The History We Have

A BLACK WOMEN IN ARCHITECTURE TIMELINE

1846

Richard Morris Hunt becomes first American to study architecture at l’Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. With no American schools of architecture, those who wanted to study (and could get accepted) traveled to Paris. The first American woman to be accepted there was Julia Morgan in 1898.

1846

1857

Formalization of the profession: Twelve men, including Richard Morris Hunt met in New York to found the American Institute of Architects which has became the predominate organization representing architects throughout the country .

1857

1861

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) becomes the first university in the United States to offer architecture courses. In 1886 Sophia Hayden becomes the first female student graduate from MIT’s 4-year architecture program graduating with Honors.

1861

The Civil War starts and rages on for four years ending in 1865. Out of the war came the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery in southern states, the 14th Amendment declaring that African Americans and other born in the country were citizens and the 15th Amendment which bestowed voting rights on the formerly enslaved.

1861

1875

Congress passes Civil Rights Act of 1875 intended to eliminate social discrimination against black Americans. In 1877, federal troops were withdrawn from the south heralding the end of the Reconstruction Period and pushing back educational possibilities for African Americans.

1875

Calvin Brent, who lived in Washington, DC (where slavery was abolished in 1862), is possibly the first black man to start his own architectural practice. He designed homes and churches many of which are on the National Registry of Historic Places.

1875

1878

Mary L. Page is the first woman to earn an architecture degree in the US when she graduates from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (UIUC).

1878

1880s

Daughter of Formerly Enslaved Studies Architectural Design

Elizabeth Carter Brooks studies design at the Swain Free School in New Bedford and designed a Home for the Aged in 1908.

1880s

1888

Louise Blanchard Bethune of Buffalo, NY is the first American female architect to have her own practice.

1888

1890

According to the census for that year, out of the 8,090 architects in the U.S. 44 were black. Twenty years later in the 1910 census, of the 16,613 architects listed the black total had risen to 54.

1890

1892

Robert Robinson Taylor becomes the first African American to graduate from MIT with a degree in architecture. He was immediately recruited by Booker T. Washington to join the faculty a Tuskegee Institute where they set up a curriculum lead to Tuskegee Institute becoming the first architectural school to recruit African Americans.

1892

1897

Illinois becomes the first state to set up licensing requirements for architects with California and New Jersey to follow in 1901 and 1902 respectively. In 1951, Vermont and Wyoming become the last state to require licensing. In 1898, Marion Mahoney Griffin becomes the first woman to be licensed to practice architecture in the state of Illinois.

1897

1902

Robert L. Robinson becomes the first black licensed architect when he is licensed to practice in New Jersey. Vertner Tandy and George Washington Foster were licensed in New Jersey in about 1908, prior to getting licensed in New York.

1902

1915

Ethel Madison Furman, living in New York with her family, lists her occupation as ‘architect’ as she apprenticed with black architect E. R. Williams (the future designer of an unbuilt 1926 National Memorial Building on the DC Mall). Later Furman returned to Virginia where she designed more than 25 buildings and alterations.

1915

1923

California architect Paul Williams becomes the first black architect to join the AIA and in 1957, the first African American to be elected to the College of Fellows. Designing for Hollywood stars like Frank Sinatra, Lucille Ball and Bob Hope, he also becomes America’s best known black Architect.

1923

1938

Meredith Lee Meredith, an artist and head of the art department at Virginia State College, designs an international-style house (she called Azurest South) in St. Petersburg, Virginia which in 1993 was listed on the National Register of Historic Places for its uniqueness. She also designed homes for a black enclave she started in Sag Harbor, NY known as Azurest North.

1938

1942

Beverly Greene who graduated from the UIUC in 1936 (Bach. Architectural Engineering) and 1937 (M.S. City Planning) was licensed in Illinois in 1942, becoming the first, black licensed female architect in the country. She graduated from Columbia University with a M.S. Architecture degree in 1945. She later worked in the architectural offices of Marcel Breuer and Edward Durrell Stone.

1942

1943

The Cassell Girls at Cornell

Alberta Cassell Butler becomes the first black woman to graduate from Cornell University’s School of Architecture, followed by Martha Ann Cassell Thompson in 1948. Both are daughters of Howard University’s first campus architect, Albert Cassell.

1943

1949

Louise Harris Brown, a University of Kansas graduate, becomes the second black woman to be licensed in Illinois and the United States. Inspired by Mies van der Rohe, she also studies structural engineering at The Illinois Institute of Technology before working in the office of Mies’ structural engineer. There she prepared structural calculations for several of Mies’ iconic Chicago projects. In 1954, she relocates to Brazil where she worked as an architect for next 39 years.

