Belford Shoumate

Belford Shoumate, 1958

Belford Shoumate (1903-1991) was born in Mobile, Alabama and attended Barton Academy—Alabama’s first public school. He received his architectural training from the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied with French architect Paul Philippe Cret, who was Professor of Design from 1903-1937. Shoumate also served as Assistant Instructor of Design at the University. After completing his studies in 1929, he worked for Joseph Urban in New York City for four years. He then worked for Carlos Schoeppl for one year in Miami before arriving in West Palm Beach in 1936. He became a licensed architect in 1937 and practiced out of his Phipps Plaza office for 54 years.

In an interview from 1988, Shoumate stated that “back then I was very much influenced by Joseph Urban and the New School of Social Research. I appreciated Urban’s use of color and the success he was having with color at the World’s Fair. We architects all joined right in with him. We were all caught up in color and form back then.”

Shoumate drafted hundreds of untitled sketches on tracing paper. His preferred method was pastel that lightly colored his deft drawings. Compared to Johnson, Shoumate’s drawings are centered more on the structure versus the setting. Nevertheless, he accented all of his structures with foliage and each sketch is grounded by a long horizontal line.

Fan-like bushes and spikey palm fronds frame this modern Bermudian home. Elegant figures accented in red stand in the doorway and on the terrace. The lines are precise, while the use of pastel adds a smudged emboldened quality that animates the drawing.

A simple Bermudian home with a triangular chimney. Again, a figure in red stands by the door. Fan-like bushes, spikey palms, and a willowy tree off to the left surround the home. The soft blue in the background could symbolize water while the streaks of white represent passing clouds.

A simple cottage with a cupola is framed by rougher foliage and topiary. One of Shoumate’s characteristic figures in a bell style skirt stands at the door. The scale is slightly larger than the other houses and encompasses more of the page.

Here we see Shoumate’s truly modern vision. Horizontal lines define the series of volumes and the house is flanked on either side by rounded archways. Palms are frond down, clouds whisper over the top, and animated bulbous trees are to the right.

Soft green other worldly foliage surrounds this three-tiered almost circular structure. A figure in red centers the drawing. The clean white lines of the structure are countered by the greenery and bit of blue at the top.