Jack Pyburn, FAIA is a preservation architect and principal at Lord Aeck Sargent in Atlanta, Georgia. His career, after graduating from Washington University in St. Louis in 1971, started as a planner working with neighborhood leaders to improve the public infrastructure in the African American community of Mecham Park in suburban St. Louis. Since that exceptional formative experience, he has had the privilege of working on a number of buildings and sites important to African American history ranging from slave quarters at Oakland Plantation in Louisiana to the home of Ms. Modjeska Simpkins in Columbia, SC where Ms. Simpkins and Thurgood Marshal planned early and successful civil rights litigation on which the Brown vs the Board of Education decision was based. Jack developed the HSR for and was the architect for the restoration of the exterior of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL and is currently working on the preservation of the A.G. Gaston Motel, St. Paul United Methodist Church and the Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand Masonic Lodge in the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument district established by President Obama.
Jack is an advisor to the National Trust for Historic Preservation HBCU grant program. He is President of the ICOMOS International Scientific Committee on 20th Century Heritage. He serves on the Docomomo International Scientific Committee for Technology and is the past member and chair of the AIA Historic Resources Committee and a past board member of Docomomo US.