John Llewellyn Skinner initiated the first program in architecture at the University of
Miami in 1927-28. Skinner was a graduate in architecture from the University of Toronto
and Harvard University. After winning Harvard's Nelson Robinson Travelling Fellowship,
Skinner went to the American Academy in Rome. He left his position as head of the
department of architecture at Georgia Tech to join Phineas Paist, the noted Philadelphia
architect, and Denman Fink, an artist whose work was in the collections of the National
Academy and the Art Institute of Chicago, in the founding of the architecture program at
the University of Miami. Fink was also known for his luxuriant drawings and paintings of
the buildings he and Paist imagined for Coral Gables, including the University of Miami's
Merrick Building. As George Merrick's uncle, Fink was integral to the emerging
architecture of Coral Gables which fused building traditions from Central and Latin
American colonial architecture.
The student work of the young program was shown in the third and fourth annual
exhibitions of the Architectural League of Greater Miami in 1931 and 1932. The watercolors
are similar to the Beaux-Arts esquisse work common to the period, since many schools
including Miami utilized the competition problems issued by the Society of Beaux-Arts
Architects in New York. The studies, however, of local buildings by Jewell Harden and
Bonnie Munroe reveal the presence of women students, which would have distinguished the
program from most of the rest of the country and an interest in the vernacular which was
also notable in period when most academic architecture focused on the formal design of
prominent buildings.
By the mid-1930's a number of factors caused the University to reduce its scale of
operation and the architecture program was one of the first affected. Charlton W. Tebeau,
author of The University of Miami A Golden Anniversary History 1926-1976, briefly
described Professor Skinner's collaboration with a group of dissident faculty who called
for an independent investigation of President Ashe. Ashe prevailed and Skinner left the
University. The architecture program did not re-emerge until 1950 in the new College of
Engineering in the department of architectural engineering. Professor Jan Hochstim entered
that program and graduated in 1954. He provides a valued present day link to the renewal
of architecture at the University of Miami.
By 1966, after his graduation from Illinois, Professor Hochstim joined the faculty
under the leadership of James Elliott Branch. Branch had brought a number of faculty from
his years at Illinois and they created a focus for the five-year bachelor of architecture
program which they described as "a sequence of courses in architectural design,
structural design, construction, building materials, city planning, building equipment,
office practice, and the humanities (Bulletin 1965, 249)." The program would lead
"to the development of architects, who as enlightened individuals, responsible
citizens, and resourceful professional men, will serve their society in attaining a worthy
architecture (Bulletin 1965, 249)." Although the courses have broadened and the
society of men has opened to become almost 50% women, the essential goal of contributing
to a better world remains at the heart of the program.
When President Foote arrived in 1981, he initiated consideration of 3 new schools,
Architecture, Communication and International Studies. By 1983, the School of Architecture
achieved autonomy. Dean Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk was a new faculty member at the opening
days of the school and with Adjunct Professor Andres Duany subsequently founded the
school's graduate program in Suburb and Town Design. That graduate program was important
in attracting the interest of faculty and students to the first professional M. Arch.
degree which was initially awarded to the class of 1993.
