George Milton Small Jr. (1916-1992) was the leading practitioner of modernist architecture in the Miesian mode in North Carolina, especially in the Triangle area, in the 1950s and 1960s. As the head of [William Henley Deitrick](/people/P000282)’s office in the late 1940s and subsequently in his own firms, he brought a pure modernist approach to residential, commercial and institutional design in a large body of commissions and influenced other notable architects including George Matsumoto. From 1955 to 1960, Small was in partnership in Raleigh with Joseph Boaz (also a former student at Oklahoma) as Small and Boaz. Thereafter he started G. Milton Small and Associates, which included a number of distinguished architects over the years. Small not only produced advanced designs but planned some of the most forward-looking projects in the Triangle region, including a nuclear reactor facility at present North Carolina State University and several buildings at the Research Triangle Park when that pivotal venture was in its formative years.

Small was born in Collinsville, Oklahoma, and attended the University of Oklahoma, where he received Bachelor of Architecture and Bachelor of Architectural Engineering degrees in 1939. In 1942 he married June Marie Volck. The couple had two children: George Milton Small III and June Marie Small. After several years of work for Hudgins, Thompson, Ball and Associates in Oklahoma City, Small served as an officer in the U. S. Navy Civil Engineer Corps Seabee Battalion from 1943 to 1946, including service at Okinawa. In 1946 he was licensed to practice architecture in Oklahoma and formed a partnership with Joseph Boaz in Oklahoma City. He also taught as a special instructor in architecture at the University of Oklahoma. In 1946-1947, he did graduate work in architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology, where he studied under the internationally renowned modernist, Mies van der Rohe, an experience that did much to define his approach to architecture. As Small recalled, Mies said he could teach everything he knew about design using a single-family house as a design problem which he did for an entire semester. During 1947 and early 1948 Small worked in the Chicago office of Perkins and Will, Architects and Engineers.

In late 1947, when Henry Kamphoefner (then a professor of architecture at the University of Oklahoma) visited Raleigh to be interviewed for the deanship of the new School of Design at present North Carolina State University, he met with the head of the North Carolina AIA, William Henley Deitrick, who mentioned the large amount of work his office had in hand and its need for additional staff. Kamphoefner subsequently wrote to Deitrick recommending that he offer a position to Small, a former student of Kamphoefner’s. Following an interview in January 1948, Small was hired to head Deitrick’s office. The devoted young modernist wrote to a friend in 1948 about Deitrick: “I have my fingers crossed on the architecture, but he seemed sincere in his stated desire to improve the quality and that he would really try to sell the clients. He was also quite frank that he would not turn down a commission just because the client insisted on a Georgian edifice.”

Two projects that Small planned while heading Deitrick’s office brought Miesian design to Raleigh for the first time. One was the Carolina Country Club, begun in 1948, one of the first modernist clubhouses in the country, with interiors designed by Matthew and Stanislawa (“Shasha”) Nowicki—Matthew Nowicki being the brilliant young Polish architect who had come to Raleigh as acting head of the architecture department of the School of Design. While in Deitrick’s office, Small also provided an initial design for a Student Union at present North Carolina State University (NCSU), but after a powerful member of the board of trustees objected to its modernist character, Deitrick and Nowicki developed another scheme that featured a tall portico facing Hillsborough Street. The anticipated opportunities in Deitrick’s office did not materialize, and in 1949 Small started his own practice, G. Milton Small Architects. He began his firm in customary fashion with a residential project—a modernist home for a Raleigh businessman, the Robert Rothstein House, which led to additional residential commissions.

During the 1950s and 1960s, Small and his firms were the most prolific and skilled practitioners of Miesian commercial design in the growing Triangle area of North Carolina, and their projects received numerous architectural prizes. Their work exhibited a Miesian concern for articulating space by horizontal and vertical planes; for exposed structure in the form of steel or wood posts and paneled walls; for a classical definition of base, body and roof; for the integration of outdoors and indoors through large expanses of glazing; and for the selective use of rich interior finish materials.

One of the earliest and most important of Small’s independent projects was a one-story brick building with a tall, trussed tower constructed for the research reactor at present North Carolina State University. Dubbed the “First Temple of the Atom” by the Associated Press, the NCSU Nuclear Reactor Building (1951-1953) housed the nation’s first non-federally owned nuclear reactor. He followed this with additional projects for NCSU, including the Student Service Center (Student Bookstore) in the early 1960s, Carter Stadium in 1967, and the NCSU Student Center (Talley Student Center) in the early 1970s.

