The Daily Hub

The Ford Foundation documented the “entrepreneurial genius” of Wallace Rayfield, who received an architecture certificate from Pratt in 1898, in a recent historical analysis of his work. “Wallace A. Rayfield, at the turn of the twentieth century, was among a very small and elite group of university-trained African American architects. His prestigious training at Howard University and Pratt Institute, culminating in a B.A. from Columbia University (including a year of study in London), prepared him for a vibrant career designing and building homes, schools, churches, and commercial buildings for the burgeoning Black middle class of Birmingham, Alabama, and many other parts of the country.”