Louis A.S. Bellinger (1891-1946) was Pittsburgh’s only licensed and practicing Black architect for the entire time that he practiced in the Steel City. My recent NEXTpittsburgh article digs deeper into Bellinger’s biography than the laundry lists of his jobs and buildings penned by historic preservationists. It’s hard to construct a biography of a consequential historical figure who left behind few traces beyond documents in public records and newspaper articles reporting on his work. There is lots more to the Bellinger story and it took some creative sleuthing to patch it together. There are also sidebars to the Bellinger story. This post is about one those: a draftsman who briefly worked for Louis Bellinger in the early 1920s.
My first entry in the Bellinger arc was my 2022 NEXTpittsburgh article about the architect’s younger brother, Walter Bellinger. Walter, along with other family members, followed Louis to Pittsburgh in the early 1920s. Walter went into the family business: the building trades. As a carpenter, he worked on buildings throughout the region before moving to California in the 1950s. Walter’s greatest contribution, however, was helping to build Pittsburgh’s Muslim community. After taking the name Saeed Akmal, he became a founder of Pittsburgh’s First Moslem Mosque.
My second entries in the Bellinger family narrative arc deal with one of Louis’s earliest commissions as a professional architect. In 1920, he designed and built the Central Amusement Park, a Black-owned sports stadium in Pittsburgh’s Hill District. I wrote about the brothers who hired Bellinger, their family’s efforts to get recognition for their achievements, and 21st century erasures by the historic preservation community.
During the 1920s, Bellinger built his small architectural practice and social capital among Pittsburgh’s growing Black entrepreneurial elite. City directories and newspaper articles show that he employed at least one draftsman in his office.
NEXTPittsburgh, April 5, 2023
The draftsman Bellinger hired was named William H. Robinson (1900-1962). Robinson was born in Louisville, Kentucky. His father Lee was a hotel-keeper and his mother Amanda worked as a housekeeper. His parents split before he was 10 and Robinson’s mother raised him while living with relatives. Robinson’s World War I draft registration had him living in his mother’s home and working for a Charleston, W.V., munitions manufacturer.
Robinson left Kentucky and enrolled in the University of Pittsburgh. He graduated in 1922 with a B.S. degree in electrical engineering. In the fall of 1922, he joined the faculty of Prairie View State Normal and Industrial College (now, Prairie View A&M University) as an associate professor of mechanical arts.
By November 1924, Robinson was back in Pittsburgh. The Pittsburgh Courier published an article with Robinson’s photo announcing that Bellinger had hired him as a chief draftsman. The article listed Robinson’s architectural work up to that point. His jobs, in addition to the Prairie View faculty one, working for the Beckham Brothers firm where one of his projects was assisting in the design of a dormitory for Simmons University in Louisville.
Robinson left Pittsburgh and became a math and physics instructor at Brick Junior College in Enfield, North Carolina. While teaching at Brick, Robinson attended Boston University for graduate school and he earned a master’s degree in 1933 and a PhD in 1937. The following year, in 1938, Robinson joined the faculty of the North Carolina College for Negroes (now, North Carolina Central University) in Durham. Robinson had a long and distinguished career, becoming chair of the Physics and Math Department. He authored several academic papers and won prestigious awards, including substantial National Science Foundation funding for his work.
Robinson died in 1962 of a heart attack at age 62. Black newspapers around the country published his obituary. The National Science Foundation’s Institute for High School Teachers created a scholarship in Robinson’s honor at North Carolina Central University. After Robinson’s death, the college renamed its science building (constructed in 1939 and listed in the National Register of Historic Places as a contributing building to the North Carolina Central University Historic District) the William H. Robinson Science Building.
©2023 D.S. Rotenstein
Shortlink for this post: https://wp.me/p1bnGQ-3ZO