There are countless examples of Black ingenuity and cultural impact that have gone under-recognized—or intentionally obscured—as part of this country’s history, but Julian Francis Abele was a hidden figure somewhat by design. The African American architect from Philadelphia, who died in 1950 at age 68, was the first Black graduate from the University of Pennsylvania’s architecture department and would ultimately become cohead of the renowned Horace Trumbauer firm. Known by many to be relatively shy, serious, and uninterested in the limelight, Abele used his impressive architectural gifts to carve a place in history, guaranteeing that, despite largely working in the shadows, his presence in the industry would forever be seen.

“He was more than content to do his work in the background,” says Peter D. Cook, Abele’s great grandnephew and design principal at HGA in Washington, DC. “But knowing that he had an impact which still today can be felt and admired throughout a great city like Philadelphia gives me chills.”

During its peak reign during America’s Gilded Age, the Trumbauer firm was known for designing lavish residential manors for prominent business magnates and robber barons across the Eastern Seaboard. The firm’s storied portfolio also included public commissions like churches, hotels, libraries, and museums that were meant to inspire wonder and awe.

At the turn of the 20th century, it was customary for architectural designs to be credited to the firm as a whole, so most designers—including Abele—didn’t initial the office’s drawings. Though this lack of attribution means that Abele’s fingerprints across the design process have had to be unearthed over time, it didn’t correlate to a lack of respect for, or recognition of, his talent. “From what I gather, he was paid a nice salary for the time, he was obviously a highly valued employee,” Cook says. “I have to give Trumbauer some credit as well, because he was a white man who—at the turn of the century—entrusted a Black man to design his most prized commissions for the incredibly influential clients he had.”

Abele was responsible for the design of all of Trumbauer’s cut stone building commissions (as working with limestone was his specialty), and he was celebrated for his brilliant implementation of Beaux Arts in America, a French architectural style marked by a synthesis of neoclassical French, Renaissance, and Baroque elements, including sculptural ornamentation, arched windows, and grandiose entrances and staircases known as “noble spaces.”

The influence of Beaux Arts architecture

According to Dreck Spurlock Wilson, ASLA, NOMA, and associate professor of architectural history at Howard University, Abele was always interested in 18th-century French architecture—in fact, he identified as a Francophile. Abele reportedly attended the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art, “which had a strong French influence on him,” and by the time he began his studies at the University of Pennsylvania, it was one of the “four or five schools of architecture in the US that was actually practicing and teaching the philosophy of Beaux Arts.”

Bill Whitaker, curator and collections manager of the Architectural Archives at the University of Pennsylvania, suggests that Abele’s adoption of this style was equal parts problem-solving and innovation. “[It was about] absorbing lessons of the past but also embracing the changing dynamics of the modern world,” he explains. “[Abele] was really an incredible expert with French Renaissance architecture; I think he loved the nuance of it and loved studying it…. He was immediately recognized as a talent.” During his sophomore year, Abele joined the architecture society; by his senior year, his classmates had elected him as president.

Once Abele was a professional architect, he would go on to design Eisenlohr Hall, which functions as the on-campus home of UPenn’s president. Whitaker claims that credit for this design was only discovered in recent years, when a rare instance of his initials was found on a set of drawings for the structure. “You can see him establishing himself within the firm, and his skills are clear,” he says. “It’s his hand that is developing the critical elements on the façade of buildings.”

After Abele graduated from UPenn in 1902 (and before he joined Trumbauer’s firm as the assistant to a chief designer in 1906), he traveled west to Spokane, Washington, to visit his older sister Elizabeth Abele Cook and her family. During this trip, he designed their home, which was formally recognized as a historic property by Spokane’s Landmark Commission in a unanimous vote last year. “It’s maybe his first attribution for a significant structure, and the only one west of the Mississippi,” says Logan Camporeale, historic preservation specialist for the city and county of Spokane’s historic preservation office. “It has had a lot of changes [since] and sometimes historic preservationists may not be interested in a building like this because it has changed so much, but the story is so important.”

The home, which was completed in 1905, still has vestiges of the “French eclectic” style Abele drew up. “It’s really not typical in Spokane, there are only a handful of other examples which came at least a decade later,” Camporeale notes of the aesthetic, adding that he was “ahead of the curve and really interested in Beaux Arts, so it makes sense he was experimenting with [another] French style [early in his career].”

