{{Short description|American architect (1868–1942)}} {{Infobox person | name = Robert Robinson Taylor | image = Robert R Taylor c1906.jpg | image_size = 200px | birth_name = | birth_date = {{birth date|1868|6|8}} | birth_place = Wilmington, North Carolina, U.S. | death_date = {{death date and age|1942|12|13|1868|6|8}} | death_place = Tuskegee, Alabama, U.S. | death_cause = | resting_place = | resting_place_coordinates = | nationality = | other_names = | known_for = | education = Massachusetts Institute of Technology | employer = | occupation = Architect | title = | term = | predecessor = | successor = | party = | boards = | spouse = {{plainlist| * Beatrice Rochon Taylor * Nellie Chestnut Taylor }} | children = 5 | parents = Henry Taylor<br />Emily Still | relatives = Robert Rochon Taylor <small>(son)</small><br /> Barbara T. Bowman <small>(granddaughter)</small><br />Valerie Jarrett <small>(great-granddaughter)</small> }} '''Robert Robinson Taylor''' (June 8, 1868 – December 13, 1942) was an American architect and educator. Taylor was the first African-American student enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the first accredited African-American architect when he graduated in 1892.<ref name="encyclopedia">Weiss, Ellen. [http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-3252 Robert Robinson Taylor], Encyclopedia of Alabama</ref> He was an early and influential member of the Tuskegee Institute faculty.
A native of Wilmington, North Carolina, Taylor remained in architectural practice in the American South for more than forty years. He was part of what was possibly the nation's first black architecture firm, Taylor and Persley, a partnership founded in July 1920 with Louis H. Persley.<ref name=":2">{{Cite book |last=Weiss |first=Ellen |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XGYKEFz8Cd0C |title=Robert R. Taylor and Tuskegee: An African American Architect Designs for Booker T. Washington |publisher=NewSouth Books |year=2012 |isbn=9781588382481 |pages=112, 140–142}}</ref><ref name=":4">{{Cite web |title=History of Firsts |url=https://www.lincoln.edu/_files/_pdfs/Lincoln-Firsts.pdf |website=Lincoln University}}</ref> He designed many of the early buildings of the Tuskegee Institute, and at several other Historically black colleges and universities. As second-in-command to Booker T. Washington, the Tuskegee Institute's founder, Taylor was instrumental in both campus planning and inventing the school's industrial curriculum.
==Early life== Robert Robinson Taylor was born on June 8, 1868, in Wilmington, North Carolina.<ref name="encyclopedia"/><ref name="mitlibrary">{{cite web|last=Williams|first=Clarence G.|date=13 January 1998|title=From 'Tech' to Tuskegee: The Life of Robert Robinson Taylor, 1868-1942|url=http://libraries.mit.edu/archives/mithistory/blacks-at-mit/taylor.html|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://wayback.archive-it.org/7963/20190702041158/https://libraries.mit.edu/archives/mithistory/blacks-at-mit/taylor.html|archive-date=July 2, 2019|access-date=July 12, 2020|website=|publisher=Massachusetts Institute of Technology}}</ref> His father, Henry Taylor, worked as a carpenter and businessman, born into slavery but freed in 1847 by his father and owner Angus Taylor. His mother, Emily Still, was the daughter of freedmen even prior to the Civil War.<ref name="encyclopedia"/> He left home for MIT in 1888, where he studied architecture.<ref name="encyclopedia"/> In June 1890 and again in September 1891, he was recommended for the Loring Scholarship, which he held for two consecutive academic years: 1890–1891 and 1892–1893.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Weiss|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XGYKEFz8Cd0C&pg=PA12|title=Robert R. Taylor and Tuskegee: An African American Architect Designs for Booker T. Washington|date=2012|publisher=NewSouth Books|isbn=978-1-58838-248-1|pages=11|language=en}}</ref>
During his course of study at MIT, he talked in person on more than one occasion with Booker T. Washington.<ref name="mitlibrary"/> What Washington had in mind was for Taylor to develop the industrial program at Tuskegee and to plan and direct the construction of new buildings for the campus.<ref name="mitlibrary"/> At the MIT faculty meeting on May 26, 1892, Taylor was one of twelve students in Course IV, the architectural program, recommended for a degree.<ref name="mitlibrary"/> The class of 1892 was the largest on record since MIT's founding.<ref name="mitlibrary"/> After graduation, Taylor did not head directly to Tuskegee. He finally accepted the Tuskegee offer in the fall or winter of 1892.<ref name="mitlibrary"/>
==Career== thumb|right|300px|Tuskegee students at work on one of Taylor's buildings (1902) Taylor's first building project on the Tuskegee University campus was the Science Hall (Thrasher Hall) completed in 1893.<ref name="encyclopedia"/><ref name="mitlibrary"/> The new Science Hall was constructed entirely by students, using bricks made also by students under Taylor's supervision.<ref name="mitlibrary"/> The project epitomized Washington's philosophy of instilling in Tuskegee students, the descendants of former enslaved Africans, the value and dignity of physical labor. It exemplified of the capabilities of African Americans in the building trades, and it underscored the larger potential of the manual training curricula being developed at Tuskegee.<ref name="mitlibrary"/> A number of other buildings followed, including the original Tuskegee Chapel, erected between 1895 and 1898, and The Oaks, built in 1899 as Tuskegee's presidential residence.<ref name="encyclopedia"/><ref name="mitlibrary"/>
