In honor of Black History Month, we are sharing some recent projects that focus on African American architects: the historic structure reports for the Watts Happening Cultural Center, Carson City Hall, and Mt. Carmel Church.
All three projects were recipients of the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund. The Action Fund program, which began in 2017, provides grants to preserve sites significant to African American history and achievement in the United States. It is helping to make historic preservation more inclusive and diverse and uses preservation as a means of social justice and positive social change. More information about the Action Fund can be found here, including the latest grantees, which were just announced.
All three Historic Structure Reports (HSRs) focus on Modern buildings by African American architects. The purpose of each HSR is slightly different, but they all demonstrate the different ways in which an HSR can be used as a tool for community engagement and owner stewardship.
Watts Happening Cultural Center, 2024
The HSR for the Watts Happening Cultural Center will pave the way for the reuse of the building, which has served the community of Watts since its completion in 1970. The Watts Happening Cultural Center was designed by African American architects Robert Kennard and Arthur Silvers. Kennard (1920-1995) grew up in Los Angeles and attended Pasadena City College and then the University of Southern California. While in school, Kennard was exposed to some of the issues affecting disenfranchised communities in Los Angeles, including overcrowding and a lack of adequate housing. This led to a life-long interest in social justice issues. Throughout his career, he remained committed to addressing the social issues of the day. Two of his earliest residential designs (the Kelly Residence, 1957, and Zieger Residence, 1958) were located in an integrated housing cooperative at a time when many neighborhoods in Los Angeles remained segregated.
After working with notable architects of the day including Robert Alexander; Richard Neutra; Daniel, Mann, Johnson, and Mendenhall (DMJM); and Victor Gruen Associates, Kennard opened his own architectural practice in 1957. In 1965, Kennard partnered with African American architect Arthur Silvers to create the firm Kennard and Silvers. Following the Watts Uprising of 1965, Kennard and Silvers shifted their focus to “civic minded projects that resonated with a more socially conscious community,” and Kennard became more active in civic affairs.[1] The firm created a Watts Redevelopment Project to help rebuild the community. Though the plan was never realized, it led Kennard and Silvers to design several buildings in Watts, including the Watts Happening Cultural Center.
Robert Kennard and Arthur Silver, 1960s (courtesy of Kennard Estate)
Arthur Silvers (1920-2007) was also raised in Los Angeles and studied architecture at USC. According to his son John Silvers, Arthur Silvers wanted to be an architect early on, but was discouraged by others who didn’t think he could pursue a career in architecture because of his race. His mother encouraged him to become an architect anyway. He attended Polytechnic High School and then studied architecture at USC. It was while he was at USC that he met Kennard. He joined Kennard’s firm in 1963.
Silvers was politically active throughout the 1960s. He was chairman of the Los Angeles chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), which worked to expose housing discrimination, and was president of the Los Angeles NAACP. His son John Silvers noted, “it’s hard to separate his architectural self from his social, political self, because it was very connected.” He said of his father’s work, “his approach to architecture was very much social because he was a civil rights leader as well.” He sought to bring people together through his design work and create spaces that were conducive to congregating and gathering. This is evident in his work on the Watts Happening Cultural Center, which emphasized communal, flexible spaces. According to Gail Kennard, daughter of Robert Kennard, it was Silver who was responsible for the design of the building.
Following their work in Watts, Kennard’s firm began to work all over the country. They designed projects that were intended to benefit their communities, since “Kennard thought that marginalized communities should be respected and that architects should design for the poor as thoughtfully as their wealthy counterparts.” At the same time, he did not only focus on work for the African American community. Kennard wanted to deliberately make a point that African American architects could design anywhere, for anyone, and be judged for their design work – not on the basis of their race.
Kennard and Silver’s design for the Watts Happening Cultural Center falls within their overall Modernist body of work. What is remarkable about the design of the Cultural Center, however, is that it places more emphasis on function and flexible space than it does on architectural detail. It was intended to be a flexible building that the community could use however they needed. It was the home of the Mafundi Institute, founded in 1967 as an organization that focused on African American community empowerment, social reform, and artistic expression. It provided arts programming and a community space for Watts, as well as the Watts Happening Coffee House that was a significant social center for decades. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and as a local landmark. The preparation of the HSR is closely tied to community engagement; the community’s needs and feedback will help shape the future use of the property. It will guide future work as the City envisions new programming for the building and its surrounding site.
Carson City Hall, 2023
Also designed by Robert Kennard, Carson City Hall was completed in 1976 for the recently incorporated City of Carson. The building is the work of a diverse architecture team that included Robert Alexander, Robert Kennard, and Japanese American architect Frank Sata. The HSR will guide the rehabilitation, restoration, and maintenance of City Hall.
Like many Southern California cities, Carson developed rapidly after World War II. The community’s development coincided with the end of segregationist housing practices and the advent of fair housing legislation. Though discrimination persisted, the housing landscape began to slowly equalize in the 1960s. Carson became home to a diverse population which included African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans (including the largest population of Samoans in the world outside Samoa). After the City of Carson was incorporated in 1967, one of its first orders of business was to find offices, though this proved challenging. The new city outgrew offices in three existing buildings before the current city hall was built. The City hired a diverse architecture team in an effort to have the project team reflect the population of Carson itself. In addition to Robert Kennard, Robert Alexander, and Frank Sata, Japanese American landscape architect Yoshito Kuromiya was responsible for the landscape design and Michael Sanchez, a Latino interior and graphics designer, was hired to complete the interiors. The Late Modern city hall incorporates Spanish Colonial Revival (or Neo-Spanish Eclectic) design elements to reflect the Spanish heritage of the nearby Dominguez Hills.
