American architect Julian Abele was born in 1881, the youngest of eight in a high-achieving family that long been a “fixture” of Philadelphia’s Black aristocracy (Smithsonian). As a child, Abele attended school at the Institute for Colored Youth, where he was chosen to deliver a commencement address on the role of art in African-American life. After studying at Brown Preparatory School and the Pennsylvania School of Industrial Art, Abele enrolled in the architecture program at the University of Pennsylvania. The University of Pennsylvania program emphasized the classical methods then in fashion at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Abele embraced these techniques; his designs grew to rely heavily on Renaissance, Greek and Roman traditions while also working to harmonize with surrounding structures: a typical approach from the Beaux-Arts movement. During his senior year at the university, Abele—who had nicknamed himself “Willing and Able” by this point—was elected President of the Student Architectural Society, the “highest honor his classmates could bestow” (Smithsonian). He completed his degree at age 21 in 1902, the first Black student to ever graduate from UPenn. By the time he completed school, he had been listed as an architect in the city directory for over a year.
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| Julian Abele |
Though Abele was by no means the first Black architect in the U.S., he is considered one of the most accomplished of his period. Between 1906, when he joined the all-white Horace Trumbauer architecture firm, to his death in 1950, Abele designed and/or contributed to the construction of over 250 buildings across the United States, including a host of Gilded-Age mansions in California and New York, the Harvard University Widener Memorial Library, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the same city’s Free Library.
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The Widener Memorial Library on the Harvard University Campus was completed in 1915 in memory of Harry Elkins Widener, a 1907 Harvard graduate and book collector who perished on the Titanic in 1912.
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Abele’s major claim to fame, however, is his design of a massive addition to the Duke University campus that spanned two decades, starting in 1924. Abele’s plans for Duke University included a library, the building for the School of Religion, a football stadium and gymnasium, medical school and hospital, faculty houses and, of course, the iconic Duke University chapel. The construction of the Duke campus filled Abele’s final living decade; near the end of his life, Abele signed sketches for the Cameron Indoor Stadium (where the Duke Blue Devils now play basketball), as well as designed the physics building and additional library. Abele passed away at 68 years old of a heart attack in 1950, before the firm was able to complete Abele’s final contribution, the Allen Building (Duke administrative offices) where his portrait would be hung 40 years later.
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| Abele’s chapel is the poster-child of the Duke campus. The English-Gothic style chapel represents one of the “last great collegiate Gothic projects” in the United States (Duke University). |
Abele’s self-effacing personality, coupled with the discrimination he faced due to his race, meant that he would not receive recognition outside the Philadelphia architectural community during his lifetime. The custom of singing architectural sketches with the name of the firm rather than the individual designer’s name also made it “impolitic” to claim ownership of a design; when speaking about his work on the design of the Free Library, Abele stated “the lines are all Mr. Trumbauer’s, but the shadows are all mine” (Smithsonian).
In the spring of 1986, Duke University students protested their school’s investments in apartheid South Africa. These protests led Duke sophomore Susan Cook to speak publicly of familial ties to Julian Abele, whose immense impact on the construction of the University had long been ignored. According to the Smithsonian Magazine, “that an African-American had designed Duke, a white-only institution until 1961, was news to nearly everyone.” Abele’s role was never a secret, cited clearly in architectural documents, but had never been spoken about so publicly. After Cook submitted a letter to the University demanding her great-uncle’s legacy be recognized, a painted portrait of Duke was hung in the main lobby of the Allen administrative building and a page on the University’s website was devoted to his achievements.
Abele is immortalized by his extraordinary buildings across the United States. His legacy serves as an inspiration for the growing number of licensed Black architect working in the U.S.—an occupation long-dominated by wealthy white men. Abele passed his talent and passion for architecture on to his son and his nephew, Julian Abele Cook Sr., who became architectural engineers. The re-discovery of Julian Abele and his quintessential role in the construction of the monumental Duke University campus was a long-awaited and imperative honor, an essential step in re-writing the narrative of design history in the United States.
“Out of the Shadows” by Susan E. Tifft, for Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/out-of-the-shadows-85569503/
“Julian Abele,” Duke University Libraries. https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/uarchives/history/articles/abele
“The Discovery of an Architect: Duke University and Julian F. Abele” by William E. King, Southern Cultures. Accessed on JSTOR.
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