Robert P. Madison
Robert P. Madison (born July 28, 1923) is an American architect from Cleveland, Ohio. He was the first African American to graduate from Case Western Reserve University’s School of Architecture and the first in Ohio to earn an architecture degree. He served in World War II as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army's 92nd Infantry Division in Italy, earning three combat ribbons and the Purple Heart.
After the war, he finished his studies at Case Western and then earned a Master of Architecture from Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1952, where he studied with Walter Gropius. He briefly taught at Howard University and then won a Fulbright to study urban design in Paris (1952–53). In 1954 he founded Robert P. Madison International in Cleveland, the first Black-owned architectural firm in the Midwest.
Madison’s firm designed many buildings in Cleveland and beyond. Notable projects include work on the Mount Pleasant Medical Center, the Cleveland Public Library, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Cleveland Hopkins International Airport concourses, as well as a U.S. Embassy Office Building in Dakar, Senegal (1965). The Dakar project earned recognition from the U.S. State Department.
He has received honors such as the Ohio American Institute of Architects Gold Medal Firm Award (1994), the Cleveland Arts Prize (2000), and an honorary doctorate from Howard University (1987). He retired in 2016. Madison’s life is told in the 2019 documentary Deeds Not Words: Conversations with Robert P. Madison, and his memoir, Designing Victory, was published in 2019. He was married to Leatrice Lucille Branch from 1949 until her death in 2012. He has said he was close to Coretta Scott and was once engaged to her.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 06:00 (CET).