Tuskegee Institute Architecture Workshop

1980

Tuskegee University has trained generations of African American architects.

In 1892, Booker T. Washington recruited Robert Robinson Taylor to be Tuskegee Institute’s lead architect. Taylor designed over 20 of the campus’s early buildings and helped develop its Mechanical Industries Department. A noted professor, Taylor also trained a generation of African American architects. In the 1980s, Tuskegee hosted a series of workshops to discuss the creation of a National Resource Center on Afro-American Architecture. Workshop documents detail plans for a museum, archive, training program, and other resources for students and working architects. The cover page includes a photograph of an early architecture class held at Tuskegee in 1900.

Though the center was never built, this and other contemporary efforts by African American institutions to document their history show the rich tradition of application and investment in Black industrial education.