Something about Charleston must have immediately captured the imagination of former 1st Lt. John C. Norman, discarged from the U.S. Army following service with an engineering unit in France during World War I.

In 1918, Norman was making his way by rail to Pittsburgh to finish postgraduate studies in architecture and structural engineering when his train stopped in West Virginia’s capital city. Here, he would eventually meet his wife and start a family – and, as the state’s seventh licensed architect and its first licensed architect and structural engineer of African-American descent, he would design scores of residential, commercial and public works structures. Some of them are still part of the city’s urban landscape.

Rick Steelhammer | Charleston Gazette-Mail