5 collections related to Architects -- North Carolina -- History

Photocopies of certificates, clippings, and photographs dated between 1957 and 1993 documenting the career of architect Harry Kirk McGee. Most items are photocopies of clippings about award of contracts or progress of construction on projects for which McGee was the architect. Most of the projects were in Johnston County, North Carolina, and a few were in neighboring counties. These included houses, shopping centers, hospitals, schools, and other public buildings. Harry Kirk McGee (1909?- ) was an architect in Smithfield, N.C., from 1957 until 1992. Less

The Les Thornbury Interviews of Early North Carolina State University College of Design Faculty and Alumni contains DVDs and videotapes with video oral history interviews of early NC State University College of Design faculty and students conducted during the 1990s. These interviews have been converted to digital files and are accessible to researchers in that format. Leslie Arden Thornbury is a filmmaker and an alumnus of the NC State University School of Forest Resources and School of Agriculture and Life Sciences. He was born on December 19, 1947, in Raleigh, N.C. He attended radio school in San Diego, California and served as a radioman in the Vietnam War in the late 1960s. After his military service, Thornbury completed his education, received a bachelor of conservation from North Carolina State University in 1974 and embarked on his career as a television producer. During the 1990s he worked on a proposed video documentary of the history of the College of Design which included these video oral history interviews with early faculty and students. Less

The Historic Architecture Research Project Records contain drawings and project files by students in the Department of Architecture, School of Design, at North Carolina State University. Included are measured drawings, photographs, negatives, field notes and sketches, historical information, and essays. The majority of the projects document historic buildings in North Carolina. Twenty-one other states and the District of Columbia are represented, as are Germany, Mexico, and Colombia. Other course-related materials include syllabi, correspondence, uncompleted projects, and a petition to eliminate the course requirement. The correspondence series includes correspondence of professors in the North Carolina State University Department of Architecture, including Cecil D. Elliott, Henry L. Kamphoefner, Vernon Shogren, and Lawrence Wodehouse, with North Carolina State University architecture students, various North Carolina clerks of court, Charles E. Peterson of the National Park Service, and George S. Koyl, Moira B. Mathieson, and Earl H. Reed of the American Institute of Architects. Between 1951 and 1969, many architecture students at North Carolina State University completed summer projects documenting historic buildings and districts. Beginning in 1959, these projects were submitted to the National Park Service's Historic American Buildings Survey. The project was formalized with the creation of the undergraduate course, "Historic Architecture Research" (ARC 300), which was required for admission to the fifth year architecture program. In 1964, students undertook a project to record the town of Beaufort in Carteret County, N.C. Participants created maps, measured drawings of buildings, and an historical analysis of the town's development. Less

This collection contains an oral history interview with Phil Freelon that was conducted by Gwynn Thayer in 2017. Included is a full transcription of the interview. In the interview, Freelon discusses: his family and growing up in Philadelphia during the civil rights movement; the influence of the arts by his grandfather, a painter in the Harlem Renaissance; his education at Central High School; the mentorship of both John Spencer at Hampton University and Roger Clark at North Carolina State University; discrimination and diversity in the field of architectural education; the architectural profession on the national stage; acquiring projects within the public arena; his work on museums, specifically the National African American Association of Museums; and cultivating talent in a design firm and his management philosophy. Phil Freelon (1953-2019), was an African American architect who was founder and president of The Freelon Group, Inc., and then managing director and director of design of Perkins + Will, located in Durham, North Carolina. Freelon specialized in public architecture and was best known for his design of cultural museums and educational buildings in Washington, D.C.; Baltimore, Maryland; Chicago, Illinois; San Francisco, California; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Atlanta and Augusta, Georgia; and Durham, Greensboro and Charlotte, North Carolina. Freelon led the design team that gave shape to the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. He was a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, won the 2012 Design Guild Award, and the same year was appointed to the United States Commission of Fine Arts by President Obama. Less