Abele designed 39 buildings for the Durham campus, including a spectacular Gothic chapel and Cameron Indoor Stadium where the Blue Devils continue to play basketball. It is incontrovertible, however, that Abele was the lead architect for Duke University in North Carolina, a project he undertook after the death of Trumbauer. But he remembers distinctly that this was not an Abele job.” Lee can recall this man’s appearance, etc. It was given to ‘an older man who had been in the City Architect’s office and installed the elevators in City Hall’ before joining Trumbauer. Abele’s biographer, Dreck Wilson, however, asserts that Abele’s preferred material was limestone and that he would not have designed a red brick edifice such as Irvine Auditorium.įurthermore, a 1983 letter written by Penn archivist Francis James Dallet summarizes an interview he had conducted with a Trumbauer employee, Valentine Burkhart Lee. “…Lee remembers specifically that the finished design was one of the few big commissions not finished by Abele. Wouldn’t it be poetic if the first African American to graduate from the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Architecture designed one of the most iconic buildings on campus? According to Penn’s website, this was the case. Toward the end of the project, Abele stepped back in.Īlthough he surely played a role in creating this glorious building, neither Abele, nor any one individual, deserves the singular title: architect of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.ĭid Julian Abele design the Irvine Auditorium at Penn? For a number of years, though, Howell Lewis Shay, another Trumbauer designer, took the lead within the firm. | Image courtesy of the Athenaeum of PhiladelphiaĪccording to the extensive research done by Brownlee and by Abele’s biographer Dreck Wilson, it seems that Abele certainly did numerous initial designs for the building. These prints of the Philadelphia Museum of Art include the signatures of Horace Trumbauer and Julian Abele, but many other architects should be cited for the final design. See David Brownlee’s book Building the City Beautiful if you want the nitty gritty details. The design and construction of the museum took decades and was a not always harmonious collaboration between the Trumbauer firm and the firm of Zantzinger and Borie. Was Julian Abele the architect of the Philadelphia Museum of Art?īeginning in the 1970s and continuing through the 1990s, articles appeared in the local African-American press claiming that Julian Abele designed the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The idea that Abele was the architect for the museum is an oversimplification. And some of these Abele myths, it pains me to say, actually give Abele too much credit.
Today, however, misconceptions, exaggerations, and falsehoods about Julian Abele continue to abound. When the drink finally caught up with Trumbauer, Abele and another high-ranking employee took over the firm until Abele passed on as well. Thus, the extremely well-prepared Abele served as the firm’s chief designer for decades. Indeed, Trumbauer, although head of a prestigious architectural firm, never had formal training. Horace Trumbauer, Abele’s employer, was known to overindulge and eventually died of cirrhosis of the liver, but the idea that Abele was his servant is ridiculous. Nonetheless, a 1974 book about elaborate Newport, Rhode Island mansions contains the following absurd assertion: “The story goes that Trumbauer was frequently intoxicated, and so he left most of his work on these houses to be done by Julian Abele, his gifted black servant.” in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania (1902), and earned a certificate in architectural drawing from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Abele received a degree in architectural drawing from the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art (now UArts), became the first African American to graduate with a B.A. | Image courtesy of Penn Archivesįor many decades, architect Julian Francis Abele (1881-1950) was not given enough credit for his work. Philadelphia architect Julian Francis Abele in 1927.
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