From 1899 to 1902, he returned to Cleveland, Ohio, to work on his own and for the architectural firm of [https://case.edu/ech/articles/h/hopkinson-charles-william Charles W. Hopkinson.]<ref name="encyclopedia"/><ref name="mitlibrary"/> Upon his return to Tuskegee from Cleveland in 1902, he was architect and director of "mechanical industries" until his retirement in the mid-1930s.<ref name="mitlibrary"/> To develop a sound curriculum at Tuskegee, both Washington and Taylor drew inspiration from MIT as a model.<ref name="mitlibrary"/> Taylor's own admiration for MIT as a model for Tuskegee's development was conveyed in a speech that he delivered at MIT in 1911.<ref name="mitlibrary"/> Taylor cited examples to the 1911 US Congress in a paper to illustrate the kinds of rigorous ideas, approaches, and methods that Tuskegee had adopted from MIT and successfully applied within the context of a black educational institution.<ref name="mitlibrary"/>
Taylor also designed buildings that were not at Tuskegee. These include Carnegie libraries at Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, and at Livingstone College in Salisbury, North Carolina. With his later partner, the black architect Louis H. Persley, he did large buildings at Selma University in Selma, Alabama, and the Colored Masonic Temple,<ref name="auto">{{Cite web|url=http://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-3942|title=African American Prince Hall Masons in Alabama|website=Encyclopedia of Alabama}}</ref> which is also an office building and entertainment venue, in Birmingham, Alabama.<ref name="encyclopedia"/><ref>{{cite book |last=Weiss |first=Ellen |author-link=Ellen Weiss |title=Robert R. Taylor and Tuskegee: An African American Architect Designs for Booker T. Washington |url=http://www.newsouthbooks.com/bkpgs/detailtitle.php?isbn_solid=1588382486 |year=2011 |publisher=NewSouth Books |location=Montgomery |isbn=978-1-58838-248-1 |pages=114–115, 141–144 |access-date=2013-01-18 |archive-date=2020-01-06 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200106043137/http://www.newsouthbooks.com/bkpgs/detailtitle.php?isbn_solid=1588382486 |url-status=dead }}</ref>
He served for a period as vice-principal of Tuskegee, beginning in 1925.<ref name="mitlibrary"/> In 1929, under the joint sponsorship of the Phelps-Stokes Fund, the Liberian government, and Firestone Rubber, he went to Kakata, Liberia to lay out architectural plans and devise a program in industrial training for the proposed Booker Washington Institute – "the Tuskegee of Africa."<ref name="encyclopedia"/><ref name="mitlibrary"/> Robert Taylor served on the Mississippi Valley Flood Relief Commission, appointed by President Herbert Hoover, and was chairman of the Tuskegee chapter of the American Red Cross.<ref name="mitlibrary"/>
Following his retirement in 1933 to his native Wilmington, North Carolina,<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Wilson |first=Dreck Spurlock |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0OaSAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA548 |title=African American Architects: A Biographical Dictionary, 1865-1945 |date=March 2004 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-135-95629-5 |pages=548–554 |language=en |chapter=Robert Robinson Taylor (1868–1942) |via=Google Books}}</ref> in 1935, the governor of North Carolina appointed Taylor to the board of trustees of what is now Fayetteville State University.<ref name="mitlibrary"/> Moreover, in 1942, less than a decade after his retirement from Tuskegee, he wrote to the secretary of his MIT class indicating that he had just been released from treatment for an unspecified illness at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.<ref name="mitlibrary"/> "Thanks to a kind Providence and skillful physicians," he said, "I am much better now."<ref name="mitlibrary"/>
==Personal life== In 1898, he married Beatrice Rochon Taylor.<ref name="encyclopedia"/> They had four children, one of whom, Robert Rochon Taylor, became a noted housing advocate in Chicago.<ref name="encyclopedia"/> Beatrice's younger sister was teacher and pharmacist Etnah Rochon Boutte.<ref>[https://www.newspapers.com/clip/28763605/etnah_rochon_boutte_1924/ "Mrs. Kate Rochon Dead"] ''The New York Age'' (April 12, 1924): 2. via Newspapers.com</ref> After Beatrice died in 1906, Robert remarried in 1912 to Nellie Chestnutt; they had one child.<ref name="encyclopedia"/><ref>{{cite web |title=Robert R. Taylor: First Black Student at MIT |url=https://www.blackhistory.mit.edu/story/robert-r-taylor |website=MIT Black History |publisher=Massachusetts Institute of Technology |access-date=27 December 2021 |language=en}}</ref>
== Death and legacy == He died on December 13, 1942, while attending services in the Tuskegee Chapel, the building that he considered his most outstanding achievement as an architect.<ref>[http://libraries.mit.edu/archives/mithistory/blacks-at-mit/taylor.html Robert Robinson Taylor: Institute Archives & Special Collections.] {{Webarchive|url=https://wayback.archive-it.org/7963/20190702041158/https://libraries.mit.edu/archives/mithistory/blacks-at-mit/taylor.html |date=2019-07-02 }} MIT Institute Archives & Special Collections</ref> He was buried at the Pine Forest Cemetery in Wilmington, North Carolina.<ref name="encyclopedia"/>
His great-granddaughter, Valerie Jarrett, was a senior advisor to former president Barack Obama.
