Booker T. Washington, Robert R. Taylor & The Tuskegee Architecture Program
Booker T. Washington, just getting started, took the Tuskegee architectural program to an entirely new level when he hired Robert R. Taylor in 1892. Taylor was the son of a freed slave turned builder in Wilmington, North Carolina and had mastered the practical skills of building in his adolescence under his father’s guidance.
This is the second post in a series recognizing Tuskegee as the first American institution to establish the ideal education for those that create the built environment. Here is a link to the first article in the series:
Taylor was the first Black student enrolled toMIT in 1888 and graduated as the valedictorian in 1892. MIT’s architecture program was the first of its kind in America, spearheaded in 1866 by the newly founded American Institute of Architects (AIA), a group whose mission was to raise the social status of the white architect. Prior to this time the way one became an architect, including most of the AIA founders, was by ascending the trades. One started as an apprentice in the field, worked his way up to a journeyman, and once one became a master was able to direct and design the work. The ancient Greek derivation of the word architect literally means “master builder” and up until this time the word “builder” was synonymous with “architect” in dictionaries. A big part of the AIA’s agenda was to distance themselves from manual work, the trades, and anything else this elitist group thought would prevent them from being on par with “professionals,” such as lawyers or doctors. Up until their separation from the trades, their necessary association with the physical labor of building prevented them from achieving the status of a “gentleman”, not just an adjective then, but an out-of-reach objective social standing that prohibited manual labor.
For the AIA founders, MIT’s prestige made it the perfect institution for them to implement their curriculum, steeped in theory and devoid of hands-on experience in the product of the craft, turning their backs from which they came. Imagine a culinary school training master chefs to write recipes without teaching how to cook. That was the new model established by the AIA, starting with MIT.
As this warped tradition was born and unfortunately still insidiously dominates the curriculum of architectural training today, Taylor flourished and managed to further his mastery. Already a competent builder, Taylor was able to enhance his practical foundation as a skilled artisan with a breadth of theoretical knowledge for design.
The AIA’s decision to have a university-based curriculum aligned with their goal of status, as opposed to an apprenticeship based one, from which their founders came, was a pivotal moment which coincides in time with Tuskegee’s development of the ideal educational training for an architect. Ironic, as at the exact same moment the AIA and MIT were perpetuating an educational model that would lead to the fall of the architect, they inadvertently helped spur on the ideal model for us to follow at Tuskegee by completing Taylor’s education. Upon graduation he was recruited by Washington to lead Tuskegee’s architecture program.
MIT, a hallowed land of academia, was a far cry from Tuskegee’s hands-on approach. Without Taylor’s prior experience in the trades, he would not have been able to fluidly embrace Tuskegee’s practical-based architectural program.
This point of the best architects in history having a foundation in building is significant, yet often missed, as it does not fit the current status quo and is hard to come by today. I graduated with a degree in architecture without ever having built anything in my life. I felt lost and went about filling that void I knew I had. I now look for hands-on experience for aspiring architects within my firm.
Taylor didn’t shift Washington’s focus on “learning to do by doing,” but instead elevated the standard and theory of design with his hard-earned know-how. Shortly after starting his tenure, the school paper stated Taylor was “ . . . teaching the students not only how to do the work, but the principles embodied in their respective lines . . . students are not only taught how to do carpentry work, but how to draw the plans of simple buildings, estimate their costs and make out bills of lumber, and are taught to work out general problems in construction.”
The buildings the students created on campus were well-built, functional and aesthetic. They represented an elevated and improved condition for the Black professional community and American Black culture, as Washington had intended.
Unlike the AIA and the typical American university, the viewpoints of Tuskegee’s men and women were not clouded by the pretentious considerations of a facade of prestige. They were interested in being effective. And so, Tuskegee strode forward, setting an indelible precedence of competence and effective action. They followed the natural track of creation where conception and execution are inherently interwoven with a single source of accountability. Unlike what was being done outside their walls, they did not separate design and construction professionals, who while needing each other to realize the product of a building, were being trained as adversaries in a contentious set-up that still stands today.
