Robert Louis Brandon Edwards

Robert Louis Brandon Edwards is a Doctoral Student in Historic Preservation at Columbia GSAPP. Robert is an interdisciplinary artist, historian, preservationist, and native New Yorker currently based in Cleveland, OH. He is also a Scholar-in-Residence at Voices Underground, a fellow at Widen the Circle, and a member of the Vernacular Architecture Forum and Society of Architectural Historians. Robert received a Bachelor of Architectural Studies with a focus in Preservation from the State University of New York and a Master of Architectural History with a Certificate in Preservation from the University of Virginia.

His research focuses on Black mobility during the Great Migration. Inspired by his grandmother’s migration from Fredericksburg, VA to Harlem, NY by bus, Robert is currently restoring a 1947 Greyhound bus, designed by Raymond Loewy and working with Playhouse Square to adaptively reuse and rehabilitate a 1948 Greyhound bus station, designed by William Strudwick Arrasmith. Robert is also the founder and owner of House & Field, a vintage clothing company that pre/serves, re/imagines, and re/contextualizes textiles and aesthetics worn by Black laborers during the 19th and 20th centuries.