Benjamin Franklin McAdoo Jr. (October 29, 1920 – June 18, 1981) was an American architect. McAdoo designed a number of residential, civic, and commercial structures in the Seattle area in a modernist aesthetic influenced by the Northwest Regional style. Born in Pasadena, California, he attended college in South California, where he was inspired by the work of Paul R. Williams and began to pursue architectural training. After working as a draftsman for local architectural firms and the United States Marine Corps, he pursued his Bachelor of Architecture at the University of Washington in Seattle, graduating in 1946. He became the first licensed African-American architect in the state of Washington, and after a brief period designing remodels and alterations, he began to receive commissions to design private residences.

Favorable coverage in The Seattle Times by architecture journalist Margery Phillips boosted his career. A residence designed by McAdoo in Burien was declared the "Home of the Year" by The Seattle Times in association with the American Institute of Architects. After designing a number of low-income houses and apartments throughout the 1950s, including eighty of his single-family "Houses of Merit", he was hired by the Agency for International Development to design modular houses in Jamaica. He returned to the United States after eighteen months in Jamaica and briefly worked for the Department of State and the General Services Administration in Washington, D.C., where he aided Edward Durell Stone in designing the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He returned to Seattle in 1964, where he pursued public and civic architectural commissions. In addition to his architectural work, he participated in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, hosted a weekly radio show on racial issues for several years, and unsuccessfully ran for a seat in the Washington House of Representatives.

Benjamin Franklin McAdoo Jr. was born in Pasadena, California, to Alfaretta DeRoussel and Benjamin F. McAdoo, Sr. He was the eldest of their four children. Benjamin McAdoo Sr. worked a variety of jobs, including as a general contractor, while Alfaretta worked as a music instructor. McAdoo Jr. grew up in a racially diverse neighborhood of Pasadena, one of a few neighborhoods tolerating black renters when redlining practices excluded them from much of the city. He attended Pasadena High School while working part-time with his father on hardwood flooring installation and tree hauling.

After graduating in 1938, McAdoo attended Pasadena Junior College; at this time, he was living alongside his parents and siblings with his paternal grandmother, who ran a grocery store in the area. He was active in the local Seventh Day Adventist Church, giving speeches and sermons at church events. He became interested in architecture, motivated by his belief in fair housing and by his admiration for California African-American architect Paul R. Williams. In 1940, he won second place in a school contest to design an architect's office and living quarters. In 1941, he studied architecture at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, working nights and attending classes during the day, but was forced to withdraw from the university for financial reasons. He then began work at a number of private architectural firms in Los Angeles.

In 1942, he worked as a draftsman for South East Housing Architects in Los Angeles. That July, he joined the United States Marine Corps at Camp Roberts, California, where he continued to work as a draftsman. Soon afterwards, he married Alice Thelma Dent. In 1943, the couple relocated with their newborn daughter to Portland, Oregon, for McAdoo to pursue a job at the Kaiser Shipyards designing pipe systems for oil tankers. He sent inquiries to the architecture departments of the University of Oregon and the University of Washington (UW), both of which approved his request to transfer credits from his previous colleges. He chose to enroll in UW, due to a more receptive response to his letters and his belief that Seattle would be a more racially tolerant environment for him and his family than Oregon. While at UW, he published a junior project entitled "An Automobile Salesroom and Shop for Maintenance and Repair" in the university's architectural year book. While in college, he entered employment at a firm owned by James J. Chiarelli and Paul Hayden Kirk, prolific designers of Seattle homes who helped create the Northwest Regional style.

McAdoo graduated with a Bachelor of Architecture degree on June 22, 1946. In October 1946, he became the first licensed African-American architect in the state of Washington. In the April of the following year, he left Chiarelli & Kirk to found his own practice, working from his apartment in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. Business was favorable for architects at this time due to a post-war housing boom. This corresponded with the rise of modernist architecture in the United States. The housing market in Seattle had been limited since the Great Depression, with the last major expansion in the late 1920s. He was initially hired for remodels and alterations, undertaking seventeen such commissions during his first year of business.