1949

1954

Norma Sklarek becomes the first black female architect licensed in New York State. When she moves to California she become the first licensed architect in that state in 1964. A Columbia University graduate, she is the third black woman to become licensed in the country, the first black woman to become a fellow of the AIA and the first to receive the AIA’s Whitney M. Young Award.

1954

1958

Howard University graduate, Henrietta Harvey, is licensed in New York, becoming the fourth African American woman architect in the country. At 320, women represent approximately approximately 1% of the country’s architects.

1958

1963

Harvey Gantt, becomes the first black architecture graduate from Clemson University. To attend he was forced to sue the university, one of several schools of architecture which still denied potential black architectural graduates. Gantt later became an architect and served as the Mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina from 1983-87.

1963

1971

NOMA is Born

The National Organization of Minority Architects was founded with goals to increase the visibility and professional status of black architects while inspiring and creating opportunities for young black architects and students. In 1970, there were approximately 33,000 architects national fewer than 400 were black architects.

1971

1984

Black women architects from across the country convene at Howard University’ School of Architecture to meet and discuss the status of black women in the profession. For many it was the first time to meet each other and the much admired Norma Sklarek.

1984

1991

Although partners in life and work, the Pritzker Prize was given to Robert Venturi alone and not to Denise Scott Brown. In 2004, Zaha Hadid wins the Pritzker Prize.

1991

1993

The AIA Gets its First Female President

Susan Maxman becomes the first female president.

1993

1995

Denice Johnson Hunt becomes first African American female to hold the position of local AIA component President in Seattle.

1995

199x

Denise Mann and Brad Grant at the University of Cincinnati create the Directory of African American Architects.

199x

1996

The NOMA membership elects its first female president, Cheryl McAfee, followed by Roberta Washington in 1997 and Kathy Dixon in 201x.

1996

2008

Marshall Purnell is elected President of the AIA, the first African American to do so.

2008

2016

A team including black architects assembled by Max Bond of Davis Brody Bond including Phil Freelon and David Adjaye, design the Museum of African American History and Culture on the Washington Mall.

2016

2018

Kimberly Dowel is elected NOMA president, making her the fourth female president.

2018

2019

William J. Bates becomes the second African American president of the AIA.

2019

2020

Garbrielle Bullock, Director of Global Diversity at the Perkins + Will architectural firm becomes the third black woman to receive the AIA’s Whitney M. Young, Jr. Award for activism and social involvement. At the 47th annual conference of NOMA, Bullock was also inducted into the NOMA Council.

2020

The First Ten

These are bios of 10 of the first black women in architecture. While we do not know the name of the first black woman to wake up one morning and declare ‘I can’t wait to design something today’, we have assembled the bios of ten we do know of.

1. Elizabeth Carter Brooks

Active 19xx-1908

The daughter of a freed slave in New Bedford, MA, learned design principles at the Swain Free School in 1880’s and went on to design the New Bedford Home for the Aged in 1908. Eliza recognized as one of the first women to practice architecture in Virginia and to have designed more than 200 buildings in Virginia including the home of Virginia’s first black governor, Douglas Wilder. As a young teenager she lived with her mother, Margaret, father, Madison J. Bailey, and her older brother, Ebenezer at a house at 3021 Second Street in Richmond, Virginia, her father was a carpenter and her brother three years her senior worked with her father as a carpenter. She attended xxx Armstrong High School before relocating to Philadelphia P. She is said to have graduated from Germantown High School in Philadelphia, P. She later credited a teacher at Germantown high school teacher with suggesting architecture as a profession.

2. Ethel Madison Bailey Furman

Active 1915-1950

Ethel Madison Bailey Furman is recognized as one of the first women to practice architecture in Virginia and to have designed more than 200 buildings in Virginia including the home of Virginia’s first black governor, Douglas Wilder. As a young teenager she lived with her mother, Margaret, father, Madison J. Bailey, and her older brother, Ebenezer at a house at 3021 Second Street in Richmond, Virginia, her father was a carpenter and her brother three years her senior worked with her father as a carpenter. She attended xxx Armstrong High School before relocating to Philadelphia P. She is said to have graduated from Germantown High School in Philadelphia, P. She later credited a teacher at Germantown high school teacher with suggesting architecture as a profession.

Ethel Madison married William Henry Carter, a barber, in 1912 and during their marriage they had two children: Thelma Carter Henderson and Madison Carter. By 1915 the Forman family had relocated to New York, NY. Ethel and Henry Carter and their young daughter lived in an apartment with her parents and brother on West 138th Street in Harlem. In the 1915 NYS Census, the occupation of both Ethel and her mother is listed as ‘housework’. She is 20 and her husband is 24. Her father worked as a contractor in New York.

