Hilyard Robinson

Hilyard Robert Robinson was born on the third of December 1899 in Washington, D.C. He grew up in a working family — his mother, Elizabeth, was a seamstress, and as a boy he shined shoes at the barbershop kept by his grandfather. He attended the Thaddeus Stevens School and graduated from the celebrated M Street High School in 1916, the crucible of so much Black Washington talent.

His path to architecture ran through art and war. He studied at the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Arts before serving as an artillery officer in World War I, where the boulevards of Paris awakened his eye for design. Returning home, he studied at the University of Pennsylvania and then Columbia University, earning his bachelor's degree in architecture in 1924 and a master's in 1931, before joining the faculty of Howard University, where he would teach for four decades and chair its architecture program.

Commissioned by the U.S. Department of the Interior, Robinson led the design of the Langston Terrace Dwellings, completed in 1938 — the first federally funded public housing development in the nation. Its humane courtyards, integrated spaces for play and art, and clean modern lines made it a model that helped shape the Housing Act of 1937. He went on to hold the first federal defense contract awarded to an African American, at Tuskegee Army Airfield, designed eleven buildings for Howard University, and created the residence of Nobel laureate Ralph Bunche.

Elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects in 1984, Hilyard Robinson died on the second of July 1986. He built dignity into brick and stone, and left a homeland of shelter for generations he would never meet.