School Notes: School of Architecture
March/April 2025

Tuskegee Chapel

The spring 2025 exhibition at the Yale School of Architecture is The Tuskegee Chapel: Paul Rudolph X Fry & Welch, curated by alumna Helen Brown Bechtel ’10MArch. This exhibition reveals the often-overlooked story of the rich partnership behind a celebrated yet understudied work of midcentury architecture: Paul Rudolph, Louis Fry Sr., and Col. John Welch’s landmark Tuskegee Chapel (1960–69) on the campus of Tuskegee University. 

Timed to coincide with the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Rudolph retrospective, Materialized Space: The Architecture of Paul Rudolph, which is open through March, this complementary exhibition features architectural models of the chapel; full-scale brick replicas of Fry & Welch’s masonry details; rarely seen construction drawings from Fry & Welch; concept sketches and correspondence from Rudolph’s studio; vintage and contemporary campus photographs from eminent photographer and Tuskegee alumnus Chester Higgins; a new interview with the last living member of the design team, Fry & Welch project representative Major Holland; iconic photos of the chapel from Ezra Stoller; a newly commissioned masonry sculpture by Tuskegee alumnus Myles Sampson; and recordings from Tuskegee’s famed Golden Voices Concert Choir. Tuskegee Chapel is on display in the Yale Architecture Gallery through July 5. 

Another exhibition highlighting overlooked contributions of Black architects, the student-curated show A Repository of Black Knowledge, was on display through February 15. The curators invited members of the new Yale Black Architecture Alumni group to contribute design work for the show.