The Carson City Hall HSR will help guide the rehabilitation and maintenance of the building. After the HSR was completed, we prepared a story map (which can be seen here) about Carson City Hall and the diverse architecture team behind it. The story map is meant to educate the public about the building, the diversity of the City of Carson itself, and the architecture team responsible for its design.
Mount Carmel Missionary Baptist Church, 2023
Mount Carmel Missionary Baptist Church (MCMBC) was designed by Alonzo Robinson, Jr., Wisconsin’s first registered African American architect. Born in Asheville, North Carolina in 1923, Robinson was raised in Delaware and studied Industrial Arts at Delaware State College for Colored Students (now Delaware State University).[1] After serving as a technical sergeant in the Navy during World War II, Robinson entered into the architecture program at Howard University, earning his Bachelor of Architecture degree in 1951. Robinson worked as a naval architect for a few years before being recruited by the Milwaukee City Bureau of Bridges and Buildings in 1954. One of his first projects as lead designer at the Bureau was the Milwaukee Fire Department Administration Building (completed 1961). He worked as an architectural designer for the Bureau for over a decade before entering into private practice as a partner with the firm DeQuardo, Robinson, and Crouch. After the firm closed in 1972, Robinson began working as an architect for Milwaukee County, while also establishing his own architecture practice, the first Black-owned architecture firm in the state.
Upon moving to Milwaukee, Robinson quickly engrossed himself in the city’s African American community, serving as a lay leader of St. James United Methodist Church and vice president of Northcott Neighborhood House, a community center founded in 1961 by the United Methodist Church. He was the first African American adjunct professor to teach construction management, estimating, and architecture classes at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. In 1974, the same year the MCMBC’s new church building was completed, Robinson was recognized at the Community Pride Exposition Awards for his invaluable service to the Black community.
Robinson’s involvement in Milwaukee’s African American community extended to his architectural practice as well. In the late 1960s through the early ‘70s, he worked with the Central City Development Corporation, a Black development group comprising some of the city’s most prominent civil rights leaders, as lead designer of Central City Plaza, the first Black-developed and owned commercial complex in the state. While Robinson’s designs were often rather unassuming—as he himself described in 1973, “Black architects have had very little opportunity to practice in areas where they could express creativity…”—his work still managed to evoke a sense of modernity as well as a sensitivity to the surrounding environment.[1] This is particularly evident is his religious works.
Completed in 1974, the MCMBC building is one of only eight purpose-built Black churches designed by Robinson throughout his 45-plus-year career.[2] Its contemporary application of the traditional gabled roof form (incorporating three consecutive smaller front-facing gables at the primary façade), as well as its use of modern materials and simple geometric volumes exemplify Robinson’s mastery of the Modern architectural vocabulary. Its one-story height, compact floor plan, and gabled roofline blend in with the rhythm and scale of its residential context and showcase his deft ability to create sensitive designs that are responsive to their surrounding environment.
The Mt. Carmel Missionary Baptist Church HSR will help to guide necessary repairs and planned rehabilitation work, including structural upgrades, improved ADA accessibility, and support systems upgrades. The MCMBC recently received a second round of grant funding through the Action Fund for these capital improvement projects.
It has been an honor to work on projects which help bring to light the achievements of African American architects and which are tied so closely to African American history. These projects show that an HSR does not have to only be a technical document, but can help highlight history left underrecognized for far too long.
[1] Jerome A. Robinson, “An Odyssey in B-Flat: Rediscovering the Life and Times of Master Architect Robert A. Kennard” (Master’s Thesis, University of Southern California, 2018), 122.
[2] John Silvers, interview with Elysha Paluszek, October 31, 2024.
[3] Jocelyn Y. Stewart, “Arthur Silvers, 1930-2008, Architect Fought Against Discrimination,” Los Angeles Times, January 26, 2008.
[4] John Silvers, interview with Elysha Paluszek, October 31, 2024.
[5] Gail Kennard, interview by Elysha Paluszek, October 30, 2024.
[6] Robinson, “An Odyssey in B-Flat Rediscovered,” 122-123.
[7] Paul Wellington and Kelsey Kuehn, “Beyond Cream City Brick Part Two: Sensitive, Contextual Modern: Examining Works by Alonzo Robinson, Wisconsin’s First Black Architect,” Docomomo US, May 18, 2021, accessed August 2024, https://www.docomomo-us.org/news/sensitive-contextual-modern-examining-works-by-alonzo-robinson-wisconsin-s-first-black-architect.
[8] Edward H. Blackwell, “Afro-American Style for Architecture?,” Milwaukee Journal, September 2, 1973.[9] Justin Miller, in discussion with Architectural Resources Group, August 1, 2024.
Photography by Architectural Resources Group unless noted otherwise.