He also designed public housing, campuses and dorms for churches and schools, single-family residential work and apartment towers.
Johnson later worked for Austrian-born architect, Victor Gruen, who specialized in designing shopping malls.
[9] Debra Davis,[2] Sidney Cobb, Robert Polk, and Spinks were associates that worked at his firm.
[10] One of his most notable designs was Stanley Mannia Café (1969–1971), a Googie style Chinese restaurant in Detroit.
[11] In the 1980s Johnson was chosen by Mayor Coleman Young to design all of downtown’s People Mover stations, an automated public transport system in the city of Detroit.
Johnson took this as an opportunity that he shared by subcontracting several of the people mover stations to African American peers including Aubrey Agee, Roger Margerum, Howard Francis Sims, and Harold Richard Varner (of Sims–Varner).