Pioneering Black Architects in Los Angeles and Chicago: A Reflection by Janna Ireland and Lee Bey

Pioneering Black Architects in Los Angeles and Chicago

This event explored the work of pioneering Black architects in Los Angeles and Chicago through the lenses of photographers Janna Ireland and Lee Bey. Their recent books, Regarding Paul R. Williams: A Photographer’s View and Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago’s South Side, examine and document the buildings, from private homes to churches and hospitals, designed by a series of Black architects that left their mark in those cities.

Janna Ireland discussed the work of Paul R. Williams, the legendary Los Angeles architect who became the first Black member of the American Institute of Architects and, later, the first Black recipient of the AIA Gold Medal. Ireland’s book, Regarding Paul R. Williams: A Photographer’s View, contains over 200 photographs taken at Williams’s buildings, from modest homes for middle class families to mansions for the elite.

Lee Bey’s Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago’s South Side is the first book devoted to the South Side’s rich and unfairly ignored architectural heritage. It documents the remarkable and largely unsung architecture of the South Side, including buildings by pioneering Black architects such as Walter T. Bailey, John Moutoussamy, and Roger Margerum.

Suggested readings

Jonaki Mehta, “Regarding Paul R. Williams’ Honors Legacy Of LA’s Barrier-Breaking Black Architect,” NPR, January, September 15, 2020.

Lost LA, “Paul Revere Williams: An African-American Architect in Jet-Age L.A.,” KCET, Season 4, Episode 4.

“The Paul Revere Wiliams Project,” an initiative of the Memphis chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and The Art Museum of the University of Memphis (AMUM).

Iker Gil and Lee Bey, “Southern Exposure:The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago’s South Side,” MAS Context, September 22, 2019.

David Hammond, “South Side Building Stories: Paging Through Lee Bey’s ‘Southern Exposure’,” Newcity, October 3, 2019.

You can purchase the books from their publishers or your local bookstore:

→ Regarding Paul R. Williams: A Photographer’s View (Angel City Press Press, 2020).

→ Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago’s South Side (Northwestern University Press, 2019).