Long-ignored Black architect of Monmouth University Great Hall finally gets spotlight

WEST LONG BRANCH - It might well be the most impressive building in New Jersey, a stunning neoclassical French tribute to a time gone by.

Built in the 1920s at a cost of $10 million — the equivalent of $150 million today — Monmouth University’s Great Hall features 50 varieties of Italian marble, the same Indiana limestone used in the Empire State Building, a 70-foot atrium crowned by a stained-glass skylight and a bathroom walled by petrified wood.

If you’ve watched the 1982 movie classic “Annie,” you’ve seen the Great Hall; it’s where the scenes in Daddy Warbucks’ home were filmed. The splendor of this place is well known. The genius behind it is not, at least not outside of the architecture community.

Julian Abele was Black, and as a pioneer in his field he worked mostly in the shadows. A group of Monmouth students is trying to change that.

Their “Julian Abele Project,” a semester-long dive into the man and the hall, is on the university’s website. The hope is that some sort of physical acknowledgement like a plaque or exhibit will be next.

“People recognize the Great Hall as Daddy Warbucks’ house, but what do they really know about it?” said Monmouth senior Kelly Dender, a project contributor. “It’s been an honor to share Julian Abele’s legacy. There’s an incredibly significant story behind it that I think has been overlooked.”

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'I had never heard of this person'

Before the Great Hall there was Shadow Lawn, a mansion built on the site in 1902. President Woodrow Wilson stayed there for six weeks in 1916, using it as a “summer White House” much like Ulysses Grant ran the country from Long Branch during the summers of his presidency. In 1927 the wooden mansion burned down.

“There were two tons of coal in the basement,” said Samantha Walton, a Monmouth sophomore who took part in the Abele project. “It caught fire, as coal is known to do.”

Mansion owner Hubert Parson, who was president of the Woolworth Co. of department stores, hired the Philadelphia architectural firm of Horace Trumbauer to rebuild. The project was placed in the hands of Trumbauer associate Julian Abele (pronounced like the word able), who may have been the first professionally trained Black architect in the United States.

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Abele’s catalogue speaks for itself: He designed the Philadelphia Museum of Art (if you haven’t been there, you’ve seen it in the movie “Rocky”), the Free Library of Philadelphia, Harvard’s Widener Library and much of Duke University’s campus, including Cameron Indoor Stadium — the country’s most recognizable home court for college basketball. In keeping with the profession’s ethos, and probably because of the era’s racial attitudes, Trumbauer received the credit. Abele’s work went unrecognized by the public.

Enter the Julian Abele Project. It’s the fruit of a course called “Museums and Archives” taught by Monmouth professor Melissa Ziobro. The course usually creates an exhibit for the university's library (past subjects include World War I and Bruce Springsteen). With campus life curtailed because of the coronavirus pandemic, the exhibit became digital.

Abele came into Ziobro’s view last year. The college had acquired the mansion after Parson was ruined by the Great Depression and renamed it Woodrow Wilson Hall in the late president's honor. But in 2020, after several years of debate, university trustees changed the name again to "the Great Hall at Shadow Lawn" due to Wilson’s abysmal record on race relations.  

“I’m a Monmouth alum and I had never heard of this person,” Ziobro said of Abele. “Everybody knows the Great Hall, but they might think of it as Daddy Warbucks’ house or where Woodrow Wilson lived, and that's not even true. The truth is much more exciting.”

Abele’s work has been recognized by Duke and the city of Philadelphia. A 2019 biography by Dreck Spurlock Wilson shined further light on his accomplishments. At Monmouth, he remained an unknown.

“It’s a great thing that were able to get this story out there,” said Dender, a history major from Middletown. “Even though he was an extremely humble man from what I’ve seen, it’s something that should not be cast aside. He wasn’t acknowledged because of his color. That’s such a shame.”

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Giving the man his due

Today the Great Hall mostly is used for administration and public-reception purposes, but classes are held in some of the rooms. COVID-19 has slowed foot traffic to a minimum over the past year, of course, but that will change. When it does, the students behind the Julian Abele Project would like to see him commemorated in concrete fashion in the building.

“Any recognition of him would be wonderful,” said Walton, an English and anthropology major from Manchester. “Credit should be given where credit is due. A plaque in the entryway or a bust of Abele would highlight his contribution to our beautiful campus.”

Whether Abele would want such recognition, Ziobro said, is a question her class discussed. How much of his obscurity was part of his profession’s code of deferring credit to the firm? How much of it was imposed on him by racist attitudes?

“From everything we’ve researched, Abele was a really humble guy; he was OK being in the shadows,” Ziobro said. “But was he really OK, or did he do that as a coping mechanism given the racial times he lived in? I would like to see us do something.”

Peter Cook, a descendant of Abele who is an architect with the firm HGA in Washington, D.C., called the students’ effort “extraordinary and wonderful.”

“When I go to Philadelphia there’s a marker outside the Free Library and the Museum of Art that speak to his contributions,” Cook said. “Duke named their quad Abele Quad. So to have his contributions noted one way or another is a wonderful part of what we as this next generation can do for him and others.”

There is an aberration in the Great Hall worth noting. In the first-floor fountain room, which also was shown in “Annie,” there is a botched restoration attempt of the frescoes that adorn the upper walls. Half of them are original and the other half are substandard refurbishments, probably from the 1970s. It’s a small thing, and certainly Abele was not doing the original painting, but the comparison is a reminder of the magnificence he orchestrated.

Monmouth’s students did him a solid, and a plaque would provide a fitting capstone.

“We should have had these discussions years ago, during the Civil Rights movement,” Dender said. “But it’s better late than never. It’s overdue.”

Visit the Julian Abele Project at https://guides.monmouth.edu/abele.

Jerry Carino is community columnist for the Asbury Park Press, focusing on the Jersey Shore’s interesting people, inspiring stories and pressing issues. Contact him at jcarino@gannettnj.com.