To celebrate Black History Month, Triangle Modernist Houses has arted an online archive devoted to Black architects in North Carolina prior to 1970. The site, “Pioneering Black Architects in North Carolina,” is available at http://www.trianglemodernisthouses.com/ncblack.htm. The home page of this Web site notes that in 1980, there were only 65 Black architects registered in North Carolina (out of a total of over 1900!) and that the first Black woman to be a registered architect in North Carolina didn’t reach that achievement until — wait for it — 1994. Wow.

The plan is for the site to eventually profile about 20 architects, but at the moment six are covered: Robert Robinson Taylor, Gaston Alonzo Edwards, William Alfred Streat, Jr., Clinton Eugene Gravely, Joseph Henry Yongue, and Arthur John Clement. The profiles include images of the architects, in a couple of cases images of their buildings, and a biography.

This is an interesting site that covers a topic I haven’t seen a lot of Web data for — African-American architects. But I recommend using it only as jumping off point. Take Gaston Alonzo Edwards as an example. The Triangle Modernist Houses site has a brief biography, but there’s a much longer one at the Fayetteville Street Planning Group and on the North Carolina Architects and Builders Biographical Dictionary. (Though Mr. Edwards doesn’t appear to have a page on Wikipedia.)

This page looks like it’ll have even more great information which expands to a full twenty biographies, but it seems at the moment to be just a good place to start.