Black Design: 28 People, Places, Ideas, and Spaces

Feb 05, 2025 By Cheryl S. Durst

A list of individuals, books, landmarks, and resources related to Black design worth celebrating this Black History Month — and every month — curated by IIDA’s EVP and CEO, Cheryl S. Durst

By Cheryl S. Durst Feb 05, 2025

Published in Articles

(Above image: “Pews,” by artist and designer Michael Bennett, created in 2023. Image courtesy of William Stuart.)

The contributions of Black designers are undeniable — but in our not-so-distant past, architects and designers of color were largely marginalized, and even now, some of design history’s most profound talents continue to be underrecognized.

This Black History Month, we’re honoring Black designers and architects who’ve profoundly influenced the built environment, and in doing so, helped shape our world. Their work deserves contemplation and celebration every month, not just in February.

Just as the world of design is vast and vibrant, so too is the world of Black design. We couldn’t simply select a handful of historic individuals or sites to highlight. So, below you’ll find 28 people, places, ideas, and spaces related to Black design — one for each day of this month.

We hope you explore, savor, and deeply engage with the people, concepts, and communities shared here. Get curious. Dig deeper. Look for more hidden figures. And always remember: Our world is what we make it. Each day is an opportunity to invite more voices into the art and practice of design. The more perspectives we seek out, especially those from underrepresented circles, the more inventive, inspiring, and just our reality becomes.

Norma Merrick Sklarek

It’s not easy being the first — yet Norma Merrick Sklarek achieved that title many times over, a testament to her talent, unflagging work ethic, and tenacity. Born in Harlem in 1926, Sklarek became the first Black woman to earn a degree in architecture from Columbia University in 1950. She went on to become the first Black woman to be a licensed architect in New York, then in California, and the first to become a member of the American Institute of Architects.

When job-hunting after college, she was turned down by 19 potential employers. Her first architectural job was at Skidmore, Owings and Merrill in New York; she began working there in 1955, the same year Rosa Parks refused to relinquish her seat to a white man on a bus in Alabama. Later, in 1960, she relocated to the West Coast to work at Gruen Associates in Los Angeles, where she ultimately ascended to the position of director of architecture. She worked on projects as varied and highly visible as the Pacific Design Center, San Bernardino City Hall, and U.S. Embassy in Tokyo. Another first: In 1985, she co-founded a company, Siegel Sklarek Diamond, with two other women architects, becoming the first Black woman to co-own an architectural firm.

Norma Merrick Sklarek, left, was a Black woman architect who broke barriers and achieved numerous firsts. Image courtesy of the Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, gift of David Merrick Fairweather and Yvonne Goff.

Sogata

What we know about Sogata is illuminating — but limited. He was a Black interior design active in the Harlem Renaissance era. He sought work across the United States and internationally — from Miami and Hollywood to London and Paris — but didn’t find his stride until settling in New York, where he focused on nightclubs and famously designed the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem. According to architectural historian and author Michael Henry Adams, Sogata had a few signature design touches: indirect lighting, bronzed or peach-hued mirrors, and perhaps most notably, the man loved a curve. A 1937 article in the New Pittsburgh Courier describing some of Sogata’s projects said, “Throughout the whole is the famous Sogata trademark … a circle or a curve. He employed the arc effect wherever he could find a spot for it,” from oval bars to curved glass light shades.

What we don’t know about Sogata? His real name. Sogata is a pseudonym; he refused to share his true identity. What happened to him after the late 1930s is also a mystery. “The tragedy of it all is that there’s not a trace left,” Adams told Veranda magazine.

Robert T. Coles House

The first Black chancellor of the AIA, Robert Traynham Coles believed architecture and advocacy were inextricably linked. He designed his prefabricated mid-century home and studio in Buffalo, New York, with a unique layout, orienting the living spaces toward a back garden and courtyard, turning away from a planned highway that would cut through a tree-lined parkway in his predominantly Black neighborhood. Coles’s home, now the focus of preservation efforts, recently received grants from the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Getty Foundation.

