Cassell, Albert Irvin

By: Rayford W. Logan, Michael R. Winston

Source:

 Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition

Cassell, Albert Irvin

1895–1969
African American architect, engineer, and planner, who designed and built many buildings for the Howard University campus.

Albert Cassell was born in Towson, near Baltimore, Maryland, the third child of Albert Truman and Charlotte Cassell. He finished his elementary and high school education in Baltimore and in 1919 received a B.A. degree in architecture from Cornell University, where he sang in churches to help pay his expenses. His studies were interrupted by service as a second lieutenant, training officers in heavy field artillery in the United States and France during World War I (1914–1918).

Work at Howard University

Cassell's civilian career as an architect began in 1919 when he and William A. Hazel planned the initial architectural and structural design for five trade buildings at Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University). The two men were also the architects for the construction of the Home Economics Building at Howard University in 1921. In 1924 Cassell designed the gymnasium, armory, and athletic field at Howard, and from 1924 until 1938 he largely transformed the physical appearance of the university. He designed the interior and exterior of the College of Medicine Building, and personally supervised the building's erection and facilities from 1926 to 1927. From 1929 to 1932 he made a detailed property acquisition survey and appraisals of 300 parcels of property near Howard. Cassell obtained grants of $900,000 from the General Education Board and the Rosenwald Foundation to acquire the land necessary to execute a twenty-year program of physical improvements. He also served as the university's agent in securing and managing 107 of those properties. During 1929 and 1930 Cassell also coordinated with municipal authorities on topographical surveys of the university and its environs.

During 1926 and 1927 Cassell designed the exterior and interior and supervised the construction of three women's dormitories, named for American abolitionist Sojourner Truth, Prudence Crandall (white founder of a school for black girls in the 1830s), and Julia Caldwell Frazier, a distinguished alumna of the university. He was the architect and engineer from 1930 to 1933 for surveys and construction of heat, light, and power requirements of Howard and Freedmen's Hospital, and for a tunnel system to distribute heat, light, and power in 1932. In that year he was architect and engineer for the roads over newly built tunnels that were in some cases nine meters (thirty feet) below ground. Between 1929 and 1932, as head of the Maintenance Department at Howard, he had direct oversight of approximately 120 mechanics and custodians in planning and supervising alterations to the Art Gallery and School of Religion buildings.

Three of Cassell's most important landmarks at Howard were the Chemistry Building and Frederick Douglass Memorial Hall, an educational classroom building, both completed in 1935, and Founders Library in 1938. For these, he was the architect, the structural designer, and supervisor for the construction and interior facilities. A new heat, light, and power plant was completed in 1936 under his supervision. In 1938 the alleged “personal vindictiveness” of Howard's first African American president, Mordecai W. Johnson, terminated Cassell's services.

In addition to his impact on the physical form of the campus, Cassell also laid the foundation for a strong Department of Architecture in the School of Applied Science at Howard University. After receiving appointment as a faculty member in 1920, he succeeded Hazel as assistant professor and head of the department the following year. As head of the department until 1928 he helped develop the School of Applied Science into the College of Applied Science, which became in 1934 the College of Engineering and Architecture.

Other Accomplishments

The buildings Cassell designed at Howard were only a part of his overall work. He was the architect and supervisor for the construction and interior facilities of a women's dormitory at Virginia Union University in Richmond, Virginia, in 1923, and of the Girls' Dormitory and the Christian Center, both from 1940–1941. He did the same for the armory or Military Science Building in 1956 and 1957, and new men's residence buildings for Morgan State College (now Morgan State University), in Baltimore, Maryland. Other buildings for which he served as architect and supervisor include the Masonic Temple in 1930 and Odd Fellows Temple in 1932, the Margaret Murray Washington Vocational School Addition in 1938, and the James Creek Alley Housing Development from 1940 to 1941, all in Washington, D.C. Cassell was architect and engineer for projects of the Catholic Diocese of Washington and a firehouse in Washington. In Baltimore, he also worked on the Odd Fellows Temple from 1924 to 1925, the Provident Hospital and Free Dispensary from 1927 to 1928, and Sollers' Point War Housing Development in 1942. The George Washington Carver War Housing Building in Arlington, Virginia, in 1942 gives further evidence of Cassell's expertise as architect and supervisor.

Cassell's wide-ranging interests included providing work and wider economic opportunities as well as housing for blacks during the Great Depression. With his personal funds he purchased a 150-hectare (380-acre) site fronting 970 meters (3,170 feet) on Chesapeake Bay, in Calvert County, Maryland. He planned to construct affordable housing for black families on the property. Although the project had the strong support of Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes, political and racial problems prevented its consummation.

On the other hand, Mayfair Mansions, Mayfair Extension Housing Developments, and Mayfair Extension commercial facilities on the site of the old Bennings Racetrack in northeast Washington, D.C., established Cassell as a successful creator and architect for middle-income African Americans. Out of his own funds he took an option on 253 hectares (624 acres) in 1938. Construction of 594 dwelling units began in October 1942, but was delayed, partly because of World War II. Between August 1945, and July 1946, the Mayfair Mansions were completed at a cost of $4.1 million and fully occupied. Cassell managed these apartments until 1952, and completed plans for the construction of an additional 513 garden-type apartments and the Mayfair Extension first commercial site.

In 1946, the 594 dwelling units received the Committee on Municipal Art of the Washington Board of Trade's award in architecture with the citation: “In Acknowledgement of the Benefit of Such Supreme Architecture in the City of Washington, D.C.” Cassell should be honored also for demonstrating the values of interracial cooperation in his various enterprises and the possibilities of the good life in privately constructed housing. He set an example for blacks in professions from which they had been largely excluded.

Later Work

At the height of the Cold War, Cassell was the creator and architect from 1951 to 1954 for a proposed bomb shelter in northwest Washington. The beginning of better relations between the U.S. and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) ended the project. Later, as senior member of the firm Cassell, Gray, and Sulton, Cassell participated in the construction of an environmental computer control in 1963 and a United States Army installation at National Airport (now Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport). He made alterations at the Pentagon in 1964; worked on Kimball School, Washington, D.C.; and, with Gray, worked as engineer for St. Paul Baptist Church in Baltimore in 1966. In addition, he worked on an expanded field house for Morgan State College from 1967 to 1968 and an addition to the Birney School in Washington from 1968 to 1969.

During his long and distinguished career, Cassell engaged in architectural practice, appraisals, property acquisition and management, land planning, site planning, creation of large private ventures, and similar enterprises. From 1920 to the eve of his death, Cassell was one of the more prominent architects and engineers in the United States. Endowed with a prodigious memory, Cassell recognized every instrument in a symphony. He claimed that listening to music helped him find solutions to his architectural problems. Cassell died in his home in Washington, D.C., on November 30, 1969, after suffering a heart attack. He was survived by a wife and six children.

Most of the information for this sketch is based on materials provided by Cassell's widow, Flora B. Cassell. Particularly valuable was “Experience Record of Albert I. Cassell, Registered Architect,” a mimeographed brochure of 11 pages provided by Charles I. Cassell. Also helpful were the obituaries in the Washington Evening Star (December 2, 1969) and the Washington Afro-American (December 5, 1969). The voluminous Cassell Papers are deposited in the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Founders Library, Howard University. See also Rayford W. Logan's, Howard University: The First Hundred Years, 1867–1967 (1969), p. 339.

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