LB: In the late 1800s and early 1900s, you had very small communities of African Americans on the West Coast, and those histories are lesser known than histories of Black people migrating to the Midwest, the Northeast, and along the Atlantic seaboard. Williams thrived in that scene not only because of his personality and extremely sophisticated aesthetic, but also because he supported the African American community that proliferated in Central L.A. Europeans like Rudolph Schindler came to work with him. The architect Frank Lloyd Wright came from Chicago and left his signature on a group of innovative residences. attracted an amazing group of modern talents. His career started at the beginning of the ’20s, a time when L.A. was the best route for this young, inventive, and extremely skilled draftsman. Sometimes you associate African American history with other regions of the United States-the South or the East Coast. Williams is pretty much at the root of the tree of African American architects. His archive will no doubt help us have a more in-depth understanding of the vast amount of work he’s done, and how important he was, and is, to American architecture. I found out about Paul Williams in a book when I was researching African American artists as a college undergraduate. He grew up in First AME, was married there, and was eventually a Board Trustee of the church. LeRonn Brooks: Williams’ parents had been members of the church since they moved to Los Angeles in 1893. I saw one of Williams’ drawings-a plan for the First African Methodist Episcopal (First AME) Church-and I was immediately impressed by his masterly control of the interior space and facades, which he articulates via a zig-zag movement of the surfaces. Constructs the Future, 1940–1990, which surveyed L.A.’s unique urban landscape and architectural innovations. Maristella Casciato: I first learned of Paul Williams through the 2013 Getty Museum exhibition OverDrive: L.A. on a warm spring afternoon and admire Williams’ modernist, Spanish Colonial Revival, and other beautiful buildings for yourselves. Here is their conversation-so that you might be inspired to cruise around L.A. Brooks, associate curator for Modern and Contemporary Collections, recently met over Zoom to discuss six iconic L.A. In the meantime, the Getty Research Institute’s Maristella Casciato, senior curator of architecture, and LeRonn P. Getty and USC will collaborate to make the archive accessible to the public, and will also partner on exhibitions, programs, and publications about Williams’ work. The archive of this prolific architect, comprising several thousand sketches, blueprints, and project notes, was jointly acquired by the Getty Research Institute and the University of Southern California School of Architecture last year. Yet many Angelenos drive by his buildings every day with no idea who designed them, or that Williams used a precise architectural language to convey function and mission.
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