Born in 1929 to a working-class family Buffalo, Coles became intrigued by architecture in high school. “My teacher took me aside and told me that I was wasting my time trying to be an architect, that I would be better off pursuing social work or the ministry. I gritted my teeth and vowed that I would be an architect, and the best darn one that I could be,” he wrote in a short personal essay. Coles went on to earn his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in architecture from the University of Minnesota and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, respectively; he started his own firm in 1963, becoming the first Black man to own an architectural practice in New York state. His work included urban public projects like community centers, affordable housing, libraries, and transit.

Located in Buffalo, New York, this home was designed by Robert T. Coles and built in 1961. Photo by Jalen Wright.

Harold Curtis Brown

Like Sogata, Harold Curtis Brown was a designer who crafted interiors for popular nightclubs during the age of the Harlem Renaissance, including the Cotton Club, Tilly’s, and the Saratoga Club. In addition to being one of the few known Black interior designers during this era, he was also openly gay.

Both a designer and a graphic artist, Brown studied at the Boston School of Fine Arts and the New School of Design. Before settling in New York, his travels took him to Paris and to Washington D.C., where he owned an art shop.

Beyond iconic nightclubs, Brown’s other notable works include the interiors of Hotel Navarro in Manhattan, which was later turned into one of an early Ritz-Carlton hotel. He also designed private homes. While there is little known about Brown before the late 1930s, the trail goes completely cold after 1938. Adams, the historian, believes that Brown decided to pass as white and worked under a different name to access more job opportunities and better pay, and seek refuge from racial discrimination.

Design Collection at the NMAAHC

Find an abundance of riches at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) in Washington, D.C., where Black design in all its forms — from furniture and architectural works to graphics and fashion — is on display. “Reclaiming My Time,” an exhibition running through January 2026, features work from contemporary Black designers and explores the necessity of rest (and the ways in which it was historically withheld from Black people), through seating design. One piece in the exhibit, the “Dan Chair” by artist and furniture maker Michael Puryear, was inspired by a wooden chair used by the Dan people of West Africa. To create the piece, Puryear sourced wood from Monticello, the plantation home of Thomas Jefferson, and Mount Vernon, George Washington’s plantation, two places where enslaved people were exploited and denied rest.

Even outside the museum, there’s powerful design to behold. The building’s tiered form is inspired by the work of a Yoruban master carver, Olowe of Ise, and the patterned bronze panels pay homage to metalwork by Black artisans in the American South.

The “Dan Chair,” by artist Michael Puryear references a chair style common among the Dan people of West Africa. Image courtesy of the collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Explorations of Black Architecture

These two books spotlight the underappreciated beauty of architecture in Black communities, and the unsung works of Black architects and designers.

In Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago’s South Side, photographer, writer, and architecture expert Lee Bey calls attention to 60 striking buildings across Chicago’s predominantly Black South Side, from a Space Age dry cleaner to an unusual Frank Lloyd Wright home and a colorful youth center. Bey, the architecture critic at the Chicago Sun-Times, highlights the history of each structure, paired with his own photography, and snippets of memoir about his own South Side upbringing. Southern Exposure offers an important, and refreshing view, of the Chicago’s South Side, which is too often framed in terms of violence or poverty, rather than the beauty of its place, people, and community. (Browse a selection of photographs, and read an excerpt, here.)

In Greatness: Diverse Designers of Architecture, author Pascale Sablan showcases the work of women and diverse architects through case studies, essays, and profiles. Sablan, an architect herself, also addresses how architecture has caused historical harms, and how it can be used to heal.

Paul Revere Williams and Norma Harvey

The first Black architect to become a member of the AIA, Paul Revere Williams’ life began with profound loss. Born in in 1894 in Los Angeles, both his parents died from tuberculosis before he turned four. While loss shaped his childhood, Williams’ legacy is defined by the act of creation — several thousand acts. Between the early 1920s, when he began designing residential and commercial spaces, and his death in 1980, he designed more than 3,000 buildings. Early in his career, he taught himself to draw upside down, so when white clients doubted his abilities due to his race — or were wary of sitting beside him — he would sketch out a design as they described their project, bringing their vision to life in real time across the table.

