From the Saunders Family History Book
Born on July 8, 1931, in Nashville, TN;
married Norma, 1956; children: Jeh Charles, Marguerite Marie
Education: Columbia College, AB, 1953; Columbia
University, MA,
architecture, 1958.
Military/Wartime Service: United States Army, 1953-54.
Memberships: National Organization of Minority Architects
(NOMA), co-founder, 1971.
Career
Paul R. Williams, architect and designer, 1956; Adams and
Woodbridge, Architects, architect and designer, 1958-62; Gindele and Johnson,
architect and designer, 1962-80; Vassar College, lecturer in art and design,
1964-2001; LeGendre, Johnson, McNeil Architects, partner, 1980-90; Jeh V.
Johnson, FAIA, architect, 1990-.
Life's Work
In a career spanning over forty years Jeh Vincent Johnson
has remained committed to the idea that designers should take account of their
social responsibilities and attempt to provide buildings that respond to
"human emotional needs," as he told Contemporary Black Biography
(CBB). He has followed this principle both as a teacher at Vassar College
and in his private architecture practice. Besides numerous churches, colleges,
and community buildings he is responsible for designing over 4,300 housing
units, many of which were developed under government programs during the 1960s
to provide good-quality, low-cost housing for underprivileged groups. He is
known as a thoughtful designer, an inspirational teacher, and a forceful, untiring
advocate for female and minority architects.
Born in Nashville,
Tennessee, on July 8, 1931,
Johnson was the youngest of five children, though his twin sister died soon
after birth. He grew up on and around the campus of Fisk University,
where his father, Charles Spurgeon Johnson, was professor of sociology and
later the university's president. Johnson's mother presided over a home that
welcomed visitors and was always busy with guests, boarders, and family
members. Although his parents were Baptist and Methodist, Johnson first
attended the St. Vincent de Paul Catholic School and then Pearl
High School in Nashville. Though segregated, St. Vincent's in particular had an enviable academic
record and provided Johnson with a good early education.
Benefited from
Excellent Training
Johnson was a bright student in high school. When he
graduated, the Dean of Columbia College at Columbia University
invited him to apply for the Columbia College National Scholarship for 1953.
The advantage of studying there was that he could begin his professional
studies in architecture a year early, in his senior year. He entered the School of Architecture, where he became President
of the Student Body.
In between his first and second years at graduate school,
Johnson was drafted into the Army, rising to the rank of sergeant during his
twenty-two months' service. He returned to Columbia where his architectural heroes were
Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier. Johnson was later influenced by Albert
Mayer and Clarence Stein. He had a summer job working for black architect Paul
R. Williams in Los Angeles.
Williams was known as "the architect to the stars" and Johnson felt
that the experience of working for him not only made him a better designer, but
also gave him a new perspective on architecture itself. He told CBB that
"My work with him and his easy going, eclectic way of doing things stood
in striking contrast to the rather rigid functionalism that was current in the
eastern schools."
After graduating in 1958, Johnson won the William Kinne
Fellows Fellowship for travel. He was already interested in designing
multi-family housing and Europe was at the
cutting edge of that kind of work. While still a graduate student Johnson had
met and married Norma Edelin and she accompanied him for the first few months
of his trip. In all, Johnson and his used VW covered 10,000 miles in the eight
months of his stay in Europe, visiting countries as far apart as Italy and Sweden.
Johnson has said that his studies of group housing projects
and his talks with European planners served him well in his later professional
career. He was particularly impressed by the Stockholm New
Town Hall, which he
thought had managed to "incorporate vernacular traditions and patterns
into a major public structure that has importance and dignity, while retaining
a tactility and humane scale that is most appealing."
