Howard Hamilton Mackey Sr. | |
---|---|
Born | |
Died | August 20, 1987
Washington, D.C., U.S. | (aged 85)
Education | University of Pennsylvania |
Occupation(s) | Architect, painter, printmaker, educator, academic administrator |
Years active | 1924–1973 |
Known for | Tropical housing architecture |
Movement | Tropical Modernism |
Spouse | Matilda Eleanor Kendricks |
Children | 1 |
Awards | Whitney Young Award (1983) |
Howard Hamilton Mackey Sr., FAIA (1901–1987), was an American architect, painter, educator, and academic administrator. [1] [2] For 50 years he worked at Howard University, from 1924 until 1973; including serving as the department head, and associate dean. [3]
Howard Hamilton Mackey was born on November 25, 1901, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Black parents Anna Willis and Henry Bardon Mackey. [1] [2] His father was a butler for a White family and his mother was a domestic worker. [1] From 1916 to 1920, Mackey attended South Philadelphia High School. [1] The summer after high school graduation, he worked as a junior draftsman for architect William Augustus Hazel. [1]
Mackey received a bachelor of architecture in 1924 from the University of Pennsylvania's School of Architecture. [1] [4] In 1936, he took a teaching sabbatical to work on a master's degree at University of Pennsylvania. [2]
He worked at Howard University for 50 years, from 1924 until 1973; as a faculty member (1924–); department head (1929–); and later an associate dean of the School of Architecture and Engineering (1937–). [3] When Mackey joined Howard University in 1924, there were only two other full time instructors in the architecture department at the time, Hilyard Robert Robinson and Albert Irvin Cassell. [1] Under Mackey's leadership, Howard University became the first HBCU to have an accredited architecture program. [1]
From 1954 to 1957, Mackey took a sabbatical from Howard University in order to teach at the University of Maryland's Civil Engineering Department. [1] During his time at the University of Maryland, he received a contract from the U.S. Department of State to develop housing plans in Suriname and British Guiana (now known as Guyana) for the Foreign Operations Administration. [1] [5] [4] [6] He also was a U.S. delegate to a Pan-American housing conference in Bogotá, Colombia. [3] Because of these experiences abroad, Mackey became known for his tropical housing architectural designs. [3]
He was a member of the College of Fellows of the AIA starting in 1962, and was awarded the Whitney Young Award in 1983. [7] [3] He was the second African-American to be elected to the College of Fellows of the AIA, after Paul R. Williams. [8] Mackey was a chairman of the D.C. Board of Zoning Adjustments, a member of the D.C. Board of Architectural Examiners, and he served on the National Capital Planning Commission's committee on Landmarks of the Nation's Capital. [3] Additionally, Mackey was a painter and exhibited his artwork at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Howard University Gallery of Art, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art. [2]
In 1925, he married Matilda Eleanor Kendricks, and together they had one son. [1] His son, Howard Jr. also worked as an architect. [1] Mackey died on August 20, 1987, in the hospital in Washington, D.C., from pneumonia, a complication from Parkinson's disease. [1]
Mackey's profile was included in the biographical dictionary African American Architects: A Biographical Dictionary, 1865–1945 (2004).