The Belgian Friendship Building

From the New York World's Fair to a Virginia HBCU
A singular architectural landmark bridging western Europe and the American South.
A singular architectural landmark bridging western Europe and the American South

How did the Belgian Friendship Building, originally constructed for the 1939 New York World’s Fair—and one of only a few surviving buildings from that celebrated exhibition—end up on the campus of an HBCU in Richmond, Virginia? In this richly illustrated book, Kathleen James-Chakraborty, Katherine Kuenzli, and Bryan Clark Green relate the fascinating story, spanning three continents, of a distinctly modern structure that has towered over Virginia Union University, in a city characterized by its traditional architecture, for more than eighty years. It is a structure whose original purposes—to present modern Belgian design and to extol its racist, colonial regime—stand in stark contrast to its dedication in 1941 to Robert L. Vann, longtime editor of one of America’s most illustrious historic Black newspapers. The Belgian Friendship Building is an enduring example of prewar modernism designed by a team of Belgian architects under the direction of Henry van de Velde that has until now been all but forgotten in histories of modern architecture. This indispensable, multifaceted account ties together the history of modern European architecture, colonial exploitation, and African American achievement in a brilliant and compelling case study.

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