Second Licensed African American Female Architect in United States

Georgia “Louise” Harris Brown (1918-1999) may in fact be the second African American woman licensed as an Architect in the United States. She was born in Topeka Kansas on June 12, 1918. She was a child with several siblings and her mother stayed home and taught school and focused on her passion for classical music. Hobbies for young Louise were drawing and painting and she was curious about the inner workings of cars and farm equipment. She spent time with her older brother, Bryant, learning a few things from him. Louise graduated from Highschool in Topeka from Seaman High School and then went on to attend her mother’s alma mater as well, Washburn University.

Louise Harris moved to Chicago with her brother in 1938 and about a year later attended an architectural night course at the Armor Institute of Technology, now known as the Illinois Institute of Technology with Mies Van De Rohe as her instructor (1886—1969) who had just arrived from Germany and would soon become world renowned. These were very memorable times for Louise with Van de Rohe instructing her. She recalls the racism and the sexism she endured, as her formal education was nearing graduation, that she had many times been asked by one of her professors, not Van de Rohe, if her field of study should not be domestic science instead of architecture.

She married James A. Brown, her brother’s roommate from Chicago, and found a job with Kenneth Roderick O’Neil in 1945, working there until she gained her Architecture License in 1949. She passed the exam on her first try. Because she had a strong interest in civil engineering and the structural design aspect of the job, she did some moonlighting with The Chicago Chapter of Alpha Gamma association for professional architects. She was likely the first African American member. She did some further work with Mies Van De Rohes Lake Shore Apartment Buildings, by producing structural calculations for his reinforced steel and concrete buildings.

Having difficulty balancing career with marriage, she divorced and made a decision to move to Brazil especially with the new freedoms and unique opportunities for architects and by 1954 she had decided to stay there permanently. While working for Charles Bosworth, a transplanted American, she opened an Interior Design office called Escandia, Ltda. She made plans to renovate the office of the City Bank of New York office in Sao Paolo. She worked heavily until late age ever more designing homes and furnishings for people who had grown to know her by reputation in Brazil. Every house, every room that she would design would be perfectly situated for its holder. She considered all of the details nothing escaped her notice. Eventually, she retired in 1993, her health deteriorating. She had Cancer surgery and Alzheimer’s and fell into a coma. She remained in a coma for two weeks and died on September 21,1999 at 81.

Resource:

Wilson, Dreck Spurlock (ed). African American Architects: A Biographical Dictionary, 1865-1945. Routledge, 2004.