Kenneth Roderick O'Neal

Kenneth Roderick O'Neal was born on July 30, 1908, in Union, Franklin County, Missouri. He attended Sumner High School in St. Louis, Missouri. O'Neal graduated from the University of Iowa with a B.A. degree (1931) in graphic art. At the onset of the Great Depression, O'Neal remained at the University of Iowa to pursue a B.S. degree (1935) in civil engineering. During this time, O'Neal submitted one of his paintings to the Harmon Foundation in New York City, to be included in their exhibition of Work by Negro Artists (1933). Following his graduation from Iowa, he moved to Chicago in 1936 to work as an engineer for the Illinois Highway Dept. A couple of years later, O'Neal attended the Armour Institute (now Illinois Institute of Technology) and enrolled in classes on modernist architecture in conjunction with the Institute of Design, and studied under former Bauhaus instructors exiled from Nazi Germany, including Ludwig Hilberseimer, and other colleagues to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. == Career ==

In 1940 to 1941, O'Neal worked evenings as a draftsman for Walter T. Bailey, Georgia Louise Harris Brown, the second African American woman in the country to become a licensed architect, also worked at the firm of O'Neal from 1945 to 1949. and "A Volume of Contemporary Homes" (1980). ONeal maintained an architectural firm, K. Roderick O'Neal and Associates, as a physical office from the late 1940's to 1958, when he accepted a position as architect for the City of Chicago, Department of Public Works, Bureau of Architecture. While with the city, he still provided architectural services working from a home office. He retired from the city in 1983. O'Neal married three times. == Work ==

• Lawrence E. Smith residence (1964), 8348 South Calumet, Chicago, Illinois == Publications ==