The Discovery of an Architect: Duke University and Julian F. Abele

Abstract

In 1937, distinguished visitor touring the United States, the English novelist Aldous Huxley, was traveling through North Carolina by auto one hot summer day. He described a pleasant but unexciting land when all of sudden, astonishingly, whole of gray Gothic stone emerged from the warm pine forest. He was thrilled by the academic city with the dominating leaping tower of the huge cathedral and the spreading succession of quadrangles. He called the campus genuinely beautiful, the most successful essay in neo-Gothic that know. (1) Huxley, like generations of succeeding travelers, had come upon the campus of Duke University. Like most visitors through the years, Huxley was unaware that the dramatic new campus had been designed by the architectural firm of Horace Trumbauer of Philadelphia, where Julian F. Abele, an African American, was chief designer. The Philadelphia Inquirer devoted only three paragraphs to Abele's death in 1950, but it covered weekend of celebration honoring him in June 2002, Oh the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Free Library of Philadelphia, at which Abele [pronounced able] received posthumous credit for the design of the central section. During the construction of Duke University in the 1920s few administrators knew Abele was chief designer in the firm, but his race was not common knowledge. By 2000, however, Abele and his achievements as an African American were the centerpiece of the university's seventy-fifth anniversary celebration. How these celebrations came to be is story of unusual interest. Neither the Trumbauer firm nor Julian Abele left an archive. Scattered sources, infrequent newspaper articles, and reminiscences by family and friends created over decades constitute the primary sources of information about Abele. His story was one discovered bit by bit, looking backward. The Duke University component, outlined in this essay, was an exercise in archival practice and historical discovery over time. (2) Julian Francis Abele (1881-1950) was born into respected and talented African American family in Philadelphia. His father, born freedman, worked in the U. S. Treasury Customs House and thus had the means to give his children valued education. In 1897 Abele graduated from Philadelphia's Institute for Colored Youth, prestigious Quaker institution, where his Aunt Julia Jones, who taught drawing, steered him toward career in architecture. In 1898 he earned Certificate in Architectural Design from the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Arts. In 1902, Abele graduated from the School of Architecture of the University of Pennsylvania, and in 1903, he received Certificate of Completion in Architectural Design from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. In the latter three institutions Abele was the first of his race to earn certificate or degree, magnificent achievement, though, as Abele noted later in his life, I lived in the shadows. The shadows of practice, custom, and personality would claim Abele for decades. (3) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Horace Trumbauer (1868-1938), Philadelphia native, was heard to say, I hire my brains. Acknowledged as premier builder of Gilded Age palaces, often in the grand French style, Trumbauer had no higher education, having dropped out of school in his teens. He learned the profession as an apprentice draftsman and through voracious reading. When he began his own firm in 1890, he hired exceptionally qualified personnel and held them to very high standards. Extremely self-conscious about his lack of education, he deliberately sought anonymity, preferring to work one-on-one with his wealthy clients and relying on their recommendations for commissions. The firm had reputation for designing statement homes for wealthy patrons in the expanding Philadelphia suburbs and at their summer residences in Newport, Rhode Island, and New York City. Talented but aloof, Trumbauer gained accolades in New York City before he did in his hometown, where his colleagues did not elect him to membership in the Philadelphia chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) until 1931. …