William Wilson Cooke was born on December 27, 1871, in
Greenville, South Carolina.[5] His parents were Magdalena Walker and
Wilson Cooke, a former slave, merchant and local politician.[5][7] He had four siblings, all of whom attended Claflin College.[6] His paternal grandfather was
Vardry McBee, an influential entrepreneur, a white slave holder, and philanthropist of Greenville.[6] Cooke attended school in Greenville until age 14, and then served as a carpenters apprentice from 1885 until 1888.[5][8]
Cooke attended Claflin College (now Claflin University) in
Orangeburg from 1888 to 1893, where he studied architectural drawing and graduated with a college preparatory diploma in liberal arts.[5][8] In 1900, he attended classes
Boston School of Technology (now Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and architecture classes at
Columbia University.[5] He returned to Claflin College to receive a
B.S. degree in technology in 1902.[8]
Career
From 1894 to 1897, he served as superintendent of industrial arts at
Georgia State Industrial College for Colored Youth (now Savannah State University).[5] He then returned to Claflin College in order to serve as the superintendent of manual training and industrial arts, replacing Robert Charles Bates.[8] He also took classes to receive a B.S. in technology.
In March 1907, he took a three-day federal
civil service examination in
Boston, Massachusetts, as the required workplace admission test at that time was not offered to African-Americans in Washington, D.C..[5] He passed the exams and was hired in the Office of the Supervising Architect of the United States Department of the Treasury.[6] This made him the first African American man to be employed at that department.[5] In 1909, he transferred departments to Field Operations, where he would supervise the construction of federal courthouses and post offices. He continued to work at the Office of the Supervising Architect until 1918, when he changed jobs.[5] He went to work as director of vocational guidance and training at
Wilberforce University, where he remained until 1921.[5]
From 1921 to 1929, Cooke had a private architectural practice at 1828 Broadway, Gary, Indiana.[6] He was also the director of Gary Building and Loan Association.[6] Cooke was the first African American to obtain an architect’s license in the state of Indiana on October 25, 1929.[6] After the
Wall Street Crash of 1929, he lost his firm and had accrued great debt, to which he was eventually able to repay.[6]
In 1931, Cooke re-joined the Office of the Supervising Architect working as a construction engineer; he designed small-town post offices in a few states.[6] In the 1920s and 1930s, Cooke ran an organization that was anti-Ku Klux Klan, as well as anti-“Bow Tie Amalgamation” group (a Black-led group that was KKK-affiliated) in Gary, because these two groups were active locally.[6] He retired from the federal government in 1942.[6]
^"Building a Community: The Architecture of William Wilson Cooke". Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History. 23 (3). Indiana Historical Society. Summer 2011.
^
abcdefghijklmWilson, Derek Spurlock, ed. (2004).
"William Wilson Cooke". African American Architects, 1865–1945. New York: Routledge. pp. 148–151.
ISBN978-1-1359-5629-5. His father, Wilson Cooke (1819–1897), was the slave son of Vardry McBee
^Edmonds, Mary Watson; Fullington, Martha Walker (June 1983).
"Tingley Memorial Hall"(PDF). South Carolina Inventory Form for Historic Districts and Individual Properties in a Multiple Property Submission.