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Architect John S. Chase with rendering of one of his buildings on the wall of his offices at 1201 Southmore in 1976.

John S. Chase was the first Black licensed architect in Texas. Chase died in 2012. His son, Tony Chase is donating $1 million to the University of Texas School of Architecture to create two endowments.

John S. Chase is shown enrolling at the University of Texas in 1950, just two days after the Sweatt v. Painter U.S. Supreme Court ruling opened white schools to Black students.

The Martin Luther King Jr. School of Communications at Texas Southern University was designed by architect John S. Chase.

John S. Chase with his sons Anthony and John Jr. in 1959.

The Houston home of modernist architect John S. Chase, the first licensed African American architect in Texas.

Saundria (Chase) Gray with her father, the late architect John S. Chase.

Houston architect John S. Chase has designed several buildings on the Texas Southern University campus. He is shown here in a 1992 photo.

Democratic National Committee chairman Paul Kirk and wife Gail, center, get a big welcome from Houston architect John Chase and wife Drucie, left, and Laura Lee and Jack Blanton.

Houston businessman and law professor Tony Chase and his wife, Dina Alsowayel, have committed $1 million to the University of Texas School of Architecture to honor Chase’s father, the school’s first Black graduate and the state’s first licensed Black architect.

The donation will create two permanent endowments to improve the representation of Blacks in architecture schools and among the ranks of working architects.

“My mom passed away almost exactly a year ago, so this, really, is meant to honor both of their lives and legacies. My hope is that it provides an opportunity for lots of deserving kids,” Tony Chase said. “They were a unit. They really were. It would be impossible for me to honor him without honoring her.”

The John S. Chase Family Endowed Graduate Fellowship will be used to recruit graduates from historically Black colleges and universities and increase the number of Black architects. Then, the John S. Chase Family Endowed Professorship in Architecture, will help recruit and keep faculty members and support their research.

“Throughout his life and as reflected in his built works, John Chase was a connector and a community-builder,” said Michelle Addington, dean of the School of Architecture. “Not only did Chase design spaces that brought people together, but he used his pioneering position to create opportunities for others.”

John S. Chase enrolled at UT in 1950, just two days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Sweatt v. Painter case opened white college campuses to Black students. He was the first Black student to enroll in UT’s architecture school and was its first Black graduate in 1952.

In his long career, he designed some 300 structures, homes, schools, churches and other buildings. His own modern home in Riverside Terrace in Houston’s Third Ward, was the subject of a 2020 book by UT architecture professor David Heymann, a Houston native. Even now, his life and career are the subject of another book under way by Tara Dudley, an assistant professor at UT.

Chase was 87 years old when he died in 2012. His wife, Drucie, died in early 2021 at the age of 89. The couple had three children, Tony, daughter Saundria Chase Gray and another son, John S. Chase III, who died a few years ago.

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After graduation from UT, Chase’s story is that of the ultimate underdog.

No existing architecture firm would hire him because he was Black, so Chase taught technical drawing at Texas Southern University, opening his own firm after convincing the state that it should let him sit for licensing exams without the required experience working for an architecture firm because he simply couldn’t get it.

Houston architects Howard Barnstone and Robert Morris did help him get work in his early days, and architectural engineer David Baer signed off on his architectural plans.

Once he was established, Chase’s Houston practice flourished and Chase was a “starchitect” in the Black community.

He had a hand in the design of Toyota Center and renovations of the Astrodome, and designed the Thurgood Marshall School of Law and the Martin Luther King Jr. School of Communications at Texas Southern University. He designed Texas’ first Black bank, Riverside National Bank (now Unity Bank) and Booker T. Washington High School in Houston.

He was a smart marketer, making himself known to Black churches all over the region, hoping for future commissions. Tony Chase tells the story of how for the first 15 years of his life, he and his family seemingly attended a different Black church every Sunday, even though their home church was the Antioch Missionary Baptist Church, a house of worship formed by former slaves in 1866, in the months after emancipation.

John Chase’s firm became the launchpad for a generation of Black architects, too, allowing them a place to get the professional experience needed for state licensing that he couldn’t get.

“The apprenticeship requirement … has been used to exclude some people and my dad was able to navigate it with the help of some architects who had good hearts and were people of good will,” Tony Chase said. “My dad never forgot that and paid attention to up-and-coming architecture students throughout his career, minorities and non-minorities.”

Diane Cowen has worked at the Houston Chronicle since 2000 and currently its architecture and home design writer. Prior to working for the Chronicle, she worked at the South Bend (Ind.) Tribune and at the Shelbyville (Ind.) News. She is a graduate of Purdue University and is the author of a cookbook, "Sunday Dinners: Food, Family and Faith from our Favorite Pastors."

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