Charles Fleming, a celebrated modern architect from St. Louis, died on July 8. He was 86 years old. News of his passing was shared in a heartfelt remembrance by Washington University, his alma mater, and on social media by Chicago architecture critic Lee Bey.
In 1960, Fleming became the first African American to graduate from Washington University’s architecture program. He went onto establish his own practice, Fleming Corporation, the first Black-owned, full-service architecture firm in the state of Missouri.
In recent years, historians have staged exhibitions and published texts about Fleming, including Bey, historian Shantel Blakely, architect Michael Willis, and Sam Fox School professor Eric Mumford.
“Charles Fleming studied architecture here at WashU during the most productive period for modern architecture in St. Louis, which coincided with the Civil Rights movement here and nationally,” Mumford said in a statement. “In his career, Fleming made courageous and very significant contributions to advancing architecture by and for Black Americans.”
Learning the Trade
Fleming was born in 1937 in Richmond Heights, St. Louis County, Missouri. His grandfather was a laborer, and specialized in wallpapering and painting. Fleming said that his grandfather used to bring him onto job sites and show him his trade, an influential experience for the soon-to-be architect. A kindergarten teacher also encouraged him to pursue his interests in art and design.
In 1955, Fleming graduated from Douglass High School in Webster Groves, a St. Louis suburb. After high school, he worked by day as a draftsman for a local construction firm. At night, Fleming studied architecture at Washington University College, which is now the School of Continuing & Professional Studies. Fleming completed his architecture degree in 1961.
Four years later, in 1965, Fleming cofounded Urban Housing Foundation—a nonprofit that combatted racial discrimination in housing—together with Richard Montgomery, who cofounded Washington University’s Urban Design Program with Fumihiko Maki.
Fleming worked for HOK before founding his own practice, Jenkins-Fleming, with California-based architect Carey Jenkins in 1968. That office had six locations throughout the U.S. There, Fleming designed buildings on Bennett Avenue in his hometown of Richmond Heights, one of the only suburban streets that catered to Black consumers due to redlining.
Important projects by Jenkins-Fleming include Gateway National Bank, the first minority-owned bank in the state of Missouri, and the physicians dormitory at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. General Community Hospital in Watts, Los Angeles. Other noteworthy commissions were the St. Louis Comprehensive Care Center, St. Philip’s Lutheran Church, Parks Chapel AME Church, Atlanta’s Art Center MARTA Station, and what is now Southern Illinois University Edwardsville’s East St. Louis Center.
After a 1975 ruling that found St. Louis public schools were illegally segregated, Fleming spent the next decade upgrading multiple public school buildings in East St. Louis. Fleming was appointed St. Louis City Housing Commissioner by Mayor Alfonso J. Cervantes around that same time. Before Pruitt-Igoe’s demolition in 1976, Jenkins-Fleming was hired in a last ditch effort to redesign the public housing complex, but to no avail.
A Lasting Impact
In 1979, Fleming founded Fleming Corporation. That office was located in downtown St. Louis at 400 Olive Street and stayed open well into the 1990s. More recently, Fleming has been recognized for his contributions to St. Louis.
Today in St. Louis County, April 18 is officially Charles Fleming Day. This April Fleming received the Dean’s Medal, the Sam Fox School’s most prestigious honor.
Fleming’s work was included in the Kemper Art Museum exhibition catalogue for Design Agendas: Modern Architecture in St. Louis, 1930s–1970s, edited by Eric Mumford and Shantel Blakely. This text contextualized Fleming’s work with other architects active in St. Louis in the 20th century like Buckminster Fuller, Erich Mendelsohn, and Gyo Obata.
This fall, a retrospective indebted to Fleming will also open at Kemper Art Museum curated by Mumford and Michael Willis, who began his career as an architect working in the 1980s for Fleming in his San Francisco branch.
A celebration of life memorial service for Fleming will be held in St. Louis at the Missouri Athletic Club on August 12.