In June 1947, he received his first full commission for the Madrona residence of local dentist and Black community activist John P. Browning. After living in various homes to the south of Seattle, McAdoo moved into the city proper in 1949, living in a renovated house across the street from the Browning residence. He participated in a small homes design competition in 1947, designing a 887 sq ft (80 m) ranch house featuring a butterfly roof. Although the design did not receive the prize, it was reviewed favorably in a column in The Seattle Times. His 1948–1949 Moorhouse residence in Magnolia, Seattle, was also praised by the paper. His work received consistently favorable coverage by The Seattle Times architecture columnist Margery Phillips, with her coverage becoming a major source of publicity across his early career. Beginning in 1954, Phillips launched a "Home-of-the-Month" column in association with the American Institute of Architects. One of McAdoo's works was chosen as one of the first winners, and his houses would ultimately be featured ten times in Phillips' columns. In 1956, a home McAdoo designed for George Hage was selected as "Home of the Year".

In 1948, he designed the nine-unit Ben-Mar Apartments, named for his children Benjamin and Marcia. Unlike other apartment complexes in the area, these apartments were not limited to White tenants. In 1950, he created a design for a 620 sq ft (60 m) single-family house titled the "House of Merit", featuring two bedrooms, a combined living and dining room, a projecting carport, and exterior walls covered in wood shakes. The House of Merit design was intended to be affordable and easy to construct; five of these homes were constructed before the end of the year, with around eighty constructed over the following three years. Following his increased business success in the early 1950s, he purchased an office building for his firm in 1951. The following year, he purchased a home in the Montlake neighborhood. At this time, less than 0.1% of the neighborhood's residents were Black. Local opinion among the predominately White residents was divided on his arrival due to tensions over racial integration in the city.

McAdoo's early designs were strongly influenced by the emerging Northwest Regional style, alongside general modern architecture. Key aspects of his designs include exposed structural elements, flat roofs, frequent use of wood, floor-to-ceiling windows, a reliance on horizontal lines, and the integration of the design into the surrounding landscape. His 1955–1956 design for the Kenneth & Kimi Ota house, the residence of a Japanese-American family living in Rainier Valley, Seattle. It combined mid-century modern design with aspects of traditional Japanese architecture.

As residential neighborhoods spread across Seattle in the late 1950s, McAdoo and his wife chose to relocate from Montlake into a residence outside of the Seattle city limits in 1958, seeking to live closer to nature and take advantage of larger, less expensive properties. He selected a plot in the rural neighboring community of Bothell, which had nonexistent or unenforced laws against Black property owners. McAdoo and fellow architect Edward Watanabe designed the spacious residence in mid-century modern style, totaling 3,600 sq ft (330 m) across a main floor and an exposed basement. Phillips featured McAdoo's residence three times in her Seattle Times coverage.

After hosting a Ghanaian ambassador, McAdoo traveled to Ghana in 1960, seeking to set up an architectural business in the newly independent country. Such ventures were unsuccessful, but led to him meeting with President Kwame Nkrumah and hosting Ghanaian exchange students at his house. In 1961, he designed the "Pagoda of Medicine" in Nashville, Tennessee, which served as the medical offices of his brother-in-law Carl A. Dent. That same year, he was appointed the Chief Housing Advisor of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and was sent to design modular homes in Jamaica. He arrived in Kingston on January 14, 1962.

These homes were fashioned from concrete blocks and were able to be constructed by untrained builders, and allowed low-income areas to be connected to water and electrical infrastructure. While in Jamaica, McAdoo lived in a middle-class neighborhood, unlike the upper class accommodations where most foreigners were residing. He attended ceremonies for the Independence of Jamaica on August 6, 1962, alongside other American dignitaries such as President Lyndon B. Johnson.

After staying in Jamaica for 18 months, McAdoo briefly stayed in Washington, D.C., where he did architectural work for the Department of State and the General Services Administration. During this time, he continued to do some work in Seattle, designing the Four Seas Restaurant with Robert K. L. Wong. He served as the coordinating architect for several of Edward Durell Stone's designs in Washington, D.C., including the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the never-built National Fisheries Center and Aquarium. He attempted to organize a Latin America division of the USAID, but was unsuccessful.