Among his many projects, Williams created residences for several celebrities, including Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, Cary Grant, and Frank Sinatra, earning the nickname “architect to the stars.” A 2020 documentary on Williams from PBS SoCal, “Hollywood’s Architect: The Paul R. Williams Story,” delves deeper into his life and work.

Norma Harvey, Williams’ daughter, was a skilled interior designer in her own right, often working with her father to craft distinct interiors for high-profile clients. Harvey oversaw interiors for Sinatra’s home (pictured below), which Williams designed in a Japanese modern style, selecting complementary Asian-inspired furnishings and dramatic color palettes.

Paul Revere Williams was the first Black architect to become a member of the American Institute of Architects. Photo by Getty Images.

Frank Sinatra’s home, located at 2666 Bowmont Drive in Beverly Hills, was designed by Paul Revere Williams in 1956. Image courtesy of the California History Room, California State Library, Sacramento, California.

The interior of Sinatra’s home was designed by Norma Harvey, Williams’ daughter. Image courtesy of the California History Room, California State Library, Sacramento, California.

The Harlem StoryMap

Much has been written about Harlem, but until a few years ago, it might’ve been a challenge to find a comprehensive overview of Black-designed spaces in the historic neighborhood. That is, until the Harlem StoryMap came to life in 2021. Created by Thandi Nyambose, a then-student at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, the StoryMap is an interactive, digital project that contains archival materials, census maps, photographs, news clipping, and even audio snippets detailing spaces created by Black architects.

Highlighted sites include St. Philip’s Church, designed in 1911 by Vertner Woodson Tandy, the first Black licensed architect in New York, and the 1937 Harlem River Houses, the city’s first federally subsidized public housing development, designed by John Louis Wilson. Wilson was the first Black graduate of Columbia University’s School of Architecture.

“Every time I discover the history of a Black person who’s created something, who’s left a mark on culture, it’s energizing,” Nyambose said in a Harvard news article. “The value of these stories being told cannot be underestimated.”

Harlem Toile de Jouy

It’s hard not to be enthralled by Harlem Toile. Created by prominent interior Harlem-based designer Sheila Bridges — whose clients have included Bill Clinton, Kamala Harris, and Princeton University — Harlem Toile de Jouy is a reimagining of 18th-century toile de Jouy, fabric printed with pastoral scenes that originated in Jouy-en-Josas, France. Bridges had long been drawn to toile, and for many years, she sought some to include in her home décor. But she never found what she was looking for — so she created it. Harlem Toile de Jouy features everyday scenes of Black life, from girls jumping rope to men playing basketball, and images of Black people dancing and picnicking in 18th-century attire.

Originally conceived as a wallpaper, Harlem Toile de Jouy is now available in multiple forms, printed on fabrics, Dutch ovens (thanks to a collaboration with Le Creuset), and fine china (from a collaboration with Wedgwood).

This lavender bone china accent plate is part of a collaboration between Sheila Bridges and Wedgwood. Image courtesy of the collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, gift of Wedgwood.

Decolonizing Design: A Cultural Justice Guidebook

In this book, author, design anthropologist, and advocate Elizabeth (Dori) Tunstall explores the ways modernist design and the built environment have historically excluded Black, Indigenous, and other people of color — and outlines how design can be harnessed as a tool to unify and heal. With specificity, scholarship, and insights from her personal experiences, Tunstall explains what exactly what decolonizing design means, investigating embedded biases and pulling in historical examples to make her case. She also provides practical, actionable strategies that readers can employ on their journey to make design more inclusive.

