Handel ‘Hal’ Lawson was born in Alexandria, Jamaica, in March 1925. His father was an accountant with the National City Bank of New York, based in Colon, Panama, but Hal grew up in Jamaica and was educated at Jamaica College, Kingston. In 1949 he came to Edinburgh, UK, to study architecture at the College of Art, graduating with a degree in 1954 and returning to Jamaica in July of the same year. He became an ARIBA in 1956 and was a founding member of the Jamaican Society of Architects in 1957, at a time when there were only 22 qualified architects on the island. He took up a role with the Public Works Department and in 1957 was dispatched to the UK as a post-graduate student on the postgraduate course at the Architectural Association’s Department of Tropical Architecture. He returned once more to Jamaica in April 1958, continuing his employment with the Public Works Department and rising to be Chief Engineer for the Housing Department by January 1959, responsible for design and construction of government low-income housing schemes and infrastructure. He also worked for the Jamaican Hurricane Housing Organisation, re-housing victims of the 1951 hurricane. In 1961 he left the public sector and joined the Kingston practice of Wilson Chong and Associates, where he was the architect in charge for the National Stadium, built for the Central American and Caribbean Games of 1962 and later host to the British Empire and Commonwealth Games of 1966. In 1968, Lawson became the Jamaican partner for Robertson Ward Associates, where he carried out the initial planning for a section of the Kingston Waterfront and designed several private residences on the exclusive Rose Hall estate. From 1970 he joined Roy Stephenson Associates where, amongst his most significant works was the design and construction of the George Headley stand at Sabina Park, Jamaica’s Test cricket ground. Alongside such major projects, Lawson was responsible for many private homes, apartment blocks, religious buildings and commercial premises and was an active member of the National Heritage Trust, the Architects’ Registration Board and the Jamaica Institute of Architects, also serving as Vice-President of the Commonwealth Association of Architects in 1984.

Sources

• Architectural Association Student Register 1945-1972, AA Archives
• Architectural Association Council Minutes Books, 24th February, 1958, p237. AA Archives
• Architectural Association Membership Register, 1958, 1961
• The National Archives, London, UK; Board of Trade: Commercial and Statistical Department and Successors: Inwards Passenger Lists; Class: Bt26; Piece: 1382; Item: 96
• The National Archives; Kew, Surrey, England; BT27 Board of Trade: Commercial and Statistical Department and Successors: Outwards Passenger Lists; Reference Number: Series BT27-141870
• The National Archives; London, UK; BT27 Board of Trade: Commercial and Statistical Department and Successors: Outwards Passenger Lists; Reference Number: Series BT27-
• Jamaica, Civil Birth Registration. Salt Lake City, Utah: FamilySearch, 2013.
• The Kalendar of the Royal Institute of British Architects, 1965, p145.
• The Daily Gleaner (Kingston), 11th January, 1964, p20
• The Daily Gleaner (Kingston), 26th August, 1975, p.12
• The Daily Gleaner (Kingston), 5th July, 1997, p24