Paul R. Williams

Paul Williams
Born	(1894-02-18)February 18, 1894
Died	January 23, 1980(1980-01-23) (aged 85) Los Angeles, California
Occupation	Architect
Buildings	1935 Rene Faron Residence 1939 First Church of Christ, Scientist (Reno, Nevada) 1948 Golden State Mutual Life 1950 Perino's Restaurant 1951 Williams Residence 1958 Los Angeles Superior Court 1961 LAX Theme Building 1962 Beverly Sunset Medical Center

Paul Revere Williams (February 18, 1894 – January 23, 1980) was a Los Angeles based American architect. He based his practice largely in Southern California and designed the homes of numerous stars as well as other public and private buildings.

Childhood and academic career

Orphaned at the age of four, Williams was the only African American student in his elementary school. He studied at the Los Angeles School of Art and Design and at the Los Angeles branch of the New York Beaux-Arts Institute of Design Atelier, subsequently working as a landscape architect. He went on to attend the University of Southern California, School of Engineering designing several residential buildings while still a student there. Williams became a certified architect in 1921, and the first certified African American architect west of the Mississippi.

He married Della Mae Givens on June 27, 1917 at the First AME Church in Los Angeles. They had three children, Paul Revere Williams, Jr. (born and died June 30, 1925, buried in Evergreen Cemetery, Los Angeles); Marilyn Frances Williams (born December 25, 1926); and Norma Lucille Williams (born September 18, 1928).

Career

Williams won an architectural competition at age 25 and three years later opened his own office. Known as an outstanding draftsman, he perfected the skill of rendering drawings "upside down." This skill was developed so that his clients (who may have been uncomfortable sitting next to a "Black" architect) would see the drawings rendered right side up across the table from him. Fighting to gain attention, he served on the first Los Angeles City Planning Commission in 1920. Williams was the first African American member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). In 1939, he won the AIA Award of Merit for his design of the MCA Building in Los Angeles (now headquarters of the Paradigm Talent Agency).

File:ParadigmHeadquarters.jpg

Paradigm's Headquarters in Beverly Hills, CA.

A. Quincy Jones (1913-79) worked for Williams and later collaborated with him on projects in Palm Springs including the Palm Springs Tennis Club (1947) and the Town & Country (1948) and Romanoff's on the Rocks (1948) restaurants.

During World War II, Williams worked for the Navy Department as an architect. Following the war he published his first book, The Small Home of Tomorrow (1945), with a successor volume New Homes for Today the following year. In 1957 became the first African American to be voted an AIA Fellow.

In 1951, he won the Omega Psi Phi Man of the Year award and in 1953 Williams received the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP for his outstanding contributions as an architect and member of the African American community. Williams also received honorary doctorates from Howard University (doctor of architecture), Lincoln University (doctor of science), and the Tuskegee Institute (doctor of fine arts). In 2004, USC honored him by listing him among its distinguished alumni, in the television commercial for the school shown during its football games.

Williams famously remarked upon the bitter irony of the fact that most of the homes he designed, and whose construction he oversaw, were on parcels whose deeds included segregation covenants barring blacks from purchasing them.

Works

Lon Chaney High Sierra House designed by Williams - Inyo National Forest

Williams designed more than 2,000 private homes, most of which were in the Hollywood Hills and the Mid-Wilshire portion of Los Angeles (including his own home in the Mid-City, Los Angeles, California|Mid-City district). He also designed at least one home in the San Rafael district in the Pasadena Arroyo.

His most famous homes were for Hollywood celebrities, and he was well regarded for his mastery of various architectural styles. Modern interpretations of Tudor-revival, French Chateau, Regency and Mediterranean were all within his vernacular. One notable home he designed was later used for exterior scenes of the Colby mansion on television's "The Colbys" (1060 Brooklawn Dr. Bel Air) This is currently the home of Barron Hilton. His client list included Frank Sinatra (the notorious pushbutton house), Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Lon Chaney, Sr., Lucille Ball, Tyrone Power (two houses), Barbara Stanwyck, Bert Lahr, William S. Paley, Charles Cottrell, Will Hays, Zasu Pitts and Danny Thomas. In contrast to these splendid mansions, Williams co-designed with Hilyard Robinson the first federally funded public housing projects in the post-war period (Langton Terrace, Washington, D.C.) and later the Pueblo del Rio project in southeast Los Angeles.

Noted public buildings that Williams designed or contributed to (in Los Angeles, unless otherwise noted) include:

The Theme Building at Los Angeles International Airport during daylight.

• Hollywood YMCA
• First Church of Christ, Scientist (Reno, Nevada)
• Los Angeles County Courthouse
• Los Angeles County Hall of Administration
• United Nations Building, Paris, France
• Saks Fifth Avenue Beverly Hills, Beverly Hills California
• Beverly Hills Hotel, Beverly Hills, California
• Arrowhead Springs Hotel & Spa, San Bernardino, California
• Shrine Auditorium (Williams helped prepare construction drawings as a young architect.)
• Jet-Age Theme Building at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) (In the 1960s as part of the Pereira & Luckman firm and with consulting engineers, Williams helped design this futuristic landmark.)
• The concrete paraboloid La Concha Motel in Las Vegas (disassembled and moved to the Neon Museum in Las Vegas, Nevada for use as the museum lobby 2006).
• Carver Park Homes Nevada
• The La Concha Motel, Nevada

Williams retired his practice in 1973. He died at age 85. He is interred in Inglewood Park Cemetery, Inglewood.

Quotes

"If I allow the fact that I am a Negro to checkmate my will to do, now, I will inevitably form the habit of being defeated."

"Planning is thinking beforehand how something is to be made or done, and mixing imagination with the product – which in a broad sense makes all of us planners. The only difference is that some people get a license to get paid for thinking and the rest of us just contribute our good thoughts to our fellow man."

Bibliography

• Paul R. Williams Paul R. Williams: A Collection of House Plans Hennessey & Ingalls, 2006 ISBN 0940512440, 9780940512443
• Karen E. Hudson, Paul R. Williams Paul R. Williams, Architect: A Legacy of Style Rizzoli, 1993 Original from the University of Michigan Digitized Nov 12, 2007 240 pages

References

• Hudson, Karen E. Paul R. Williams, Architect: A Legacy of Style. New York: Rizzoli, 1993.(the author is Williams' granddaughter and curator of his estate)

Architecture; Leavey NA737.W527H84 1993

• Hudson, Karen E., The Will and the Way: Paul R. Williams, Architect, Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., NY 1994

• Yenser, Thomas (editor), Who's Who in Colored America: A Biographical Dictionary of Notable Living Persons of African Descent in America, Who's Who in Colored America, Brooklyn, New York, 1930-1931-1932 (Third Edition)

• Sennot, Stephen (author), Samudio, Jeffrey B. (contributing editor), "Encyclopedia of 20th Century Architecture: Paul Revere Williams", Routledge, Taylor & Francis Publishhers, January, 2004, 1,500 word biography of life and professional work

Further reading

• The Will and the Way: Paul R. Williams, Architect By Karen E. Hudson, Paul R. Williams Edition: illustrated Published by Rizzoli, 1994 ISBN 0847817806, 9780847817801 64 pages

External links

• Via Magazine profile: Paul Willams, an Architect
• SoCal History biography of Williams
• USC Trojan biographical page
• about African American Architects
• 1928 Paul Williams Renovation Photos, James V. Coane & Associates Architects
• Paul Revere Williams Project Website