Thread by @SoDaemmGood

On this day in 1989, architect John Louis Wilson, Jr. passed away. we should celebrate his life and career, especially in New Orleans and NYC:

(a thread, 1/14)

nytimes.com/1989/11/04/obi…

Born in Meridian, Mississippi in 1898, Wilson moved to New Orleans to attend Gilbert Academy, a Black Methodist Episcopal high school on St. Charles near what's now Jefferson Ave, Uptown.

Gilbert was tied to New Orleans University, founded in 1873 during Reconstruction (2/14)

(the site is now De La Salle High School, a predominantly White Catholic institution built in 1949 after the demolition of Gilbert's epic 1886 building. @nolacampanella writes about how that happened here: richcampanella.com/wp-content/upl…) (3/14)

After graduation from Gilbert, Wilson continued on at NOU, where he studied classics and graduated in 1920.

This was Jim Crow New Orleans. Public spaces had been racially segregated by law for two decades, and most Black voters had been purged from the rolls (4/14)

Throughout Wilson's time in school, municipal residential segregation ordinances became popular across the US.

New Orleans' City Council passed one in 1924, codifying racist exclusion of Black people from quality housing opportunities a decade before redlining (5/14)

Meanwhile White philanthropists withdrew funding from Black liberal-arts institutions like New Orleans' NOU, Straight and Leland Universities.

To survive, in the late 1920s, two of the three (NOU & Straight) negotiated a merger to create @du1869 - Dillard (6/14)

Dillard's Gentilly campus was planned and designed by New Orleans architect Moise Goldstein Sr, a 1902 @Tulane engineering grad and faculty @TulaneArch.

According to Wilson's 1984 @AIANational Whitney Young Award page, Goldstein encouraged Wilson to study architecture (7/14)

@TulaneArch, founded in 1894, was open to White men only; it wouldn't open to Black students until 1963.

So Wilson joined the Great Migration north, to Harlem, and enrolled at @ColumbiaGSAPP, where he became the first African American graduate in 1928 (8/14)

Wilson became a housing inspector for the city of New York and a licensed architect in 1930. In 1931, despite significant resistance from White architects on the project, he was appointed to lead the design team for the Harlem River Houses (9/14)

Unlike later public housing, designed as warehouses for people White architects did not see as fully human, the Harlem River Houses' architecture and urban design communicate dignity and respect for its residents (10/14)

After receiving acclaim for the project, Wilson went on to a long and successful career as an architect of and advocate for quality affordable housing in New York City. He maintained an office in the heart of Harlem, where he mentored many aspiring Black architects (11/14)

He was among the founders, in 1953, of the Council for the Advancement of the Negro in Architecture, and a chair of AIA committees for minority scholarships.

Wilson's Stuypark House apartments in Crown Heights from 1975 draws on Modernist social housing precedents (12/14)

this image, from La Guardia Community College's archives: Wilson at the HRH's 50th anniversary celebration flanked by Chicago mayor Harold Washington and future NYC mayor David Dinkins (13/14)

Wilson designed dignified buildings on tight budgets for communities that needed them.

As we strive for a new era of public and social housing today we should remember the #designjustice practitioners, like him, who built the ground we stand on (14/14)