the first African American honored with election to the AIA College of Fellows. He died on January 23, 1980.

http://www.blackpast.org/?q=aaw/williams-paul-r-1894-1980