Sylvia Harris

Graphic designer Sylvia Harris saw herself as a “citizen designer,” and lived up to the moniker. She earned her master’s degree in graphic design at Yale, and went on to co-found a company where she thought deeply about user-centric design — and put it into practice. Her former business partner, David Gibson, told the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) that she developed a term, “public information design,” that propelled her work. Later, as creative director for the U.S. Census Bureau, her designs contributed to an uptick in Census return rates, and in 2000, amid discussions about poor ballot design after the presidential election, she created a “Voting By Design” poster that examined every step of the voting process, explaining how good design could improve democracy.

Harris, who was posthumously awarded an AIGA medal in 2014, also challenged her industry to reckon with its lack of diversity, and to identify and teach Black design traditions. In a short essay, “Searching for a Black Aesthetic in American Graphic Design,” she briefly noted examples of Black design influences from the 1920s through the ’90s. “It is my hope that American designers and scholars will contribute to this body of knowledge,” she wrote, “and support a generation of designers hungry to see their people and experience reflected in the mirror of our profession.”

Azurest South

Amaza Lee Meredith, one of our country’s earliest Black female architects, lived an extraordinary, unconventional life. Her International Style home and studio, Azurest South, was similarly atypical, with its concrete façade and flat roof.

Meredith was born in Lynchburg, Virginia, in 1895, and her teen years were marked by tragedy. In 1915, her father died by suicide; she graduated high school the same year. Educated at Virginia State University (then known as the Virginia Normal and Industrial Institute) and Columbia University, Meredith went on to teach art at Virginia State. She ultimately chaired the art department, as well as designing homes for friends and family. Meredith designed Azurest South, located on the campus of Virginia State, in the 1930s, and her architectural style was as unusual as her living arrangements — she shared the home with her longtime companion, Dr. Edna Meade Colson, openly living with a same-sex partner.

Now, used as gathering space by the Virginia State University Alumni Association, the house recently received grant funding from the Getty Foundation and National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Meredith’s legacy also lives on in Sag Harbor, New York, where she and her sister created a community of summer cottages for middle-class Black vacationers. Luminaries like Harry Belafonte, Duke Ellington, and Lena Horne were known to visit. The name of that enclave? Azurest North.

Azurest South was designed by Amaza Lee Meredith and built in 1934. The home is located on the grounds of Virginia State University. Photo by Hannah Price.

Black Artists + Designers Guild

Founded in 2018 by artist and designer Malene Barnett, the Black Artists + Designers Guild (BADG) provides community and creative support to artists and designers of African descent. The nonprofit, mission-driven organization, which is committed to equity and inclusion, seeks to increase visibility of and opportunities for Black creatives, and provide space for artists and designers to collaborate, innovate, and appreciate one another’s work. Speaking of appreciation: Last fall, Barnett, the daughter of Caribbean immigrants, published Crafted Kinship, a book celebrating the work of contemporary Black Caribbean artists and designers.

“COMPLEX DREAMS”

A vivid homage to Black girlhood is on display inside Michigan State University’s Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum. “COMPLEX DREAMS,” an installation by multidisciplinary artist Esmaa Mohamoud running through February 15, was crafted specifically for the Broad Art Museum, designed by renowned architect Zaha Hadid. Pieces in the exhibition include a sculpture of a young Black girl — made from shea butter, resin, wax, and charred bones — outfitted in overalls and gold earrings and looking skyward. Nearby, an 18-foot-tall powder-coated steel fence towers above her.

“I grew up in a subsidized housing complex and we were barred in with fences,” Mohamoud told museum curator Steven L. Bridges. “For me, fences signal attempts to keep you both in and out.” Another striking element of the exhibit: aa collection of 6,000 painted steel butterflies hanging from the museum’s ceiling.

Installation view of the “COMPLEX DREAMS” exhibition at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University. Photo by Kyle Flubacker Photography.

Here: Where the Black Designers Are

In Here: Where the Black Designers Are, graphic designer, educator, and activist Cheryl D. Holmes-Miller answers a question she’d been asking for decades: Where are the Black designers? With compelling prose, she recounts her experiences on the path to a vibrant design career, from her multiethnic upbringing to her design education as a graduate student at Pratt Institute, and her design work for notable clients including NASA and Time, Inc. Throughout, she investigates the dearth of diversity in design and issues a call for greater inclusion.