The Taylor School of Architecture and Construction Science at Tuskegee University is named for Taylor. The housing project in Chicago, Robert Taylor Homes, was named after his son, Robert Rochon Taylor, a civic leader and former Chairman of the Chicago Housing Authority.
The US Postal Service has a postage stamp with his likeness.<ref>Black Heritage: [https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/f4/0b/d1/f40bd120ee5482f48bf5ba290844e3c2.jpg Robert Robinson Taylor.]</ref>
==Projects== thumb|right|300px|Tuskegee Chapel (1898), which Taylor considered his best work.
{| class="wikitable sortable" ! Year !! Building !! Location !! Collaborator !! class="unsortable" | Status / notes |- | 1893 || Thrasher Hall<ref name=":0" /> || Tuskegee Institute || || |- | 1898 || Tuskegee Chapel || Tuskegee Institute || || |- | 1898 || The Oaks<ref name=":0" /> || Tuskegee Institute || || |- | 1900 || Huntington Hall || Tuskegee Institute || || |- | 1900 || Emery dormitories || Tuskegee Institute || || Four buildings |- | 1901 || Dorothy Hall || Tuskegee Institute || || |- | 1901 || Women's Trades Building || Tuskegee Institute || || |- | 1901 || Carnegie Library || Tuskegee Institute || || Donated Carnegie library |- | 1901 || Alta Settlement House || Cleveland, Ohio || Charles W. Hopkinson<ref name=":0" /> || |- | data-sort-value="1902" | 1902–1903 || Administration Building || Tuskegee Institute || || |- | 1903 || Rockefeller Hall || Tuskegee Institute || || |- | 1904 || Men's residence Hall || Tuskegee Institute || || |- | 1904 || Douglass Hall || Tuskegee Institute || || |- | data-sort-value="1904" | 1904–1905 || Collis P. Huntington Memorial Building || Tuskegee Institute || || Academic building |- | 1907 || Tantum Hall || Tuskegee Institute || || |- | 1909 || Milbank Agriculture Building || Tuskegee Institute || || |- | 1910 || Tompkins Hall<ref name=":0" /> || Tuskegee Institute || || Dining facility |- | 1910 || White Hall<ref name=":0" /> || Tuskegee Institute || || Women's dormitory |- | 1913 || John A. Andrew Memorial Hospital || Tuskegee Institute || || |- | 1915 || The George Washington Carver Museum || Tuskegee Institute || || Formerly the laundry building |- | 1920 || King Administration Building<ref name=":0" /> || Wiley College, Marshall, Texas || || |- | 1921 || James Hall || Tuskegee Institute || Louis H. Persley || |- | 1921 || Dinkins Memorial Building || Selma University, Selma, Alabama || Louis H. Persley<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1">{{Cite web |last=Dorris |first=Jesse |date=June 1, 2020 |title=10 Pioneering African American Architects and the Legacy Buildings They Designed |url=https://interiordesign.net/designwire/10-pioneering-african-american-architects-and-the-legacy-buildings-they-designed/ |access-date= |website=Interior Design |language=en-US |issn=0020-5508}}</ref> || |- | 1924 || Prince Hall Masonic Temple || Birmingham, Alabama || Louis H. Persley<ref name="auto" /> || |- | 1927 || Sage Hall || Tuskegee Institute || Louis H. Persley || |- | 1928 || Wilcox Trade Buildings || Tuskegee Institute || || Architecture buildings |- | 1931 || Logan Hall || Tuskegee Institute || Louis H. Persley || Old gym |- | 1932 || Armstrong Science Building || Tuskegee Institute || Louis H. Persley || |- | 1932 || Hollis Burke Frissell Library || Tuskegee Institute || Louis H. Persley || |}
== See also ==
* African-American architects * Robert Charles Bates, an early architecture teacher at Claflin University
==References== {{Reflist}}
==External links== * [https://www.blackhistory.mit.edu/story/robert-r-taylor Robert R. Taylor, First Black Student at MIT (MIT Black History Project)]
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Taylor, Robert R.}} Category:1868 births Category:1942 deaths Category:People from Wilmington, North Carolina Category:Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Category:MIT School of Architecture and Planning alumni Category:African-American architects Category:19th-century American architects Category:Fayetteville State University Category:Tuskegee University faculty Category:20th-century African-American people Category:20th-century American architects