Articles

In June 1950, following a U. S. Supreme Court ruling desegregating graduate and professional schools in Texas, twenty-five-year-old John Saunders Chase became the first African American to enroll in The University of Texas at Austin’s master’s program in architecture. He later became the first licensed African American architect in Texas. In a distinguished career spanning more than five decades, Chase designed buildings throughout southeast and central Texas. His style was distinctly modern with buildings featuring clean lines and bright, open public spaces—their designs guided not by tradition, but rather by the needs of the individuals and communities they would serve. Chase is remembered as an influential civic leader and one of Texas’s most important progressive architects. More»