Wigington left his mark both on Omaha and his adopted home of St. Paul, Minnesota, as one of the Midwest’s first African-American architects. By the time Wigington enrolled at Central in 1898, he won three first-place drawing certificates during the 1898 Trans-Mississippi Exposition in Omaha. Subsequently graduating in 1902, he worked for notable Omaha architect Thomas Kimball, becoming the city’s first African-American architect. After quickly promoted to junior draftsman, he started his own firm in 1908. Local credits include an addition to St. John’s AME Church, the rebuilding of Zion Baptist Church after the city’s 1913 tornado and the Bloomfield and Crutchfield Apartments—now on the National Register of Historic Places. He later moved his family to St. Paul and served for 35 years in the city architect’s office. The Pavilion on Harriet Island in St. Paul—one of three buildings he designed now on the national register—was renamed in 1998 Clarence W. Wigington Pavilion. Wigington designed ice palaces for St. Paul’s annual Winter Carnival. Becoming active in civil rights, he helped to create and served as president of the St. Paul Urban League. He died in 1967, but his legacy lives on in many of his surviving structures.
Clarence passed away in 1967 at the age of 84.