| A well-known
Philadelphia architectural designer, Abele was the first black graduate of what
is today the Graduate School of Fine Arts. Julian Francis Abele, born in Philadelphia
on April 30, 1881, was the youngest of eight children born to Charles and Mary
Adelaide Jones Abele. Through his mother Adelaide, Julian was a descendant of
Reverend Absalom Jones (1746-1818), founder of the Free African Society and of
St. Thomas Episcopal Church. His older brothers included Joseph B. Abele, an engineer
with the Philadelphia Electric Company; Robert Jones Abele, who graduated at the
top of his 1895 class at Hahnemann Medical College; Charles Abele, a brass sign
maker who worked with artisan Sam Yellin. 
Young
Julian Abele was educated at the Institute for Colored Youth, Brown Prep School
and the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art before enrolling at the University
of Pennsylvania in 1898. An outstanding student, Abele received a number of prizes
during his undergraduate years at Penn, including first prize in competition for
the Library Tablet to commemorate alumni gifts, first prize in competition for
the Conklin Memorial Gateway at Haverford College, first mention from the Beaux
Arts Society, the Arthur Spayde Brooke Memorial Prize and the T-Square Club Prize.
During his senior year, Abele served on the student yearbook committee and as
president of the Architectural Society. He did all this while working all four
years as a designer with the Louis Hickman Architectural Firm, juggling his job
with afternoon and evening classes at the University.  After
graduating from Penn in 1902 with his degree in architecture, Abele was immediately
engaged by established architect Horace Trumbauer,
who helped to finance the young architect's three years of study at l'Ecole des
Beaux Arts in Paris. After earning a Diplome d'Architecte in 1905, Abele returned
to Philadelphia and the Horace Trumbauer Company. He spent his entire professional
life with this nationally known firm, almost all of it as chief designer, taking
over the office after Trumbauer's death in 1938. Abele was responsible for the
design of such Philadelphia buildings as the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Free
Library of Philadelphia, the Land Title Building (which came to house the offices
of Trumbauer's firm), and a number of mansions, including Edward Stotesbury's
Whitemarsh Hall; Penn's
Irvine Auditorium was designed by Trumbauer's office, but it is not clear
how closely Abele was involved in this design. Abele's projects outside Philadelphia
included the Widener Memorial Library in Cambridge, Massachusetts, mansions in
Newport and New York and many of the English Gothic and Georgian buildings on
the campus of Duke University in North Carolina.
 Abele
had immersed himself in the Beaux Arts style as a student and remained committed
to this system of architecture. He was noted not only for his adaptation of historical
styles to create fine exteriors, but also for his successful rendering of interior
space and its decorative details. For example, when he was given the task of designing
the Philadelphia Art Museum in 1919, he immediately traveled to Greece to study
classic Greek buildings; he was responsible for adapting not only the column styles
of classical Greece temples for the Art Museum, but also the color of the stone
and the polychrome figures on the facade. Julian Abele's artistic versatility
is remarkable. Not only was he a master architect, he also worked skillfully with
wood, ceramics, iron, copper, brass, precious metals stained glass, and water
colors. He made furniture, jewelry, paintings and lithographs as gifts for his
friends and associates.
Despite Abele's sophistication, accomplishments
and influence as an architect, racism did limit the public recognition of his
role in the buildings he was responsible. Racial prejudices deterred him from
visiting the Duke University campus he designed and delayed his admission to the
American Institute of Architects until 1942. Racial prejudice was also the reason
Julian Abele did not sign his name to architectural designs he did for Trumbauer's
firm until after Trumbauer's death.  As
a student and his early in his career, Julian Abele resided in the house of his
mother Mary Abele (listed as a 55 year old milliner) at 718South 21st Street in
Philadelphia; five of his brothers, a sister-in-law and a niece also lived here
at the time of the 1900 census. According to the the 1910 census, ten years later
Julian was living in the household of Charles Abele at 1911 Fitzwater Street;
also living in the household were two other Abele brothers (one with a wife) and
sister Elizabeth Abele Cook and her five children. Elizabeth had separated from
her husband, John Francis Cook, in 1906, she and her children would reside with
her brothers.
In 1925 Julian Abele married his piano teacher Marguerite
Bulle; at age 49, he was twenty years older than his Parisian born bride, a student
of conductor, composer and pianist Nadia Boulanger. The couple had three children:
Julian, Jr. (the eldest), Marguerite Marie (who died at age five) and Nadia Boulanger.
The 1930 census shows Julian, his wife and two oldest children living, along with
Elizabeth Abele Cook and her youngest child, at 1515 Christian Street. This 10-room,
3-story rowhouse was furnished with elegant French furniture, objets d'art from
their travels plus furniture, art work and even needlepoint from Julian's hand.
In 1936, after Marguerite left Julian to marry another man, the children remained
with their father on Christian Street.  Julian
Abele died at home in Philadelphia on April 23, 1950. His descendants have continued
to gravitate toward architecture. His son Julian Abele, Jr., and his nephew Julian
Abele Cook both became architects. Julian Abele Cook studied architecture at Penn
with the Class of 1927; two of his grandchildren have continued the family tradition,
Susan Cook as an architectural engineer and Peter Cook as an architect in Washington,
D.C. Ironically, it was Susan Cook, while a student at Duke University during
the 1986 student protests against apartheid in South Africa, who wrote the letter
to the student newspaper which made public Julian Abele's role in the creation
of the Duke campus. His portrait now hangs in one of the buildings he designed,
and the Duke
University Web site proudly acknowledges his work.
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