It may have been about this time that Ethel begin to work for Edward R. Williams, one of the most prominent black architects of the era. Ethel listed her occupation in the 1920 census as ‘architect’. New York was a prime locale for black architects. She may have continued to work for Williams until she left New York but would have been very aware of the life and practice of other black architects in New York such as Vertner Tandy and George Washington Foster.

By 1920, Ethel and Carter had divorced and Ethel was re-married to Joseph D. Furman, a carpenter. Ethel, her new husband and two children from a previous marriage lived in a Harlem apartment with her father, mother, brother and two lodgers. Her father and brother Ebenezer Bailey continued to work as carpenters.

The family never broke its connection with Virginia and by 1923 had returned to Virginia where Ethel found many projects waiting for her. One of the best know examples of Ethel Furman’s work in Richmond during this period is the Douglas Wider home which, like many of Furman’s early works, no longer exists. This house, which was the birth place of Douglas Wider, who in 1989 became Virginia’s first post-Reconstruction Era governor, was built in 1923. Other projects include two projects for Dr. J. B. Early; the remodeling of Dr. A. A. Tennant home and Fair Oaks Baptist Church.

Registration as an architect would have been required in Virginia starting sometime after 1920 which might have made it difficult to work on projects of certain size under her own name. Not having had received a formal architectural education was a stumbling block (although she appeared to have studied architectural drafting through Chicago xx a correspondence course popular at the time). Licensed architects would have had to file for her. Several other projects which are now demolished were also designed by Furman during this period.

By 1930 the family was living in the house that Ethel had designed and her father had built at 3025 Q Street. Also living there were Ethel’s children Thelma Carter, Madison Carter and Livingston Furman and two lodgers. Working from an office in their home, Ethel designed other structures including the St. James Holiness Church built at 14 East 30th Street. By 1940 Ethel is living with her sons and her father who is retired. In that year’s census, Ethel’s is listed as Head of Household whose occupation as waitress, not architect.

Back in Richmond, Ethel completed the design of more than 200 new buildings and additions and alterations to existing buildings. They include new houses outside of Richmond in the 1950s, the Mt. Carmel Church in Noel, Va, at least six houses for members of the Snead family in Goochland, Richmond and Glen Allen counties, the Mt. Olive Baptist Church in Henrico, Va. and dozens of other churches throughout Virginia at 700.

3. Amaza Lee Meredith

Active

Amaza Lee Meredith (1895 – 1984) was an artist and educator, born in Lynchburg, Virginia, who also proved with the design of her home, Azurest South, to be a talented architectural designer. But her biggest creation may have been the first black enclave in the Sag Harbor section of Long Island, New York known as Azurest North.

Her parents were Emma P. Kennedy, a black woman, and Samuel P. Meredith, a white man, married at a time when inter-racial marriages were not legal in Virginia. Her father was a master stair builder. When she was fifteen, she graduated with honors from high school in Lynchburg, Virginia. Following her father’s suicide, her mother raised Meredith, her two sisters and one brother.

Meredith’s first job was as a teacher in a one room schoolhouse in Botetourt County, Virginia. Beginning in 1918, Meredith taught elementary school in Lynchburg. By 1920 she was attending Virginia Normal and Industrial Institute in Petersburg (a forerunner of Virginia State College for Negroes) where she graduated as valedictorian in 1922. She then taught mathematics at Dunbar High School until 1928. From 1915 to 1923 another black woman Edna Colson, who was later to become a lifelong friend and companion, was Director of the Normal School.

Meredith studied art education at the Teacher’s College of Columbia University in New York and graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1930. Meredith taught at Virginia State College for Negroes (which became Virginia State University – VSU) for two years before leaving once again for Teacher’s College in New York. This time she received a Master of Science in Fine Arts Education degree in 1934.

Meredith returned to VSU and in 1935 inaugurated the school’s art department. During her period as head of the Art Department, the department graduated more than 100 students with BS degrees and ten with MS degrees.

In 1938, Meredith designed and supervised the construction of the house she named Azurest South that was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994. It has been described as an extraordinary example of the architectural movement known as the International Style. The house which sits at the edge of the college campus is a one story, stucco finished concrete building with curved corners, a flat roof deck and bright turquoise (azul) railings and metal window frames. The name Azurest is said to be a play on the words as-you-rest. There was nothing like it in Virginia. The style was defined by the 1932 architectural exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art entitled Modern Architecture – International Exhibit which occurred while Meredith studied in New York.

