Recovering Hidden Histories Through Architecture

By Chad Eric Smith, Director of Marketing and Communications, Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts

For more than fifteen years, Dr. Melanee C. Harvey-Fryar has been pursuing a question that traditional art history has too often overlooked: What can architecture reveal about the history, aspirations, and cultural imagination of Black communities?

Beginning September 8, readers will have an opportunity to explore one answer when Harvey-Fryar's chapter, "Identifying the Religio-Racial Aesthetics of AME Church Design, 1876–1920," appears in Rewriting American Architecture: Contesting the Myths of National Culture, a new anthology published by the University of Texas Press.

For the Howard University associate professor of art history, however, the publication represents far more than a single scholarly milestone. It marks one of the earliest public expressions of ideas that have occupied her scholarship for years—and the first step toward a larger book project still taking shape.

 

"This is one of my forward steps in a 15-year project where I've been looking at the African Methodist Episcopal denomination as a kind of case study to understand how Black communities were very intentional with their aesthetics, " said Harvey-Fryar.

That work has led her through thousands of pages of historical newspapers, church records, architectural documents, and archival collections. Among the most valuable resources have been the Christian Recorder—the historic newspaper of the African Methodist Episcopal Church—Howard University's Digital Howard repository and the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, where she has studied the papers of architect John A. Lankford, the first licensed African American architect in Virginia and the only architect to serve as the African Methodist Episcopal Church's official architect.

"I often say about my projects with the AME Church, I would not be able to do this at the rate of speed I'm doing it if it wasn't for digitization of the humanities," she said. "This is really, for me, a project that evolves every single day."

Her research grew in part from a question inspired by renowned painter Henry Ossawa Tanner, whose connection to the African Methodist Episcopal Church is well documented. If one internationally celebrated artist emerged from that community, Harvey-Fryar wondered, what other artists, architects, and creative thinkers had been shaped by it—and what visual traditions had they inherited?

As she followed those questions across decades of archival material, Harvey-Fryar began to see architecture not simply as buildings, but as a visual language through which Black communities expressed dignity, equality, and cultural identity.

I really want to make the argument that all of these art forms work together. Whether it's fashion, whether it's architecture, whether it's painting or sculpture—they all work together to advocate certain ideology about Black American life.

That conviction also informs her broader approach to scholarship.

"I know a lot of people are like, 'But you're an art historian,'" she said with a laugh. "One of my commitments is to decouple all of these little categories that we have in art history."

Instead, she sees architecture, painting, sculpture, fashion, music, theater, and design as interconnected expressions of the same cultural imagination—a perspective she believes reflects the collaborative spirit of the Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts itself.

Publication in Rewriting American Architecture also represents a deeply personal milestone.

"It means everything," Harvey-Fryar said. "It's validation."

She recalled submitting an earlier version of her research to the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, only to have it rejected. Rather than abandoning the work, she continued refining her ideas until they found a home in Rewriting American Architecture, where they appear alongside contributions from leading scholars in the field, including anthology editor Charles L. Davis II and Black placemaking scholar Andrea Roberts.

"It put me in the room with some of the leading scholars," she said. "For me, this is the first project to be published that will introduce some of my foundational ideas about Black architectural practice."

While the publication marks an important professional achievement, Harvey-Fryar hopes its greatest impact will be on the next generation of scholars.

"I want them to know there's still much for us to discover and find," she said. "When you do the research, look through historical newspapers; there are still things for us to find that we haven't recognized."

She believes today's students have unprecedented opportunities because of the rapid expansion of digital archives, making historical research more accessible than ever before.

"I hope our students understand there are still facts for you to discover about Black culture and to really feel empowered by the digitization of historical material that will make that kind of discovery far, far more accessible than it's been in the past."

Her hopes extend beyond students to fellow faculty as well.

I think it goes back to what I said of really dissolving those disciplinary boundaries. What happens when we use other methodologies to think through how we are visually communicating with the world?

She already sees that collaborative spirit reflected across the College, where faculty routinely cross disciplinary boundaries in their teaching, research, and creative practice. To Harvey-Fryar, that willingness to engage across fields opens new possibilities for scholarship and artistic expression alike.

Ultimately, she believes research is about much more than uncovering forgotten facts. It is about creating conversations across generations.

"What happens when you create art that is in conversation with the past?" she asked. "That becomes a stronger statement than often just our immediate response to our surroundings."

As Rewriting American Architecture: Contesting the Myths of National Culture prepares for its September 8 release, Harvey-Fryar hopes readers will come away with a renewed appreciation not only for Black architecture, but for the countless stories still waiting to be uncovered.

"There are still things for us to discover," she said. "I want our students to feel empowered by that."