19 Facts About Julian Abele

Julian Francis Abele was a prominent black American architect, and chief designer in the offices of Horace Trumbauer.

Julian Abele contributed to the design of more than 400 buildings, including the Widener Memorial Library at Harvard University, Philadelphia's Central Library, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Eisenlohr Hall, home of the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania.

Julian Abele was the primary designer of the west campus of Duke University.

Julian Abele was related to Absalom Jones, who established the African Episcopal Church of St Thomas in 1794, the first Black church in Philadelphia.

Julian Abele worked in many media: watercolor, lithography, etching and pencil, wood, iron, gold and silver.

Julian Abele designed and constructed all of his own furniture, even doing the petit point himself.

Julian Abele attended the Quaker-run Institute for Colored Youth, which later became Cheyney University, where he excelled in mathematics and was chosen to deliver the commencement address.

Julian Abele was the first Black student admitted to the Department of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania.

Julian Abele won a 1901 student competition to design a Beaux Arts pedestrian gateway.

Julian Abele was widely respected among his peers, earning the nickname "Willing and Able", and won student awards for his designs for a post office and a museum of botany, and he was elected as the president of the university's Architectural Society.

Julian Abele became the University of Pennsylvania architecture department's first Black graduate in 1902.

Julian Abele worked part-time for a local architect and attend evening classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Between 1903 and his hiring by Horace Trumbauer in 1906, Julian Abele traveled throughout Europe.

Julian Abele's descendants contend that he studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris during his stay.

Immediately after his graduation from the University of Pennsylvania in 1902, Julian Abele traveled west to Spokane, Washington, where he designed a house for his sister, Elizabeth Julian Abele Cook, before returning east.

In 1906, Julian Abele joined the Trumbauer firm as assistant to chief designer Frank Seeburger.

Julian Abele was the architect for Eisenlohr Hall, which functions as the official home of the president of the University of Pennsylvania on the Penn campus.

When Julian Abele joined the American Institute of Architects in 1942, Philadelphia Museum of Art director Fiske Kimball called him "one of the most sensitive designers in America".

Julian Abele died from a heart attack in 1950, in Philadelphia and is interred at Eden Cemetery in Collingdale, Pennsylvania.