Pub. 1 2020-2021 Issue 1

9 campus’ central passage Abele Quad. A plaque installed on the quad emphasizes that Abele “designed all the surrounding buildings” and quotes the famous St. Paul’s Cathedral epitaph of Christopher Wren: “If you seek his monument, look around.” Generations of Duke students have strolled among the university’s Abele- designed buildings — an experience the architect himself may never have enjoyed. During the decades his vision was coming to life in North Carolina, multiple sources suggest the era’s Jim Crow policies prevented Abele from ever visiting the site — although evidence is inconclusive. It is certain, however, that Abele could not have experienced the campus as a student; Duke did not integrate until 1962, 12 years after his death. Even in Philadelphia, Abele could not escape segregation — although he did manage to reject it in his daily commute. According to a Smithsonian Magazine profile, Abele reportedly walked more than ten blocks to work each day rather than sit in the back of the city’s segregated streetcars. Abele’s legacy also includes many descendants who joined the field, including his son Julian F. Abele, Jr., and his nephew, Julian Abele Cook, Sr. — grandfather of Peter Cook. These generations “could never have dreamed of the potential to be able to work as I work today,” says Cook, whose major projects include the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Embassy of South Africa — a project tasked with modernizing the space while preserving the architectural evidence of an "awful" past the country "couldn’t afford to forget." “In some ways that suggests that we’ve made progress in this country,” Cook reflects, “But every time you think about the progress we’ve made, there always seems to be some equal and opposite reaction that attempts to take us back to where we don’t need to go.” A quiet man, Julian Abele left no personal account of his experiences confronting discrimination as he built a distinguished career. “My father would be very uneasy with all this attention,” his son commented at the Duke dedication ceremony, “But he was proud of his work at Duke.” What we do know is that upon Trumbauer’s death in 1938, Abele began signing drawings with his own name. He became an AIA member in 1942, listing in his application a house he had designed for his sister, and Duke University buildings he worked on after Trumbauer’s death. If Abele’s achievements were overlooked in his lifetime, the oversight grew after his death in 1950 — even as work continued on the Duke buildings he had designed. It’s perhaps fitting that his name resurfaced there in 1986, as Duke students protested the school’s investments in apartheid South Africa. As part of the demonstrations, students built shacks in front of the Abele-designed chapel, prompting one student to lament that “our rights as students to a beautiful campus” were being violated. b Julian Abele, AIA, Designed Duke University Chapel, as Well as More Than 30 Additional Campus Buildings, Between 1924 and 1950.