Opened Private
Practice
On his return to the United
States in 1959 Johnson entered private practice in Hudson Valley, New
York, with his college friend William Gindele. Most
of their work was on community buildings: multi-family housing, community
centers, churches, schools, and single-family homes. By 1967 Johnson had become
so successful in the field of multi-family housing that he was contacted by the
White House to serve on President Lyndon B. Johnson's National Commission on
Urban Problems. At the time many American cities were suffering the
after-effects of rioting and looting and minority groups were deeply resentful
of the conditions they felt were forced upon them by local governments. The
Douglas Commission, as it was known, met in eighteen urban locations over the
course of two years. So dangerous was the atmosphere that there were often
offered a police escort, though they rarely accepted. As Johnson has noted the
work of the commission was received without fanfare, but most of its
recommendations for ways of rationalizing taxation, construction processes, and
alleviating segregation have since been adopted.
The Douglas Commission led Johnson to involvement with the
American Institute of Architects (AIA), where he became chair of the National
Committee on Housing. He served on numerous committees and eventually became
chair of the committee for the 1974 national convention. He declined the
nomination for national director of the AIA because he felt it would interfere
with his other work. In 1977 he was elected to the AIA's college of fellows,
the highest honor for any practicing American architect.
Much of Johnson's work centered on Poughkeepsie
and the area around Vassar College in New
York, where he taught for thirty-seven years. It
includes the former Poughkeepsie Day School building, the Susan Stein Shiva Theater,
the Poughkeepsie Catharine
Street Center
and Library, and the ALANA
Center on the Vassar
campus. In the late 1990s he converted the Poughkeepsie Day School
building, one of his own designs on the Vassar campus from 1963, into a college
office, lab, and classroom block.
Inspired His
Students
In 1964 Johnson began teaching at Vassar College,
where he had a studio in architectural drawing and design, and where he
encouraged students not only to learn draftsmanship, but to think about the
human value of their designs. Johnson was always been committed to the idea
that thought and reflection are a crucial part of the design process and he
inspired his students to be conscious of what they were trying to do in their
designs.
Johnson's work at Vassar was also instrumental in
encouraging women into architecture. In 1964 very few women entered the
profession, yet by the end of the twentieth century many graduate schools had
equal numbers of men and women. Johnson's approach to encouraging female
architects was characteristically pragmatic and generous. He told CBB that
"We had a lot to do with changing that, I think, partly through personal
contacts, partly by pushing students to reach beyond their expectations of
acceptance, and partly by involving them in the dynamics of my own
practice."
In 1971 Johnson and four male colleagues at the AIA national
convention in Detroit
formed the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA) because they
felt that minority architects were unknown to the American public. They were
especially keen to publicize the profession to young black and Latino students.
By 2003 NOMA represented hundreds of minority men and women, with chapters in
all the major architecture schools in America. In 1997 Johnson was
awarded a special citation from the New
York chapter of the AIA for his advocacy on behalf of
equal opportunity and housing issues.
Johnson's influence on urban development, on young minority
and female architects, and on the profession as a whole, is substantial. As a
teacher he has inspired hundreds of students to go on to successful careers as
architects and as teachers in design schools around the country, while his
commitment to fairness and humane values in architecture and urban design has
improved the quality of the lives of thousands of Americans.
Awards
AIA, Students Medal, 1958; William Kinne Fellowship, 1959;
Fellowship of American Institute of Architects, 1977; New York chapter of the
American Institute of Architects, special citation, 1997.
New York Times, September 11, 1949; December 29, 1956;
November 4, 1973.
On-line
"Jeh Vincent Johnson." Biography Resource
Center,
www.galenet.com/servlet/BioRC (February 3, 2004). National Organization of Minority Architects, www.noma.net
(March 1, 2004).
"Three Faculty Members Retire," Vassar Today: The
Alumni Quarterly, www.aavc.vassar.edu/vq/fall2001/articles/today/faculty_retire.html
(March 1, 2004).
Other
Additional material for this profile was obtained through a
written interview with Jeh V. Johnson on February 3, 2004, and from documents
he kindly supplied.
— Chris Routledge
