Julian Abele
*Julian Abele was born on this date in 1881. He was a Black architect.
From South Philadelphia, Julian Francis Abele was the son of Charles R. and Mary A. Abele. He was educated at the Institute for Colored Youth before entering the University of Pennsylvania in 1898. He was the first Black to graduate from the Pennsylvania School of Fine Arts and Architecture in 1902. That year, Horace Trumbauer asked him to join his firm, which had been exclusively white up to that point. Trumbauer sent Abele to Paris to study at L'Ecole des Beaux Arts.
By 1908, Abele was the chief designer in the firm of Horace Trumbauer & Associates and owns an impressive list of buildings. In addition to Widener Library, he designed Philadelphia’s Free Library and Museum of Art, the chapel and many other buildings of Trinity College in Durham, N.C. (which was later renamed Duke University) and the James B. Duke mansion on Fifth Avenue and 78th Street in New York City (now NYU’s Graduate Institute of Fine Arts). Abele's role in the firm of Horace Trumbauer was neither a well-kept secret nor a well-publicized fact.
His talent was such that it made him chief designer at age 27 and paid him a salary of $12,000 per year in 1912 (which is over $250,000 in current dollars). However, Abele did not join the American Institute of Architects until 1942, four years after the death of Trumbauer, at which time Abele became head of the firm. Abele never personally visited Duke University during the construction phase or afterward due to Jim Crow segregation. Yet, the archivist of Duke University, in a letter to the editor of the Raleigh, NC News and Observer, states it was well known by university personnel that the firm's chief designer was Black.
The histories of Widener Library to date only mention the firm of Horace Trumbauer and never make mention of Abele himself. It was Mrs. Widener’s choice of this Philadelphia firm to design the library that would bear her son's name, and it is unclear whether she knew Abele or just Trumbauer. In any case, his work stands, and society and scholarship are catching up to give him the proper credit he deserves. Julian Abele died on April 23, 1950, after designing the Allen Administration Building at Duke University. He is considered the first major Black architect in the United States.
To Become an Architect
To Become An Urban Planner
To become a construction worker
