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.
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