Paul R. Williams

Paul R. Williams (1894-1980), architect. Paul Revere Williams was born in Los Angeles, which was then a mid-sized city with a black population around 2,000. His parents, who had moved from Memphis to seek a better climate for their tuberculosis, died when he was four, but his foster mother provided a stable environment and encouraged his interests in art, while her builder friend exposed him to architecture. He was the only black student in his elementary school and high school, where he became known for carrying his sketchbooks and pencils with him everywhere. When he told a guidance counselor that he wanted to be an architect, the man “stared at me with as much astonishment as he would have had I proposed a rocket flight to Mars,” then exclaimed “Whoever heard of a Negro being an architect?” In response, the teenager decided that “If I allow the fact that I am a Negro to checkmate my will to do now, I will inevitably form the habit of being defeated…Therefore, I owe it to myself and to my people to accept this challenge.” After finishing high school, he took night classes at the Los Angeles School of Art and Design and apprenticed at the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design, even while being told “Your own people can’t afford you, and White clients won’t hire you.” He used the phone book to create an alphabetical list of every architect in LA and then visited each one in search of a job, but he was only offered the position of office boy. After a week of working in this position without pay, though, he was promoted. In 1914 he won a student competition to design a civic center in Pasadena, the first of several such prizes that he would garner over the next few years. In order to strengthen his understanding of math and physics, he studied architectural engineering at the University of Southern California, designing other buildings while still in school and pledging Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc.

In 1921 Williams became the first certified black architect west of the Mississippi River. He worked for a white architect for several years, rising to the rank of chief draftsman and becoming the first black member of the American Institute of Architects, before leaving to start his own business. He later remarked that “Without having the wish to ‘show them,’ I developed a fierce desire to ‘show myself’…I wanted to vindicate every ability I had. I wanted to acquire new abilities. I wanted to prove that I, AS AN INDIVIDUAL, deserved a place in the world.” His career coincided with Los Angeles becoming one of the largest cities in the West due to the oil and motion picture industries, and Williams was in demand to help the city grow. Many of his early works were private homes for business executives and movie stars such as Lucille Ball, Frank Sinatra, Lon Chaney, Barbara Stanwyck, and Danny Thomas. One real estate agent in the Beverly Hills area where many of these homes were built later called him “the Jackie Robinson of architecture.” As his reputation grew, Williams also began designing larger buildings for commercial, public, and broader occupancy use, including: the Los Angeles Superior Courthouse, the seat of government for Los Angeles County, the Beverly Sunset Medical Center, the Saks Fifth Avenue store, the Theme Building, the Beverly Hills Hotel, Perino’s restaurant, several schools, the MCA Building (which won him the AIA’s Award of Merit in 1939), and the Imperial Courts and Pueblo del Rio housing projects. The Los Angeles Times later reflected that ““If you have a picture in your mind of Southern California in the 1950s and early 1960s, you are quite likely picturing a building created by Paul Williams.” He also designed many structures for black community institutions, including: Angelus Funeral Home (the first incorporated black business in California), the 28^th Street YMCA, the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza mall, the First AME Church (the oldest black church in LA), the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Building (the largest black insurance company in the West), Broadway Federal Savings and Loan (the oldest black bank west of the Mississippi), and Second Baptist Church. His desire for racial uplift also led him to serve on Los Angeles’ first housing commission. Although most of his designs were in the Los Angeles area, he also created the Hotel Nutibara in Colombia, several churches and hotels in Las Vegas, the Langston Terrace housing project in Washington D.C., several buildings at Howard University, and St. Jude’s Hospital in Memphis. Some of these works are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, which preserves buildings of architectural and/or historic significance.

Williams’ many designs earned notoriety for their diversity in size and use and in architectural styles. One critic noted that he was “remarkably sensitive to changes in architectural fashion. He endeavored to retain a foothold in the past while transforming it with a sense of contemporaneity.” He himself described his approach to design by stating that “Planning is thinking beforehand how something is to be made or done, and mixing imagination with the product – which in a broad sense makes all of us planners. The only difference is that some people get a license to get paid for thinking and the rest of us just contribute our good thoughts to our fellow man.” Neither his skills nor the need for these buildings, though, could overcome racial prejudice. Many prospective clients came to his office knowing his reputation but not his race, and in his words, “The moment…they met me and discovered they were dealing with a Negro, I could see many of them freeze. Their interest in discussing plans waned instantly and their one remaining concern was to discover a convenient exit without hurting my feelings.” Even those who hired him were uncomfortable sitting next to him while he drew designs for them, and so he mastered the art of drawing upside down so that they could sit across the table while he worked. Some of the subcontractors and artisans working on the home did not want to take orders from him. Many of the homes that he built were on land with had restrictive covenants which barred African Americans from living there; as his granddaughter later ironically remarked, “Here was this man designing mansions in places he couldn’t dream of living.”

During World War II, Williams worked for the Navy and designed a naval station in Long Beach. The war brought thousands of African Americans and millions of people overall to Los Angeles, and this and the growing Civil Rights Movement helped increase his national profile. His books The Small Home of Tomorrow and New Homes of Today to help returning veterans purchase their own homes, and he also wrote numerous essays on housing for Ebony magazine, whose editor later wrote that “He was very concerned with the problem of low-income housing, especially for African-Americans…He showed this by his tremendous commitment in writing and speaking about the issue. He was thinking about how you can build something for yourself with a small amount of money.” During the 1950s he received the Man of the Year award from Omega Psi Phi, the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal, an award from Wisdom magazine for “contributions to knowledge and distinguished service to mankind,” and honorary doctorates from three universities. He also became the first black member of the AIA’s College of Fellows. When he retired in 1973, he had designed more than 3,000 structures. His health began to fail from diabetes, but when his family took him for drives around Los Angeles, he often saw one of his buildings, smiled, and said “That’s a fine piece of work.” His funeral was held in a church that he had created. Several years after his death, one of the mansions that he had designed earned new fame when it was used in the TV show The Colbys, a spinoff of Dynasty. In a sadly ironic commentary on race relations, many of his drawings and other records were accidentally destroyed during the 1992 Los Angeles Rebellion, caused by the acquittal of police officers for the beating of black motorist Rodney King. In 2015 the city of Los Angeles built a memorial plaza for Williams near his Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Building. Two years later he was given the Gold Medal by the AIA, whose leader noted that “His pioneering career has encouraged others to cross a chasm of historic biases. I can't think of another architect whose work embodies the spirit of the Gold Medal better. His recognition demonstrates a significant shift in the equity for the profession and the institute…Our profession desperately needs more architects like Paul Williams.”

©David Brodnax, Sr.