“We all have a purpose in life,” Holmes-Miller writes in her memoir’s opening pages. “Though seemingly simple, mine has been quite complex: I am called to tell you the story of the very first Black graphic designer and to make sure that the Black designer of today never goes missing again.”

Charles McAfee Swimming Pool and Pool House

Located in Wichita, Kansas, the Charles McAfee Pool was the first in the state to offer Black swimmers access to competition-length lanes. Designed by Black architect Charles McAfee and built in 1969, the pool features distinct modular elements, including concrete shade structures for pool visitors to seek relief from the sun and light towers for those interesting in swimming laps at night. The pool is situated in McAdams Park, which has special meaning for McAfee.

“McAdams Park was always very important to me, as it was the only park Black people could attend when I was growing up,” McAfee told the Getty Foundation. “When I got the chance to build the pool, I used materials that were going to last forever. Mostly concrete columns and brick walls that I knew couldn’t easily be destroyed.”In 2023, the Getty Foundation and the National Trust for Historic Preservation awarded grant funding to the city of Wichita to preserve the space as part of the Conserving Black Modernism initiative.

The Charles McAfee Pool and Pool House in Wichita, Kansas, were constructed in 1969. Photo by Nicole Bissey Photography.

The pool features distinct modular elements, including concrete shade structures for pool visitors to take a break from the sun. Photo by Nicole Bissey Photography.

Charles Harrison

Charles “Chuck” Harrison’s design influence is far-reaching. Very far-reaching: He designed more than 750 products for the Sears corporation. A graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Harrison became the first Black person in the United States to earn a degree in industrial design in 1954. He later received a master’s in art education at the Illinois Institute of Technology. When he first interviewed for a job at Sears, he was rejected because of his race, but the design manager, who couldn’t deny his talent, offered him freelance opportunities. In time, Sears brought him on — when he was hired at the Chicago headquarters in 1961, he was the first Black executive — and eventually he became the company’s chief product designer.

His designs helped shape several commonly used items, from the riding lawnmower to the cordless shaver and a wheeled plastic trashcan. Another unforgettable Harris design? The View-Master. Before he joined Sears, he worked at a small firm that tasked him with redesigning the View-Master. The first version was bulky and predominantly used by photographers. Harrison’s lighter, more intuitive version, became a popular toy — and an iconic item.

“Afrofuturism: A History of Black Futures”

If you missed the Afrofuturism exhibition at the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) that ended last summer, fortunately, you can still virtually experience the exhibit — or snag a copy of the companion book. With more than 100 objects from the world of music, comic books, television, fashion, and more, the exhibit explored interpretations of Black agency and identity, and visions of a more liberated future. Afrofuturism often involves technological, sci-fi, fantasy, and space themes, and the inspiration behind the exhibition began with musical group Parliament-Funkadelic’s iconic Mothership. When the museum’s curatorial team traveled to the home of P-Funk leader George Clinton to retrieve a 1,200-pound replica of the unforgettable stage prop, the idea for an Afrofuturist exhibit started to take root.

The Mothership is an almost-exact replica of the larger version used by George Clinton and his bands used during live concerts between 1976 and 1981. The clone was built in the 1990s. Photo by Eric Long.

I had to find another place where they hadn’t perceived black people to be, and that was on a spaceship.

George Clinton, Parliament-Funkadelics, 1976

Anthologies on Black Design

These two anthologies collectively contain a spectrum of perspectives and wide range of thought-provoking ideas.

The Black Experience in Design: Identity, Expression and Reflection features an array of Black voices on design, with essays on design education and scholarship, activism and community-engaged design, art, Afrofuturism, and liberatory spaces. Shaped by six editors with contributions from about 70 designers, artists, educators, curators, researchers, and students, the book seeks to convey the richness of Black creativity and experiences across mediums, introduce new ways of seeing, and to promote practices that will produce a more equitable future.