Upon returning to Seattle in 1964, McAdoo and his family initially lived in an apartment atop his offices in Capitol Hill. After a difficult housing search held back by redlining practices and seller's discrimination, they moved to the Hilltop Community in Bellevue, Washington, where they lived in a home designed by Paul Hayden Kirk. McAdoo continued his work with the General Services Administration at its Auburn offices, with his private architectural practice as a secondary job. In the late 1960s, he returned to private practice full-time, specializing in civic and educational buildings such as Seattle Fire Station No. 29, the Southcenter Blood Bank (1970), a warehouse at the Naval Submarine Base Bangor (1975), the University of Washington Ethnic Cultural Center (1972). He designed the Queen Anne Pool in 1974–1977 as part of the Forward Thrust project. His last known design was the Creston-Nelson Substation for Seattle City Light, which was built in 1979–1981.

McAdoo worked up until his death on June 18, 1981. His funeral was held at Green Lake Seventh Day Adventist Church. After his death, architects Garold Malcolm and Richard Youel continued his firm for about twenty years under the name "McAdoo, Malcolm and Youel". The firm was responsible for constructing the Des Moines Library, which opened in 1988.

Charles M. Stokes, a Republican, resigned his seat to make an attempt at running for State Senate office in 1954. He was first elected to the position in 1950 for the 37th District, a district containing Seattle's predominantly black neighborhoods. He became the first African-American state representative from King County. Seeking to fill Stokes' now-vacant seat, McAdoo ran as a Democrat on a civil rights platform, advocating the elimination of sales taxes on food and clothing, greater funding for public schools, and support for the United Nations. He placed second in the district's Democratic primaries, behind Fred H. Dore. This allowed McAdoo to advance to the general election.

The third place candidate, Paul Revelle, disputed the results; McAdoo had listed his office as his address for the election, but his Montlake residence was outside of the district. McAdoo's lawyers pointed to the large amounts of voters registered to districts they did not live in. A superior court judge ruled that although many voters were indeed registered to other districts, McAdoo was ineligible to run in the 35th district. He appealed the decision to the Washington Supreme Court, which maintained the ruling. McAdoo's attorneys attributed the ruling to anti-Black discrimination on the part of the Democratic party. In 1964, he was elected president of the Seattle chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The same year, he began hosting a weekly KUOW-FM radio show discussing racial issues, which ran until 1968.

McAdoo was a member of a variety of architectural and civic organizations, including the American Institute of Architects, the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards, the National Organization for Minority Architects, the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, and the Society of American Military Engineers. He was a board member of the King County Central Blood Bank, the Seattle Environmental Review Committee, the University of Washington's Educational Opportunity Program, and the board of trustees of Walla Walla College. McAdoo and his wife had two daughters and a son.

Mentioned designs by Benjamin F. McAdoo

Name	Location	Date	Ref.
John P. Browning House	Madrona, Seattle, WA	1947
Moorhouse Residence	3037 37th Avenue W, Seattle, WA	1948–1949
Ben-Mar Apartments	315 23rd Ave E, Seattle, WA	1949–1950
George Hage House	Burien, WA	1955
Ota Residence	10300 61st Avenue S, Seattle, WA	1955–1956
McAdoo House	17823 88th Avenue NE, Bothell, WA	1957–1958
Four Seas Restaurant	Chinatown–International District, Seattle, WA	1962
Seattle Fire Station No. 29	2139 Ferry Ave SW, Seattle, WA	1969–1972
King County Central Blood Bank, Southcenter Branch	130 Andover Park E, Tukwila, WA	1970
Samuel E. Kelly Ethnic Cultural Center	3931 Brooklyn Ave NE, Seattle, WA	1970–1972
Seattle First National Bank, Wedgwood Branch	8405 35th Ave NE, Seattle, WA	1972
Trident Warehouse	Naval Submarine Base Bangor, Bangor Base, Washington	1975
Queen Anne Pool	1920 1st Ave W, Seattle, WA	1974–1977
Seattle City Light, Creston-Nelson Substation	5300 South Bangor Street, Seattle, WA	1979–1981

• African-American architects