The connection Meredith had to New York extended beyond her college days. Meredith often joined her older sister Maude Meredith Terry and family at Maude’s favorite vacation spot in the Hamptons, Long Island (85 miles from New York City). Terry resolved to challenge historic discriminatory patterns which prevented black home ownership in the seaside resort. By 1947 Meredith and Terry had purchased and began to sub-divide land in the Village of Sag Harbor to sell to middle-class African Americans. They called their development Azurest North.

By 1953 when the Azurest Syndicate Incorporated was formed, dozens of the 120 seafront and inland lots had been sold for $1000 each. While Terry was president, Meredith, the recoding secretary, drove the organization’s early formation and decisions. In addition to selling lots, they developed the community’s infrastructure including Terry Drive and Meredith Avenue.

Meredith never formally practiced architecture, but she took every opportunity available to design for family and friends. At Azurest North she designed her sister’s house, the house for Dr. Colsen and herself and at least three others of which two were built. Meredith also designed a house in Ettrick, Virginia in 1954 and another in Prairie View, Texas in 1956. Meredith also Virginia in 1954 and another in Prairie View, Texas in 1956. Meredith also designed a house in Ettrick, Virginia in 1954 and another in Prairie View 1954 and another in Prairie View at 700.

4. Helen Eugenia Parker

Active 1933-xx

Helen Eugenia Parker taught drafting to youth during the Depression and in the 1930’s worked for an architect of Puerto Rican descent in Detroit. She was a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha and the National Technical Association. It is not known if she was licensed. The daughter of a freed slave in New Bedford, MA, learned design principles at the Swain Free School in 1880’s and went on to design the New Bedford Home for the Aged in 1908. Eliza recognized as one of the first women to practice architecture in Virginia and to have designed more than 200 buildings in Virginia including the home of Virginia’s first black governor, Douglas Wilder. As a young teenager she lived with her mother, Margaret, father, Madison J. Bailey, and her older brother. first black governor, Douglas Wilder. As young teenager she lived with her mother, Margaret, father, Madison J. Bailey, at 150.

5. Martha Ann Cassell Thompson

Active 19xx – 19xx

Martha Ann Cassell (1925-1968) was the oldest daughter of Washington, DC architect Albert Cassell and Martha Ann Mason Cassell, a public school teacher. Her father was one of the best known architects in Washington, D.C. for his work at Howard University where as campus planner and architect in the 1920s and 1930s, he designed Founder’s Library, a campus icon. Cassell attended Cornell, but his studies were interrupted with the call to join the battles of World War I in France. Although Albert Cassell was never able to return to Cornell, Cassell received his architectural degree as did hundreds of other young men who had been forced to leave school to fight in Europe during the War. But Cassell wanted his children to do what he could not: Three of his four children – including two daughters – graduated from the college of architecture at Cornell University. The first was his son Charles Irvin Cassell, who as an architect, worked for his father at his campus office for several years.

Martha Ann Cassell was the eldest daughter and second child. In Washington, DC she attended James Monroe Elementary School, Garnet Patterson Middle School, Banneker Junior High School, and Dunbar High School where she graduated as valedictorian in 1943. That same year she entered Cornell University’s College of Architecture.

Martha graduated from Cornell with a degree in architecture in the Spring of 1947, becoming Cornell’s first African American female architecture graduate. The next year she married Victor Thompson, a Meharry University medical student and they had one child named Karen.

From 1949 to 1951, Thompson worked for an architectural firm in St. Louis, Missouri. But Martha Thompson’s Gothic-style ecclesiastical architecture rendering skills were discovered by Philip Hubert Frohman, principal of Frohman, Robb & Little the chief restoration architect for the Washington National Cathedral. Thompson was assigned to produce detailed renderings of French Gothic-style renderings – although Frohman’s vision was originally Neo-Gothic. Between 1959-1968, Thompson produced very detailed perspective drawings and preparing clay mock-ups of sculptural ornaments – which were then used by the marble stone cutters. ornaments – which were then used by the marble at 350.

6. Alberta Cassell Butler

Active 1951-1982

Alberta Cassell Butler (1926-20xx) was the youngest daughter of Washington, DC architect Albert Cassell and Martha Ann Mason Cassell, and Martha Ann Cassell Thompson’s sister. Her father and later her brother were Cornell educated architects. Alberta Cassell attended Washington, DC’s James Monroe Elementary School and Garner Patterson Junior High School, Banneker Junior High Schools and in 1944 graduated from Dunbar High School. In that same year, Alberta Cassell Butler. Entered Cornell’s school of architecture where during her sophomore year, she was part of a four-person design team winning a national student contest for the design of a shopping center in Ithaca New York.

