"Mckissack & Mckissack Architects & Engineers."

The McKissack and McKissack architectural tradition dates back to the first Moses McKissack (1790-1865) of the West African Ashanti tribe,who was sold into slavery to William McKissack of North Carolina.Under the tutelage of his owner,one of America's first contractor,Moses Mckissack became a master builder.Physically enslaved,he used he used the implements of the building trade and and became one of its skilled craftsmen.In 1822 he married (184-1865),a Cherokee, and they became the parents of fourteen children.The ninth child,Gabriel Moses Mckissack (1840-1922),moved to Pulaski,Tennessee,after the Civil War and continued in the building trade he learned from his father.When Moses II began his business in Pulaski,builders were often responsible for designing their structures.Like his father,Gabriel Moses II taught the the building skills to his Moses McKissack III (1879-1952) and Calvin McKissack (1890-1968).One of Moses II and Dolly Ann Mckissack's seven sons,Moddes III was born in Pulaski,Tennessee, on May 8, 1879.He received his education in the town's racially segregated public schools.Working with his father,Mckissack III  gained hands-on experience in his native rural community.In 1890,just one year away from being graduated,he dropped out of Pulaski Colored High School.The same year,James Porter,a white Pulaski architect,hired Moses III,and he served as a construction superintendent,building houses in Pulaski, Mount Pleasant,and Columbia,Tennessee,and Athens, and Decatur Alabama. After working five years for James,he worked as construction supervisor at Vale Rolling and Riverburg Mills,preparing shop drawings for B.F. McGrew and Pitman & Patterson.His proficiency and acumen in construction earned him the reputation as a superb artisan. Having mastered the principles of construction under his father's supervision,Moses III left the familiarity of his native surroundings and set out to establish his own business.In 1905, he moved to Nashville and opened his architectural  and construction business in the Napier Court Building.The same year,Granberry Jackson, Vanderbilt University's dean of architecture and engineering, commissioned Moses to design and construct his home.Later,he designed and built other homes in Nashville's West End area and the home of Tennessee Governor A.H.Roberts.The first major commission he received was Fisk University's Carnegie Library,for which Secretary of War William Howard Taft laid the cornerstone in 1908.Fisk's Carnegie Library was one of the first (1927) and other buildings on that campus.Between the 1940s and the 1950s,Mckissack and Mckissack also designed buildings on the campuses of Fisk University and Meharry Medical College.The firm was selected in 1929 to build the new headquarters for Tennessee's only African American-owned insurance company,Universal Life of Memphis.Other Mckissack buildings include the C.M.E. Publishing House in Jackson,Tennessee,and the A.M.E. Publishing House in Nashville.These buildings,demolished in the late 1970s,represented the firms expertise the Art Deco style.As the tentacles of the Great Depression reached everywhere,Mckissack and Mckissack did not escape its snare.While the firm struggled financially and glided toward insolvency,it avoided liquidation because of a series of contracts its received to design and build public schools and numerous Public Works Administration projects.The architectural firm received various Public Works Progress Administration contracts in the 1930s and later designed several federal housing complexes.In 1941,Alabama granted the firm a business license.Two years later licenses were granted in Georgia,South Carolina,Florida,and Mississippi.The Mckissacks received national recognition in 1942,when the federal government awarded the construction contract for the 99th Pursuit Squadron Air Base,a World War II African-American combat air unit,in Tuskegee Alabama,to Mckissack &Mckissack.The contract was the largest federal government contract ever awarded to an African American firm.Moses and Calvin received the "Charles Clinton Spaulding Medal,given to the outstanding "Negro"business firm in the country.The firm was involved in the design of several community housing developments,one of which was the College Hill development in northwest Nashville.Because of his national standing and expertise in the design and construction of public housing, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Moses  III to the White House Conference on Housing Problems.Moses McKissack III, the founder of McKissack and McKissack,died at age seventy-three on December 12,1952,after having been in the architectural business for forty-seven years.Funeral services for the firm's patriarch were held at Capers Memorial Christian Church where he was a member and designed of the church edifice.His brother Calvin,the surviving partner,became president and general manager of the firm,remaining until his death in 1968.Subsequent to the demise of Moses and Calvin McKissack,the scepter of administration passed to Moses III's son,William Deberry McKissack (1925-1988).He directed the company until an incapacitating stroke caused him to relinquish his post. After his untimely resignation,management of the country's oldest African-American architectural firm shifted to his wife,Leatrice Buchanan McKissack.In 1987,the Tennessee Building Commission awarded McKissack & McKissack the design for the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis.Following the death of William Deberry McKissack,the McKissack daughters,who were professional engineers,joined the company.With assistance rendered by her daughters,the McKissack women opened satellite offices in Tennessee,Washington, D.C., and New York. In August 1993,McKissack & Mckissack,Architects and Engineers received its first contract with the Tennessee Valley Authority when the firm was chosen to design a crew maintenance facility in Corinth,Missississippi,and an in-processing facility at the Sequoyah Nuclear Plant in Chattanooga,Tennessee.The firm remained Nashville based until it moved its headquarters to Philadelphia in 2001.Unlike its beginning,when the firm was managed by the McKissack men, it is now owned and operated by the McKissack women.