Building on an enduring bond

Tuskegee University and MIT deepen a connection that's existed from the start. Robert Robinson Taylor's impressive legacy straddles two institutions. There's MIT, where he studied architecture and became the Institute's first African American graduate; and then there is Tuskegee University, originally the Tuskegee Institute, where Taylor spent most of his career, heading the architecture department of the historically Black college, helping to shape its educational philosophy that drew some inspiration from MIT's, and designing and helping to build many of the buildings on the Tuskegee campus. While there have been ongoing links between the two campuses, just in the last year leaders and students in both places have been working to build, extend, and deepen that connection. Booker T. Washington, Tuskegee's founder, recruited Taylor shortly after his MIT graduation in 1892, and apart from a brief three-year interlude, Taylor remained there until his retirement, having become the nation's first accredited Black architect. During that period, he designed 48 buildings that formed the core of the campus, and which were built by the students and faculty members themselves. Forty of those buildings, including the chapel and the science building, remain in use on the campus today, and have been designated as national historic landmarks.