Paul Revere Williams, a pioneering Black architect in Los Angeles, is the focus of a series of exhibitions this year that aim to highlight his extensive and influential legacy. Despite widespread belief that much of his archive was lost during the 1992 Los Angeles riots, it has emerged that the majority of his work was preserved by his family. This trove, comprising original drawings, renderings, plans, and blueprints for approximately 1,800 projects, was recently acquired jointly by the Getty Research Institute and the University of Southern California (USC). Three major institutions—the Getty, USC, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)—are using this material to tell a broader story of Williams’s contributions to architecture, civic life, and Black Los Angeles.

Williams, who died in 1980, broke racial barriers throughout his 50-year career, becoming one of Southern California’s most successful Black architects. He earned his architecture license in 1921 and was the first documented Black member of the American Institute of Architects by 1923. Despite facing overt racism, including restrictive covenants that prevented him from owning property in areas where many of his projects were located, Williams built a thriving practice. He designed estates for high-profile clients such as Barbara Stanwyck, Frank Sinatra, Lucille Ball, and Desi Arnaz, as well as civic buildings, hospitals, schools, churches, and affordable housing in Black neighborhoods like West Adams.

Williams’s design versatility is evident, as he navigated various styles including Tudor, Georgian, and Spanish Colonial, adapting to client preferences rather than adhering to a single signature style. Nevertheless, certain elements recur in his work, such as graceful curved staircases and his distinctive logo for the Beverly Hills Hotel, which he designed in his own handwriting. Despite his deep involvement with the hotel’s numerous expansions from the 1940s onward, Williams was barred from entering through the front door due to racial discrimination.

The Getty exhibition highlights Williams’s architectural contributions to historically Black institutions, such as the First African Methodist Episcopal Church, the oldest Black congregation in Los Angeles, and Black-owned businesses like the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company. The USC Fisher Museum of Art’s show emphasizes his innovative approaches to affordable housing and collective living concepts, inviting contemporary artists and architects to engage with his legacy. Meanwhile, LACMA’s broad survey presents the diversity of his work, encompassing luxury Hollywood estates alongside civic and religious buildings. Its curator noted that Williams’s work spanned many facets of life—people could be born in a Paul Williams hospital, attend a school he designed, worship in his churches, and be laid to rest in his funeral homes.

Though Williams faced considerable racial obstacles—including having to teach himself to draw upside down to ease the discomfort of white clients—his determination enabled him to become a foundational figure in American architecture. The renewed attention through these exhibitions seeks to ensure that his contributions are recognized as central to Los Angeles’s architectural and cultural history, with curators expressing hope that his name will feature prominently in future histories of American architecture.