Born in Raleigh, Macon Strother Smith graduated from Hugh Morson High School.  In 1941, he graduated with honors in Architectural Engineering from NCSU.  After serving in the Navy as a Lieutenant Commander, he joined Thomas Cooper and Ross Schumaker in Raleigh for three months before leaving for Carter Williams' firm. He was president of AIANC in 1966.

In 1955, the School of Design's "Matsumoto Wing" of Brooks Hall was designed by George Matsumoto with the "Architect of Record" as Carter Williams.  Smith was heavily involved in this project and remembered working on it with great fondness.  Smith was also architect and construction manager converting William Deitrick's famous "Water Tower" to the AIANC office.

He retired from architecture in 1995. From 1996-1999 Macon Smith was instrumental in the publication of an award-winning historical chronology of AIA North Carolina: “History of the North Carolina Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, 1913-1988: An Architectural Heritage.” He served on countless AIA boards and committees and won both the 2001 Deitrick Medal and the 2006 F. Carter Williams Gold Medal, the highest honors presented by AIANC. 

In early 2008, he spent many hours scouring his own records and helping TMH get started.  He died in the fall of 2008.

MACON SMITH
RESEARCH GRANTS

TMH established the Macon Smith Research Grant Program in 2009 to support research into Triangle Modernist architecture and architects.  Funds of up to $1000 are available to private citizens, academics, or institutions.  To apply, send an email with a 200-word project description and contact information.

On July 9, 2009, the first MSRG was awarded to David Hill, Assistant Professor of Architecture, NC State University, for travel to Oakland CA to interview architect George Matsumoto. 

Hill's oral history of Matsumoto will be placed in the NC State University Library Special Collections. Matsumoto’s body of work provides evidence of a confident designer who is cleverly inventive, but not one given to unnecessary re-invention for each new project. His architecture is refined and it defies simple categorization. He is a significant, yet under-represented, contributor to the post-war modernist trajectory, and this research endeavors to magnify accessibility to Matsumoto’s work while critically situating it relative to his contemporaries, many of whom have been examined via their own monographs.