Bond, J. Max, Jr., 1935-2009, African-American architect, b. Lexington, Ky., Harvard Univ. (BA, 1955; MA, 1958). Bond’s father, J. Max, Sr., was dean at Tuskegee Institute and then took the family to Tunisia, Liberia, Haiti, and Afganistan; his prominent relatives included educator Horace Mann Bond and civil rights leader Julian Bond. Bond faced racial prejudice while attending Harvard, including being among a group of Black students who had a cross burned in front of their residential hall. He began his career as an associate of French modernist architect André Wogenscky in Paris, and then returned to New York. In 1964, he moved to Ghana where he designed the Bolgantanga Regional Library (1967) and other government buildings while also teaching at the newly established architecture school in Kumasi. In 1967, he returned to New York, heading the Architects’ Renewal Committee (ARCH) in Harlem until 1968. In 1970, he joined with Donald P. Ryder to establish the firm Bond Ryder and Associates. Among the buildings that the firm designed included the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change (1968) in Atlanta and the Studio Museum (1979) in Harlem. From 1980-1984, Bond was the chair of the architecture division at Columbia Univ.’s graduate school, and then was dean from 1985-1992 at the School of Architecture and Environmental Studies at New York’s City College; he also served on the city’s planning commission from 1980-1986. Bond became well known for his advocacy for and support of Black architects. In 1990, Bond and Ryder merged with another firm to become Davis Brody Bond, with Bond continuing to design major buildings, including overseeing the renovation and expansion of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (1991) and The Towers on the Park (1998), both in Harlem, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (1992) in Alabama, and the museum located at New York’s National September 11 Memorial and Museum (opened 2014), which was incomplete at the time of his death.
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2024, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: Architecture: Biographies
