An Architect In Harlem

When Percy Charles Griffin was growing up in Mississippi, he was always painting pictures. So much so that his mother told him he was a born architect. She knew, says Griffin, 39, that "I couldn't make any money at painting , so the next thing to that was be an architect." Although at the time Griffin "didn't know what the word 'architecture' meant. When I came up here [New York], I wanted to be an engineer." But math--a subject he was good in during his high school days--became a stumbling block when he got to City College because he had lost interest. He told one of his professors this and he was told to switch his major from engineering to architecture. "There too," recalls Griffin, "I was pathetic."

During his second year at  the college he began to perk up and the attitude of those professors who thought he was wasting his time went from "sympathy to admiration." His scholastic improvement took him to the top of his class.

Griffin, the first in his family to go to college, eventually won an architectural award at City College for his thesis design--a cardboard model of a four-story, block-long , multi-service cultural center that included a 300-seat theatre, art gallery, and restaurant.

Griffin's decision to attend college came after landing a job in the office of the famed architect Philip Johnson, who is responsible for the AT&T Building in Midtown Manhattan. "I went to school because everyone [in Johnson's office] was a college graduate. Princeton, Harvard, all over. I really wanted to complete my education." Johnson, knowing this, made it possible for Griffin to attend school by allowing him to have a flexible work schedule where he could take off "one, three days every week" without deducting "any money from my salary. I was doing regular architectural development, drafting, design development. Same as anyone else. Griffin gives Johnson credit for evaluating his school projects. After graduation in 1972, Griffin took the architecture licensing exam which he passed.

To Percy Griffin, who teaches at the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT), architecture is the best of two worlds: aesthetics (how a building will look) and technology (how the building will be built and how well it can stand up to stress from weather, aging, weight, etc.) "It's very artistic. You have to have imagination and then you turn right around with this imagination, understanding the technical part of [architecture], which is the engineering, the structure, the mechanical, the electrical, and energy conservation. It's a mixture of many different fields. Not only the design or the technical but sociology, philosophy, history. I feel that history is a major part of understanding architecture. Where it came from, the different periods it went through. Without the history, you would not have very much depth as an architect."

A majority of Griffin's clients--75 percent to be exact--are black. Most of his projects involve home renovation. He also does design work for churches (such as the cultural and community center at the Thessalonia Baptist Church in the Bronx). Some of his clients include Sylvia's Restaurant on Lenox Avenue and actor Irving Lee of the daytime soap opera The Edge of Night.

Griffin feels, however, that the black community--particularly its leaders--do not make adequate use of "the professionals that are available to them. How many projects that I see going up in Harlem, the Bronx, Chicago, all over and no black architect  [is involved]. [Black architects] could survive pretty well if we could get our ten percent or fifteen percent of the money for construction." He wonders how a black community leader can be a leader without knowing that "it's a hard struggle for black architects."

This excerpt is from an article that was originally published in the Harlem Weekly in 1984. A longer version of this article was posted on November 1, 2012.

Creating Choreography Via Architecture

Avant-garde dancemaker Gus Solomans, Jr.'s segment will be half of a shared evening of dance at the Danspace Project of St. Mark's Church in [Manhattan's] East Village (April 14, 15,16 [1989]). In a collaborative work with a team of Columbia University [architectural] students, the Solomans Company/Dance will present Site Line, described by Solomans (a former architect), in a telephone interview, as a dance with "a wall that would divide the dancing space in half. The audience on each side of the wall [will] see essentially a different dance. They'll be able to see the dancers on the other side. The wall is partly transparent, partly translucent, and partly opaque." Solomans says that he wants the audience to interpret what they see for themselves, "to make choices, to participate as viewers, not just sit there and [let the choreography] wash over them and be entertained. I try to make the visual atmosphere rich enough for everyone to get some stimulation."

This article was originally published in the New York Amsterdam News (April 15, 1989) as part of a Spring 1989 Dance Roundup article.

The Ups And Downs Of Being A Black Architect

"Architecture in its concern for the creation of human environment, must deal with physical, psychological, social and economic needs of its clients."--Robert J. Nash, black Washington architect and fellow of the American Institute of Architects.

Black architects comprise a very small percentage of the total number practicing in the United States. But despite that fact and despite a few drawbacks to pursuing an architectural career, ""the numbers of blacks studying architecture has increased drastically since the late '60s," says J. Max Bond, Jr.

After serving 14 years on the faculty of Columbia University's School of Architecture, he should know. He is also the chairman and a partner in the architectural firm of Bond Ryder Associates in New York City.

"The changes reflect the changes in society," continues Bond. "There have been attempts at special programs, pre-architectural programs, things like that. Right now one of the really great inhibitions is that architecture is not one of the most secure professions. Nor is it one of the highest paying professions because it is subject to the shifts in the economy."

