![]() While not much is known about his foster parents, it’s evident that they recognized the importance of a good education and instilled strong community values in the young boy. Williams was orphaned in 1898, his parents having died of tuberculosis two years apart, and he and his brother were placed in separate foster homes. Williams was born in 1894 in Los Angeles to parents who had migrated there from Memphis in search of a better climate. Williams: A Photographer’s View (Los Angeles: Angel City Press, 2020), 9. ![]() ![]() Janna Ireland, “The Architecture of an Icon,” Regarding Paul R. The acquisition was made shortly before early 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic necessitated closure of the Getty and has not yet been catalogued. Williams Architect: a legacy of style (New York: Rizzoli International, 1993). Her work to capture Williams’s architecture is now an ongoing project. As Ireland recounts, “…I jumped at the chance, even though Barbara was a stranger, Williams’s name was only vaguely familiar, and my knowledge of architecture was limited…At its core, my work is about the expression of Black identity in American culture, and I felt an immediate connection to Williams’s story.” Ireland embraced the invitation with gusto and determination and her photographs resulted in the 2017 exhibition “There is Only One Paul Williams: Photographs by Janna Ireland,” curated by Andrea Dietz and Audrey Landreth for the Shulman Institute and in the recently publication Regarding Paul R. In her role as director of the Julius Shulman Institute at Woodbury University in Burbank, Bestor sought to illuminate this important chapter of L.A.’s architectural history and in 2016 invited Janna Ireland, an emerging L.A.-based artist, to photograph some of Williams’s buildings. The Los Angeles-based architect Barbara Bestor knew of Williams and was dismayed that there had never been an exhibition devoted to his work. This major acquisition will provide future generations with access to Williams’s papers and drawings, leading to significant new scholarship on the architect and his work. ![]() As the director of his archive Hudson was instrumental in its recent joint acquisition by the University of Southern California (USC) School of Architecture and the Getty Research Institute. Williams Architect: A Legacy of Style, the first monograph devoted to his work. Hudson was the first to bring her grandfather’s story to a greater public in 1993 with the publication of Paul R. However, a dedicated cadre of determined women has set out to rectify that and to give Williams his rightful place in architectural history as one America’s most talented architects. Architecture has been, and largely remains, an elitist profession that is predominantly white and male, with female and minority practitioners often overlooked. Despite these, and many other, remarkable accomplishments, Williams and his work are, dishearteningly, underrecognized today. The story of Paul Revere Williams (1894-1980) is punctuated by many firsts-that he was the first Black architect to practice West of the Mississippi is but one of them-and spans a career of fifty years during which he built more than 3,000 buildings.
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