Wilson shares that when Abele returned to Philadelphia and began working for the offices of Trumbauer, “there were only about four Negro architects who were licensed and practicing.” The architect ascended fairly quickly, becoming chief designer in 1909. Even still, on his application to the American Institute of Architects, where he gained admission in 1942, he only lists the Cook-Abele House in Spokane and a project he worked on after Trumbauer’s death in 1938 (when he became cohead of the firm with William O. Frank) as his past work experience. “So he himself did not want to take specific credit for jobs within the Trumbauer office,” Whitaker notes.

The beautification of Philadelphia

Abele’s work aligned neatly with the City Beautiful Movement that gained prominence at the turn of the 20th century. (This architecture and urban planning philosophy proposed that beautification efforts in major American cities—in the form of grandiose buildings, striking sculptures, and more—would not only promote aesthetic delight, but would improve quality of life and civic virtue among citizens.) This approach to progressive social reform was a leading concern of the upper class, which the Trumbauer firm was decidedly cozy with, so it’s no surprise that their clients were also major patrons of the projects borne of this movement; they were commissioned to design the Philadelphia Museum of Art and central library branch.

Abele’s love of the classical Beaux Arts style, which he became more deeply acquainted with during a Trumbauer-sponsored trip across Europe, was a perfect fit for this agenda, and the architect’s work on civic commissions made strides in elevating Philadelphia’s profile as an American city equal to Paris or other European cities. As chief designer at the firm, Abele presented his hand-drawn designs to the art commission for review, so his Black identity was certainly no secret to collaborators, peers, and stakeholders.

“The monumentality of the museum is wonderful, people don’t build buildings like this anymore,” says David Barquist, H. Richard Dietrich Jr., curator of American Decorative Arts at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. “It creates a sense of drama when you walk in the door that sets you up for the fact that you’re in a special place about to have a special experience.”

The Parkway Central Library, based on the 18th century Hôtel de la Marine building on the Place de la Concorde in Paris, is very much of the same style. “When the building opened in 1927 it was state of the art, not only in terms of the mechanics of the building and retrieval systems for materials in the book stacks, but also in terms of services for children—the department had its own entrance which gave children the autonomy to [come here] independently and browse collections,” says Marija Gudauskas, head supervisor of Parkway Central Library’s Map Collection and Print and Picture Collection. “His work was trying to rejuvenate the past and meet it with the present. He wanted to connect people with history.”

King of the college campus

Beyond civic commissions, Abele’s designs also decorated university campuses outside the city of Philadelphia: His student-competition-winning design for a Beaux Arts pedestrian gateway was built on the campus of Haverford College in 1901; his design for Harvard University’s Widener Library was erected in 1915; and, as part of the Trumbauer firm’s commission to redesign Duke University’s east campus and the west campus anew in the 1920s, Abele’s work can be seen across some 40 buildings, including the chapel, indoor stadium, main administration building, and all of the structures on the main quad.

Valerie Gillispie, university archivist at Duke’s Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, cites the chapel as the centerpiece because of its location and magnificence. “Duke is unusual because the east campus has some older buildings that were remade into a Georgian-style campus, and then on the west campus the design is neo-Gothic,” she explains as a stylistic departure from Abele’s earlier work. This Gothic Wonderland, as today’s students affectionately call it, was likely inspired by the former Duke president’s appreciation for the way Princeton University and Chicago looked, and it’s aesthetically a stronger fit for the regional Southern context than it would have been in the Northeast.

Today, Duke’s main quad is named for Abele, and his portrait hangs regally in the reading room of the campus library. But at the time he was designing the school, “it’s unclear how much time he actually spent in Durham and North Carolina,” according to Gillispie. While administrators certainly were aware of his Black identity, she notes that “Abele was a very proud man and did not like putting himself in the position to be treated as a second-class citizen, so what we are pretty sure of is that he didn’t come down to campus and North Carolina very much, because he wouldn’t have been accommodated in the way Trumbauer was.”

In keeping with the blueprint his ancestor laid, Cook says he has always sought out working on projects “where there was an opportunity to uplift and inspire places that really contribute to the betterment of our built environment” in his own career. Cook, who was one of the three lead designers for the National Museum of African-American History and Culture, counts “sensitive, small landscape interventions,” like a memorial and restoration of a burial ground of enslaved persons at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, as projects that are influenced by Abele’s commitment to important civic structures.

“Years ago, my grandfather [Julian Abele Cook Sr.] said to me: ‘When you go to see a doctor you go because you’ve got some pain, and when you go to see a lawyer you may also have some issues you’re wrestling with,’” Cook shares. “‘But when you go to see an architect, you go with a dream.’ That’s why I got into architecture, and that’s why my grandfather did, and he probably learned that at the feet of Julian Abele, who had such an illustrious career.”