Similarly, An Anthology of Blackness: The State of Black Design investigates why the design profession struggles to attract, retain, and support Black creatives. Through essays, personal stories, cases studies, and visual narratives, contributors highlight the value of community and solidarity and outline design practices that support inclusion. Overall, the book is a work of design scholarship and social justice.

The National Organization of Minority Architects

NOMA, founded in 1971 when a group of 14 Black architects met during the AIA National Convention in Detroit, has activist roots. Founding members sought to fight racial discrimination that hindered minority architects’ professional success. Now, the organization has grown to more than 1,000 members and continues its mission of cultivating justice and equity for communities of color, showcasing the talent of architects of color, and fostering communication and camaraderie among minority design professionals.

First Baptist Church-West

The red brick building that currently houses the First Baptist Church-West congregation was designed in the 1970s, but the church’s history predates its structure — it is the oldest Black Baptist church community in Charlotte, North Carolina, first established in 1867. The current building, with its sharp angles, geometric shapes, vaulted ceiling, and interior walls adorned with stained glass, was designed in 1977 by architect and civil rights activist Harvey Gantt, who has a storied past of his own.

Gantt was elected the first Black mayor of Charlotte in 1983; he also made history by being the first Black student admitted to Clemson University in 1963. Initially denied solely because of his race, he filed a lawsuit that went all the way to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. His wife, Lucinda Brawley, was the first Black woman admitted to Clemson.

The First Baptist Church-West in Charlotte, North Carolina, was designed by Harvey Gantt in 1977. Photo by Tema Nicole Stauffer.

“Making Home — Smithsonian Design Triennial”

What does home mean, exactly? Artists present a multitude of distinct answers to this question in the “Making Home” exhibition, which includes 25 site-specific installations throughout the Andrew and Louise Carnegie Mansion, now home to Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.

“Making Home” is Cooper Hewitt’s seventh triennial, but the first presented in partnership with another Smithsonian, the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Each installation investigates how design factors into the physical trappings and emotional resonance of home. Curators commissioned all brand-new works for the triennial (another first), and some artists created pieces that probe the idea of home for Black Americans. In “The Underground Library: An Archive of Our Truth,” the Black Artists + Designers Guild turned Andrew Carnegie’s personal library into a space where visitors can read about Black history while surrounded by objects that pay homage to the African diaspora.

And in “So That You All Won’t Forget: Speculations on a Black Home in Rural Virginia,” designer Curry J. Hackett and his Wayside Studio installed dried tobacco leaves, sourced from an area near his family’s Virginia farmland, in what was once the Carnegies’ dressing room. “Tobacco is typically associated with enslaved labor or nicotine addiction,” Hackett said, “but my relationship to it is more nostalgic, since my family grew and sold it on land that they owned for generations.”

The exhibition is open through August 10.

Installation of “The Underground Library” by the Black Artists + Designers Guild in “Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial” at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Photo by Ann Sunwoo © Smithsonian Institution.

Installation of “So That You All Won’t Forget: Speculations on a Black Home in Rural Virginia” by Curry J. Hackett, Wayside Studio in the “Making Home” exhibition at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Photo by Elliot Goldstein © Smithsonian Institution.

Beverly Lorraine Greene

Chicago-born Beverly Lorraine Greene, the first Black woman to become a licensed architect in America, was no stranger to firsts. As a college student in 1936, she became the first Black woman to earn a bachelor’s degree in architectural engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, and she stayed on another year to earn her master’s degree in city planning. Early in her career, she worked for the Chicago Housing Authority on the Ida B. Wells Homes, and later, in New York, she earned a second graduate degree at Columbia University (this time, a master’s in architecture).

Her talent earned her jobs with leading architects of the day, including Edward Durell Stone and Marcel Breuer; with the former, she worked on part of Sarah Lawrence College’s arts complex, and with the latter, she contributed to the design of the UNESCO United Nations Headquarters in Paris, among other work.

