“Who ever heard
of a black architect?”
34 SPRING 2019 | WWW.SHAKER.LIFE
Madison as a freshman architecture
student at Howard University, 1940.
Bob Madison’s rhetorical question comes in the middle of conversation we’re
having about his storied career and the obstacles he had to overcome. As an African
American born in 1923, there were plenty.
His question refers to the mid-1950s, when he opened his firm, Robert P.
Madison Architect on East 105th Street, and couldn’t find work. Real work designing
real buildings.
“We did porches, basements, things like that.”
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