Downing Hall (Lewis Downing Hall- College of Engineering & Architecture)

Lewis Downing Hall houses classroom, office, and meeting spaces for Howard University's College of Engineering and Architecture. The building was constructed in 1952.The building was designed by Paul R. Williams and Hilyard Robinson. It also features:

• a post-silicon validation laboratory, completed in 2024.  Through the lab and related programming, faculty and student teams will test, debug, and validate applications-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) microchips. ASIC chips are used to power tech equipment in industry, intelligence agencies, and defense systems. 
• Engineering Departments and the Office of Student Services for the College of Engineering and Architecture.

About the Building's Name

Lewis King Downing is the founding dean of Howard's School of Engineering and Architecture. Under Downing’s leadership, HU became the first HBCU to offer fully accredited engineering programs. It was Downing who broke down racial barriers in the employment of black engineers by inviting representatives from some of the nation’s largest corporations to the HU campus to observe the high-quality work of his students.

When Downing attended HU, engineering programs were offered in the College of Applied Sciences, which housed the departments of architecture, engineering, art, and home economics. The School of Engineering and Architecture was established as a separate unit of HU in 1934, appropriate to the recognition of the distinctiveness of the engineering and architecture professions. Downing returned to HU as a civil engineering instructor in 1924 and was promoted to assistant professor and acting dean after two years. Downing took a sabbatical to continue his engineering education at the University of Michigan, obtaining his master’s in engineering in 1932. He was named the first HU engineering dean in 1934.

In his forty years as engineering dean at HU, Downing received many accolades, such as honorary Ph.Ds. from the Johnson C. Smith University in 1953 and Virginia State College in 1959, being elected as a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers, a member of the Washington Academy of Sciences, the American Society for Engineering Education and the National Technical Association. He was also a member of Pi Mu Epsilon, the honorary national mathematics society, Beta Kappa Chi, the national scientific honor society known as the first African American STEM Honor Society, and Alpha Phi Alpha, the first intercollegiate historically African American fraternity.

According to the Tau Beta Pi Association, Downing is believed to be the first African American Tau Beta Pi member and had a pivotal role in the remarkable growth and success of the DC Alpha Chapter at Howard University.

The Lewis K. Downing Hall, our main engineering building located at 2300 Sixth Street, NW, was built in 1952 and formally named in 1974, posthumously, in dedication to his service at Howard University and his groundbreaking work in creating pathways for engineering and architecture students of color.

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