Outstanding examples of Small’s elegant business and institutional designs include his Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company Building on Glenwood Avenue in Raleigh, completed in 1962, which shows the deftness with which he handled the Miesian vocabulary. Raised on a brown masonry podium, it featured cantilevered roof and floor planes separated by black steel columns, with a recessed enclosure of glass and aluminum. Similar in composition is the American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists National Headquarters (1964), located in the then developing Research Triangle Park. In this building, the walkway around the perimeter is enclosed by glass to form an internal hallway. The 1968 Richard B. Harrison Branch Library on New Bern Avenue in Raleigh exhibits still another exploration of the theme, using a raised concrete podium and black slab roof supported by steel columns, with a tan brick and glass enclosure underneath. Small was also associated with two notable skyscrapers for which the principal architect was an out of town designer, the Home Security Life Insurance Building (1958) in Durham—regarded as the state’s first Miesian tall office building—and the Branch Bank and Trust (1963-1965) in Raleigh. Small’s own office building on Brooks Avenue, completed in 1966, summarizes key elements of his work over the previous twenty years. To make the best use of a small site, the occupied space of the Small and Associates Office Building is raised a story on steel columns, allowing for parking and a fountain-lined approach underneath. The building seems to hover in the trees next to the street. Superficially, the structure is a rectangular box of glass and metal panels with aluminum mullions, cusped corners, and an overhanging roof slab. However, close examination of the façades reveals subtle differentiations in window and panel configurations, depending on the type of space behind the wall in each area. The plan of the building has a clear hierarchy of spaces, from the reception area and conference room/principal’s office with their finishes of walnut veneers, bronze-toned metal, and framed wall panels, to the linear drafting room with its frankly exposed structure. Our Savior Lutheran Church in Raleigh, completed in 1964, is the most distinctive of several churches designed by Small’s firm. Set on a raised plinth, the sanctuary is defined by its two gabled roof planes, which reach down over low, brick side walls. The street end wall is glazed and the scissors trusses that support the roof are painted black, increasing the appearance of a hovering roof.

Although Small was best known for his commercial and institutional projects, he continued to design a substantial number of modernist residences. Typical of his approach is the design for his own G. Milton Small Jr. House in Raleigh. Constructed in 1951 and expanded in 1966, the small, panel-walled, flat-roofed house is cantilevered over a brick retaining wall and has large areas of glazed sliding doors opening onto a screened porch. Other houses, like the Phillip Rothstein House of 1960 have sweeping, low-sloped gable roofs, free-flowing interior spaces, and a strong indoor-outdoor connection. Small also ventured into myriad aspects of residential design. As discovered by researcher Albert Willis, he contributed a stock design for a small but boldly modernist residence published in The Celotex Book of Today’s New Homes (Chicago: Celotex Corp., [1955], pp. 6-7), which featured extensive glass and an open relationship between indoor and outdoor spaces; Willis notes that Small was the only southern architect featured in this plan book. Small and builder Frank Walser (who executed many of Raleigh’s important modernist residences) also built some modernist homes in the Drewry Hills suburb as part of a real estate venture. According to Milton Small III, Drewry Hills was developed by John C. Williams, Leroy Atkins, and others. Small and Joseph Boaz designed the subdivision site plan and a number of builder pre-cut project houses (two in 1953, three in 1954, and eleven in 1954). Several of these houses still exist today but with many additions and changes. The plan for the Oak Park subdivision on Glenwood Avenue was also designed by G. Milton Small and Associates in the late 1950s or early 1960s.

Small’s familiarity with the Miesian approach also had a profound effect on the work of architect and School of Design professor George Matsumoto. The two men collaborated on several projects, including the Gregory Poole Equipment Company Building and the Gregory Poole House, both in Raleigh. Matsumoto’s own designs for the new studio wing at the NCSU School of Design in 1956 and his personal residence on Runnymede Road in Raleigh in 1954 demonstrate his transition from Wrightian to Miesian design under Small’s influence.

Small’s work gained extensive professional recognition. In 1963 he was named a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects for his performance in architectural design, the seventh architect from North Carolina so honored. The announcement in the Raleigh News and Observer of March 17, 1963 also noted his previous awards for the Nuclear Laboratory at NCSU, the Home Security Life Insurance Building in Durham, the Gregory Poole Equipment Company Building, the engineering and classroom building at Atlantic Christian College, and three residential projects. Small’s work received additional design awards from the North Carolina AIA, including the Northwestern Mutual Insurance Company Building in 1964.

Active in the profession and the community, Small was vice-chairman of the Raleigh City Planning Commission (1950-1960), a member of the Raleigh Board of Adjustment, and president of the Design Foundation at the NCSU School of Design. At his death, the News and Observer of May 8, 1992 cited Small as a “longtime Raleigh architect who brought the modern style of architecture to the Triangle. Architect and professor Robert P. Burns, professor and former head of the architecture department at the School of Design stated, “Nobody among those who built buildings in Raleigh had so much influence on how the city looks. . . . He brought with him the new vision of modern architecture” and demonstrated that “modern architecture could be used in all sorts of buildings.”

The successor firm to G. Milton Small and Associates is Small Kane Architects, of which George Milton Small III is a principal. Drawings, photographs, and other records for many of his works are in the G. Milton Small Jr. Collection at Special Collections Research Center at NCSU Libraries. Other photographs of Small’s works are in the Joseph Molitor Collection at Avery Architectural Library at Columbia University in New York.

Note: Small’s works like many other landmarks of mid-century modernism have been subject to demolitions within recent decades (see Building List), and others including the award-winning Northwestern Mutual Insurance Company Building are currently endangered. North Carolina Modernist Homes and other individuals and organizations are striving to encourage their preservation and enhance public appreciation for these and other modernist works. The building list posted here covers only a portion of Small’s work. Additional residences and information may be found at the website of North Carolina Modernist Homes, http://www.ncmodernist.org/small.htm.

• David R. Black, “Early Modern Architecture in Raleigh Associated with the Faculty of the North Carolina State University School of Design, Raleigh, North Carolina,” National Register of Historic Places Multiple Property Documentation Form (1994).
• G. Milton Small Papers, Special Collections Research Center, North Carolina State University Libraries, Raleigh, North Carolina.
• “George Milton Small Jr.,” North Carolina Modernist Houses website, http://www.ncmodernist.org/small.htm.
• Registration files for G. Milton Small Jr. at North Carolina Board of Architecture, Raleigh, North Carolina.