Paul Revere Williams
The architect behind Hollywood's most glamorous homes, in neighborhoods he wasn't allowed to live in.
Paul Revere Williams was born in Los Angeles in 1894 and lost both parents before he turned five. A teacher told him a Black kid had no business drawing buildings. He became an architect anyway.
A lot of his white clients didn't want to sit next to him, so he taught himself to draw upside down from across the table. It worked. Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz called. Frank Sinatra called. He remodeled the Beverly Hills Hotel. He also built for his community, including the 28th Street YMCA and the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance headquarters. In 1957, he became the first Black Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and in 2017 the AIA awarded him its Gold Medal.
He designed homes in neighborhoods whose deeds wouldn't have let him live there. Next time you drive around LA, look closer. You're probably passing his work.
Sources
- Wesley Howard Henderson, "Paul R. Williams" (PhD dissertation, University of Texas at Austin, 1993)
- Ellen Weiss, review of Karen E. Hudson's "Paul R. Williams, Architect: A Legacy of Style" and "The Will and the Way," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 53(4), 1994
- Dreck Spurlock Wilson, ed., "African American Architects: A Biographical Dictionary, 1865–1945" (Routledge, 2004)
- Eric Harris, Anna Franz and Kathy Denise Dixon, "The Birth of Black Modernism," Buildings 15(14), 2025
- Los Angeles Public Library, "A Quiet Gentleman: Paul Revere Williams and His Los Angeles Dream"
- Fast Company, "Why Paul Williams, Hollywood's most prolific black architect, drew upside down"
- National Trust for Historic Preservation, "Nine Places that Illustrate the Life of Trailblazing Black Architect Paul R. Williams"