“Liberatory Living: Protective Interiors and Radical Black Joy”

A current exhibition at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco explores the crucial importance of spaces — whether literal or metaphorical — that offer Black people beauty, rest, and radical joy. “Liberatory Living: Protective Interiors and Radical Black Joy” includes furnishings, lighting, wallcoverings and ceramics from 16 contemporary designers and artists, including Sheila Bridges, Cheryl R. Riley, Michael Bennett, Norman Teague, and more. These works present a new way of thinking about domestic interiors, safety, and belonging. The exhibition runs through early March.

This piece from Chantal Hildebrand, titled Woke Women II, is featured in the exhibition. Image courtesy of Vessel Gallery.

Moses McKissack III and Calvin Lunsford McKissack

The McKissack brothers — Moses III and Calvin — were some of the first registered architects in Tennessee. Around 1790, their grandfather, Moses McKissack, became a master carpenter; he passed down his knowledge of the building trade through the generations. In 1905, Moses III started an architecture and engineering firm in Nashville, with help from his brother, Calvin; his first major commission came in 1908, with the design and construction of the Carnegie Library at Fisk University.

While Calvin went his own way in 1912, opening an independent practice, the brothers reconnected as business partners in 1922, later expanding their architectural work beyond the bounds of Tennessee to Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, and Mississippi. Major projects included a nearly $6 million contract to design and construct the 99th Pursuit Squadron Airbase in Tuskegee, Alabama in 1942.

After the McKissack brothers’ deaths, women in the family eventually took over firm leadership. Today, engineer Deryl McKissack, the granddaughter of Moses III, helms an architecture and engineering firm that continues the McKissack legacy.

“Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica”

Featuring 350 objects made by artists across the globe, “Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica,” is the first major exhibition to closely examine cultural expressions of Pan-Africanism. Usually taking the form of a political or cultural movement, Pan-Africanism calls for unity among people of African descent. In this exhibition, artists from Africa, North and South America, and Europe put forth ideas about decolonization, freedom, and self-determination. Co-organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona in collaboration with KANAL-Centre Pompidou Bruxelles, the exhibit is open through March 30.

This piece from Zanele Muholi, “Somnyama III, Paris, from the series Somnyama Ngonyama,” is on display in the Art Institute’s exhibition “Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica.” Image courtesy of The Art Institute of Chicago, promised gift of Isabel Wilcox.

Masjid Muhammad, Nation’s Mosque

Among the oldest Black Muslim congregations in the country, Masjid Muhammad, also called the Nation’s Mosque, was founded in 1937. The current building, constructed in 1960, was designed by Black architect David R. Byrd — it was the first community mosque in Washington D.C. to be built by American citizen and local residents. Founded by Elijah Muhammad, the mosque counted Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali among its members. The building’s design marries raw materials with detailed interiors and Islamic motifs.

In 2024, Masjid Muhammad received a grant from the Getty Foundation and the National Trust for Historic Preservation as part of the Conserving Black Modernism initiative. Those funds will be used to help realize the mosque’s sustainability goals — the plan is to earn LEED certification and become D.C.’s first green mosque.

Washington, D.C.’s Masjid Muhammad, Nation’s Mosque, was designed by David R. Byrd and built in 1960. Photo by E.A. Crunden.

Carson City Hall

Co-designed by Black architect Robert Kennard, Carson City Hall in Carson, California, was influenced by Japanese and Spanish Rancho-style architecture, along with nautical forms. Inside, the main staircase leads to a nautilus-shaped atrium; interior walls are crafted from polished teak, reminiscent of a yacht.

Kennard — who was born in Los Angeles and inspired by other prominent Black Californian architects — such as Paul R. Williams, founded his architecture firm in 1957. It’s now the oldest Black-owned architecture firm in L.A., currently helmed by his daughter, Gail Kennard. During his lifetime, Kennard designed more than 700 projects. He co-designed the Carson City Hall building with a diverse team, including Japanese American architect Frank Sata, Japanese American artist and landscape architect Yoshito Kuromiya, and Latino interior and graphics designer Michael Sanchez.