Black Success Is Never Simple: An Interview with Architect Curtis J. Moody

Curtis J. Moody African American Architect

This interview was conducted on June 6, 2013, at the Moody•Nolan headquarters in Columbus, Ohio.

Mitchell:

It really is an honor to meet and speak with you. I’m a professor of English at Ohio State University and now realize that you are responsible for many of the buildings in which I’ve had my most memorable experiences: the Hale Center, the Schottenstein Center, RPAC, and the Ohio Union. And that’s to say nothing of the many buildings around Columbus that help make this an easy city to love. I’ve noticed that the descriptions of your buildings often reveal a real awareness of cultural concepts. I’m thinking, for example, of the relevance of jazz, the Sankofa bird, Gullah culture and basket weaving, the talking drum, and the journey across oceans that created the African Diaspora. Given this awareness, featuring you in Callaloo is especially appropriate. The founder of Callaloo, Dr. Charles Rowell, is also an alum of Ohio State University and his journal engages and preserves the sort of cultural connections that help to fuel your work. You, Charles Rowell, and Callaloo all seem to appreciate the dynamic interchange of culture. So, we’re talking about the visual, the aural, the spiritual, the literary, and so much more whenever we’re talking about what you have created and what Callaloo creates. So, thank you for spending some time with our readers.

I’d like to begin with some reflection on your past. I understand that it was in Junior High School that you decided you wanted to be an architect. You didn’t quite know what that meant, but you knew that when buildings were being planned, there were drawings involved. What exactly attracted you to those building sites, and what about those drawings and everything else you saw ignited that desire?

Moody:

It’s always interesting to try to look back and think about how I came to make the decision to be an architect. I don’t think it was anything specific, other than an interest. At that time, I was young enough not to know the professions, not to know who did what. I just knew that I was interested in drawing buildings and for whatever reason that was just my interest. When I was in school, we were required to take industrial arts, and under industrial arts, you had woodworking; you had metal working; and you had what’s called “drafting.” And drafting consisted of drawing machine parts, and I can do that very well, but I just knew that I wasn’t excited about drawing a bunch of machine parts. When I looked through books and saw houses and buildings, I was excited about drawing those, and my teacher at the time, when I told him so, he said, “Well, you can get equal credit by drawing those.” And that’s what I did; I switched from drawing machine parts to drawing houses. And so that continued to spark my interest.

Mitchell:

So it really was in school itself. I had sort of visualized that you saw a building going up in your neighborhood or something, but it really was part of the curriculum. Okay, so once this desire was sparked, you spoke to your guidance counselor about it, and she very much discouraged you. She even told your coach that you were setting yourself up for disappointment. Would you share that story with our readers?

Moody:

Well, it is absolutely a true story. You know, you have to remember: when I was in high school, at that time, we weren’t called blacks. We were called Negroes and the teacher actually said, “No Negro is—we don’t know anyone that’s an architect.” She said that it’s a profession that normally caters to the wealthy. “Who is going to select a Negro architect?” she asked. And, of course, I didn’t know. It’s like, “You’ll be better served if you become a...