Vincent Leroy Lee
October 20, 1903-June 6, 1979
Architect, Member of Parliament

Unassuming, dedicated and diligent, Vincent Leroy Lee was one of Bermuda’s first black architects and the second black person to represent Southampton in the House of Assembly.

He designed homes, commercial buildings and churches, among them Spot Restaurant, the Salvation Army’s Newlands Corps, Evening Light Tabernacle and Vernon Temple parsonage, the Bassett and the Recorder buildings on Court Street, as well as Somerset Cricket Club and Southampton Rangers. He was also the architect for renovations carried out at St. George’s and Clay House Inn.

Outside of his profession, he was deeply committed to public service: he had a strong interest in education, and he successfully lobbied the Government to build a new primary school in Southampton (which became Heron Bay Primary). He served on several boards and drew plans pro bono for organisations he held dear.

Printer

Vincent Lee was born in Pembroke, the only child of Agnes Jane (Smith) Lee and Charles William Lee. His mother died in 1905, when he was only 17-months-old, and he was raised by his uncle and aunt, Frank and Theodosia Albuoy. He attended Jairus Swan’s primary school in Hamilton, and worked as a printer after leaving school.
 
Vincent’s father, Charles, had moved to New York in 1906, where he held a variety of jobs, including a horse and carriage driver in Central Park. In 1912, he married his second wife, Lillian Ernestine Outerbridge.

In 1920, Vincent joined his father and stepmother in New York, where he took advantage of educational opportunities that were widely available in the US.

He attended Brooklyn Preparatory School, and the Pratt Institute School of Architecture from 1925 to 1926.

He gained work experience with the Paterson-King Corporation, a firm of architects, engineers and builders before returning to Bermuda in 1931. In 1932, he married Edna Belvina DeRoza, a Southampton woman of Bermudian and Cape Verdean ancestry, at St. Mary’s Church, Warwick.  They set up home in Southampton.

Bellman

Lee initially found it difficult getting established and was forced to work as a hotel bellman in order to make ends meet.

But by 1937, he had designed several homes, and had begun work on two commercial projects: The Recorder and Bassett buildings. The projects made the front page of the Recorder, which noted that the buildings “should be quite an asset to Court Street, which is fact coming into its own as one of the leading thoroughfares in the city.”

Lee initially worked for a private firm C. Browning and Vokes, but in 1944, he struck out on his own, opening his own architectural studio at the Arcade building on Burnaby Street, Hamilton. The Recorder described the venture as “the first of its kind to be made by a member of his race.”

Political

Lee found time to work with the Southampton Political Association, one of the parish political machines established to get black candidates elected to Parliament in the years before universal adult suffrage.

He threw his hat into the ring in a November 1951 by-election in Southampton, handily defeating fellow black candidate Hilton Hill. 

In his election victory speech, Lee noted that Government had recently approved £32,000 to build a new primary school in Southampton. Lee, who had been chairman of the school’s PTA, said he had been asking for something to be done about the existing school for 15 years.

Lee was a Member of Colonial Parliament—which is what MPs were called back then—for less than two years and was a member of the Board of Trade, the forerunner of the Tourism Board. He did not stand in the 1953 general election and gave no reasons for his decision.
 
Still as an MCP, he backed educational programmes, including a new sports field for The Berkeley Institute. He opposed a plan, which was ultimately defeated, to cut funding for scholarships.  He also supported an unsuccessful petition by the Catholic Church to build a second school in Warwick.

Parish

After leaving Parliament, he remained active at the parish level: he was elected to the Southampton Parish Vestry and served as Tax Collector and Overseer of the Poor.

He was also a member of the advisory board of the Salvation Army and the Board of Governors of the Bermuda Technical Institute, which opened in 1957.

At the official opening of the Salvation Army’s Newlands Corps and Youth Centre in Pembroke in January 1957, Lee was on hand as a board member and as the architect who drew the plans at no charge.

Lee was active up to the 1960s—in 1959, building contractor LL Newton Butterfield said he had drawn 7,000 plans during his 30-year-old career. He was the architect for St. George’s Cricket Club’s expanded clubhouse, which was unveiled on the eve of Cup Match 1961.

In 1969, his expertise was recognised with his appointment to Government’s Arbitration Tribunal-Compusory Acquisition of Land board.

Vincent and Belvina Lee had one son, Charles Joseph Lee, who was named after his grandfather. Charles (1878-1956) and Lillian Lee (1881-1960) eventually moved back to Bermuda, where they would spend the rest of their lives.

Vincent Lee died in 1979, his wife Belvina in 2000. His wife’s cousin Reginald Burrows, at the time an Opposition MP, led the tributes paid to him in Parliament. He was survived by his son Charles, daughter-in-law Margaret and grandsons Carlos, Stanley and Michael.

Vincent Lee’s work as a pioneering architect was recalled in 2014 when Government’s Emancipation Committee honoured 12 families, including the Lees, for their contribution to Bermuda.

In 2014, when black Bermudian architects remain underrepresented in the profession, he remains a trailblazer.

Vincent and Belvina Lee
Photo: Courtesy of Charles and Margaret Lee