A Profile of African American Architect Julian Abele: The Shadows are All Mine

Published 2022-04-07

You may not know Julian Abele by name, but you've probably encountered his architecture. As chief designer for Horace Trumbauer, he worked on over 250 buildings, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Philadelphia's Free Library. His designs left an indelible mark on the cities of Philadelphia, New York, and Newport, and on Duke University.

On February 15, 2022, the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art (ICAA) presented this talk "A Profile of African American Architect Julian Abele: The Shadows are All Mine." Hosted by designer Barbara Eberlein, the program featured presentations by David Brownlee, architectural historian at the University of Pennsylvania, and Amy Cohen, great-grand niece of Abele’s longtime friend and collaborator Louis Magaziner. These conversations centralize Abele in the history of classical tradition, a recognition long overdue.

Julian Abele was trained in the classical tradition at the University of Pennsylvania and readily embraced the Beaux-Arts style throughout his career. Working decades before the Civil Rights Act became law, he overcame innumerable obstacles in a country gripped by segregation. He designed Gilded Age mansions in Newport and New York, the Widener Memorial Library at Harvard, and much of the Duke University campus. Despite his incredible and prolific contributions, Abele was rarely publicly acknowledged for his work.

The title of the program is taken from Julian Abele's response when asked if a major architectural commission was exclusively his design:

“The lines are Mr. Trumbauer’s, but the shadows are all mine.”

Program Chapters:
00:17 Introduction by Barbara Eberlein
03:14 "Julian Francis Abele 1881-1950" by David Brownlee
20:37 "Julian Francis Abele & Louis Magaziner: The Story of an Unusual Friendship" by Amy Cohen
41:37 Panel Discussion with Barbara Eberlein, Amy Cohen, and David Brownlee

About the Speakers:
David Brownlee is an architectural historian at the University of Pennsylvania and has written about many of Philadelphia's architects and buildings, including Louis Kahn, Denise Scott Brown, Robert Venturi, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Barnes Foundation, and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. The Society of Architectural Historians named him a Fellow in 2015 and established the David B. Brownlee Dissertation Award in his honor in 2020. David has long been active in civic affairs and now serves on the boards of the Preservation Alliance, the Athenaeum, the Design Advocacy Group, the Beth Sholom Preservation Foundation, and the Philadelphia World Heritage City project.

Amy Cohen spent twenty years teaching World Geography and African American History. She serves as Director of Education for the documentary film company History Making Productions. She speaks and writes frequently on historical topics and is a monthly columnist for Hidden City. Cohen serves on the board of the Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion, a house museum whose mission is to showcase Victorian-era Philadelphia through architecture, gardens, furniture, and other collections.

Barbara Eberlein, the President and Creative Director at Eberlein Design Consultants and a member of the ICAA Board of Directors, has built a national reputation for expertise in the restoration of significant historic structures of the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. She is a sought-after lecturer on classical design, equally respected for her scholarly mastery and boundless enthusiasm for the field.

Sponsors:
Lead Annual Public Programs Sponsor: RINCK
Seasonal Public Programs Sponsor: Dell Mitchell Architects
Seasonal Public Programs Sponsor: Hyde Park Mouldings

This program is presented by the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art, a national nonprofit promoting the practice, understanding, and appreciation of classical design. To watch more online classes like this one, or to become a member and support our educational mission, visit www.classicist.org/ .

@justinleemiller 2 years ago

Thank you for this! I’ve always been curious about Abele.

@lovinglife419 1 year ago

Great lecture!

@waldenlake9818 10 months ago

This was a fabulous set of presentations, thank you for posting! It is hard to determine 'authorship' of a design within a collaborative practice. Abele's role in Trumbauer's office is also complicated by the incredible amount of talent present in his firm. What I like about Brownlee's presentation is that he intimates the potential role of several staff architects in Trumbauer's office (including Abele) that need to be 'brought from the shadows.' The guild-like structure of most architecture firms--with a lead designer taking final credit, but with many hands embellishing the design--makes it extremely difficult to authoritatively determine who created what. We often have to live with the fiction that one creative 'genius' authored all of the designs in an office with a collaborative structure. Such an unfortunate situation within a field with so much talent!