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A plaque next to the red doors outside St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Northwest D.C. states that the church’s building was designed by Calvin T.S. Brent. It describes him as a local African American architect and explains the building is a replica of an Anglican Church in England.
Brent, according to D.C. Preservation League Executive Director Rebecca Miller, is known as the city’s first African American architect. He started apprenticing at 19 years old, and worked on various projects across the city, mostly for African Americans.
But there are many other buildings that visitors and residents may not know were designed by African Americans, Miller said. One of the league’s newest projects is aiming to change that.
“Only 1% of licensed architects in the country are African American, and so we thought it was really important to diversify that,” Miller said. “If you’re going to tell the full story of a city, you really need to tell the full story of who built it and who lives there.”
The initiative aims to track D.C. buildings that African American artists designed. The final product, which is expected to be finished within two years, will be a Multiple Property Document from the National Park Service. It’s a National Register Document, Miller said, so it will be reviewed by D.C.’s Historic Preservation Review Board, adopted by it and then forwarded to the National Register of Historic Places.
The project will be put together with help from a contractor, Studio Plat, which Miller said has been working to establish a database of Black architects for locations across the country. It’s being paid for using a $75,000 grant from the National Park Service.
African American architects, Miller said, are an underrepresented category on the National Register of Historic Places and the D.C. Inventory of Historic Sites.
“We wanted to draw light to all the fantastic architecture you see in D.C. that you didn’t know was designed by Black architects,” Miller said.
Howard University’s architecture program played a significant role in the development of D.C., Miller said, and there are buildings across the city that Black architects designed. Those include buildings on Howard’s campus and the Langston Terrace Dwellings, one of the first affordable housing projects for African Americans.
Once the document is established, Miller said there will be public programming with it and information about the various sites will be added to the group’s app.
“It’s educational for us to know the development of the city and how, sometimes, you forget that there are lots of other people who are designing,” Miller said.
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