Roger Roberts, who has been a project architect for the past six years with the firm of Richard B. Dempsey, also in New York City, does not think now is a good time for anyone to consider a career in architecture.

"Perhaps by the time they got through school and got a little bit of learning, things might pick up. Right now we are oversaturated [with architects] The overall picture is that things are  slow but if blacks become more successful businesswise then black architects would become more successful. [When the economy is bad] we're the first ones to feel it. The housing market is very bad."

As a project architect, Roberts's job is "to oversee the production of a job. To see that everything gets drafted correctly and properly and all the necessary details that are required for the job get done, to coordinate with the engineer and to oversee the project when it goes into construction.

The design work that comes into Richard Dempsey's office is, according to Roberts, "through referral or else you get published and someone may see it or if you've done a job and they're happy with it, they come back again or recommend you to someone else."

On the other hand, Max Bond's work is mostly in the public sector. "Most of the commissions in the last 10 or 12 years come from public agencies and generally related to the black community. We as a group have not been extensively employed by private industry. It's beginning to happen. Nor have we in many ways been employed as much as we feel we should by the federal government."


This is an excerpt from an article that was originally published in the Baltimore Evening Sun (October 25, 1982).

Inside An Architect's Home

"As we look around today," said Percy Griffin, a Harlem-based African American architect, "we see a little of many different styles creeping into architecture: the Renaissance, the Gothic, Byzantine, and so on. We went to one period back in the '50s where we had steel and glass, the glass boxes." Many of these buildings can be found on Manhattan's Park Avenue, north of Grand Central Terminal. For example, the Lever Brothers Building. This style is called "modern" architecture. Now we're in the post-modern period in which architects borrow from other architectural styles. Said Griffin about post-modernism, or what he called "eclectic architecture": "It's like baking a cake. If you have the right ingredients, it will be tasty. So's architecture."

Griffin's home, in a four-story limestone building that he owns on West 144th Street in Harlem, is a mixture of different styles. (He lives there with his wife Sandra, an urban planner, and their seven-year-old daughter, Kammara.)

The Griffins occupy the basement, and the first two floors of the building. The upper two floors are rented out to three tenants.

The den, in the basement, where he and his wife spend most of their time, is described by Griffin as having a high-tech decor. It is furnished with a circular bar, a TV, a stereo, and a spinet piano.

The main floor containing the family area and the living room is eclectic. The walls are white. The living room has a built-in fireplace, a glass top coffee table, and paintings on the wall. (The paintings are his own work. They line the walls throughout the house.) The family area, adjacent to the kitchen, has a long wooden dining table, a couch, a bookshelf that he built, and a wall in which a rectangular opening has been cut inside of which are placed wooden ancient Roman columns on either side of the opening. A few feet away is another column,that is more modern, and painted blue to match a similar column in the living room.

The upstairs area is designed in Scandinavian light wood. The wall of his and his wife's bedroom which faces the stairs is made up of a series of small window panes to emit light when desired and is shielded from within by a Japanese shade. Down the hall is their daughter's bedroom furnished with a bed that is a few feet off the floor and is accessible by a ladder nearby. Underneath the bed is a row of shelves for various dolls, a birdcage with two parakeets, a dresser, and a TV set. Taped to that same wall are her drawings. Along the wall outside her bedroom are framed pictures of her.

This article was part of a much longer article about architect Percy Griffin. It was originally published in the Harlem Weekly in 1984.

Max Bond, Black Architect

The following is an excerpt from an interview I did with the late black architect Max Bond. It took place at Columbia University's School of Architecture, where he was the dean at the time, about 1983 or 1984. He was the cousin of Julian Bond, the former Georgia state legislator and NAACP executive. Bond died in February 2009 at the age of 73.

1. His view of architecture criticism:

"I think that architectural criticism generally in this country is not good as it should be. That's not to say that there aren't some good critics. But the level of architectural criticism is not very high. I think the architectural critic should obviously try to expose ideas and issues. There are several issues that are never really dealt with very much in this society. One of these is what American culture is. [Architectural criticism would have us think that the population of the U.S. is] one hundred percent white or of European derivation. You wouldn't get any sense of the complex heritage of America. [Critics would have you] think that the kinds of things we should look to architecturally are solely from Europe. It is obviously a very important issue because it is related to the establishment of cultural values for this society."

2. His view of black architects:

"I don't know if any of us [black architects] have received the acclaim that we're due. But obviously there have been many very distinguished black architects. There are several architects who I think really deserve a lot of distinction--Paul Williams; Hilliard Robinson who practices in Washington [D.C.], who is now retired or semi-retired. And other people such as Jay Johnson [who is a friend of Bond's. When they were in college, they worked together in Paul Williams's office one summer]."