Alberta Cassell also received an award for having the highest grade in her class at the School of Architecture at Ithaca. She graduated from the School of Architecture in 1948. Her sister, Martha, graduated the following year. With her sister, Martha, the two of them were the first American American women to graduate from Cornell’s School of Architecture. Two years later, Alberta Cassell married Francisco Butler, a mechanical engineering graduate from Howard University, with whom she had two children.

Following in her brother’s footsteps, Alberta Cassell worked with her father, who was for xx years, Howard’s primary architect and planner, at his architectural office on Howard University’s campus. When her father turned his attention to the development side of the profession, Alberta Cassell left and became a naval architect.

In 1951, she took a position as a architectural engineer at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC. In 1961, Alberta Cassell became an engineering draftsman with the Military Sea Lift Systems Command. From 1971 to 1982 she worked as a naval architect with the US Naval Sea System Command.

Through much of her time as a navel architect she ran into discrimination against women and sometimes lack of sleeping quarters on ships and land for African Americans. When she became disabled on the job, she was denied disability benefits. But Cassell was successful in a law suit against the Navy which resulted in her receiving these benefits. After working thirty years in naval architecture, Alberta at 350.

7. Beverly Lorraine Greene

licensed 1942

Beverly Greene (19xx – 19xx) is documented as being the first female African American architect in the United States. She was born in Chicago in 1915, the daughter of a postal worker-turned-lawyer and stay-at-home Mom. Perhaps wanting to improve conditions where she lived on the South Side of Chicago was what inspired her to want to study to improve it. She received a Bachelor’s degree in Architectural Engineering from Urbana-Champaign in 1936 and a Master of City Planning degree there in 1937. She joined the Kappas xxxxx and participated in theater groups productions entertaining teens. For a while she and her mother ran a program to help young girl xxxx. She appears to have been friendly and outgoing. And the reason so much is known about her is that black newspaper columnists in both Chicago and New York wrote about her. Like the article which reported that Greene attended a dinner party given by xxx for famed architect Paul Williams who was visiting Chicago from Los Angelos in 19xx.

It is no surprise that she was friendly with a group of professionals working to get Chicago South-side’s first public housing project. She and other black architects were hired by the Chicago Housing Authority to work on what became the Ida B. Wells Housing xxx. In xxx she addressed the issue when speaking before a group of black women at a career day meeting held at Chicago’s Morris Eats Resturant. Here she answered questions about rent prices and apartment sizes at the Ida B. Wells apartments. She also encouraged young women to consider architecture.

Greene was licensed as an architect in the state of Illinois in 1942. She later worked in the office of the Roderick O’Neil, a black engineer and architect. Greene applied for a job in New York working for Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. The company had announced that no Negroes would be allowed to live in the new Stuyvesant housing complex to be built in Lower Manhattan that Greene would have worked on. Greene was sure when she learned about their attitude that she would not be hired. It may have been to deflect criticism that she was the first architect hired. She moved to New York and started worked at the company. She also went by Columbia University to apply for admission to full time graduate study. She found out shortly after that not only she been accepted but she had been given a scholarship to attend Columbia University. In 1945 she received a Master of Architecture degree from Columbia.

After graduation, Greene worked for several New York architects including Edward Durrell Stone and Marcel Breuer. She is credited with work on several of Breuer’s buildings including a building for New York University in the Bronx and a UNESCO building in Paris. In 1950, Beverly who was a member of the Council for the Advancement of the Negro in Architecture (CANA) participated in an exhibit of the work of black architects organized by that organization and co-sponsored by the AIA NYC and the Architect’s League.

Beverly Greene designed two renovation projects in Harlem including the 195x renovation of the Unity Funeral Home, where her own funeral was held in 1957. Greene died at the age of 41 after a sudden illness. Her funeral was attended by Lena Horne, rumored to be her best friend, and other musicians and politicians.

8. Louise Harris Brown

licensed 1949

Louise Harris Brown (19xx-19xx) was born in Topeka, Kansas. Her father was a shipping clerk and her mother a housewife. After graduating from high school she attended her mother’s alma mater, Washburn University, for one year. In 1938, she followed her brother, who was studying to become an electrical engineering to Chicago. It was while taking a night course at what was then the Armour Institute of Technology taught by no less a figure than Mies van der Rohe himself that Louise became interested in becoming an architect. She returned to Kansas and in 1940 began studying architecture at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Louise graduated in 1944 with a Bachelor of Science in Architecture degree.

Louise returned to Chicago after graduation and latter married her brother’s roommate, James A. Brown. From 1945-1949 she worked for Kenneth Roderick O’Neal, the first black architect to open an office in downtown Chicago. Here she was the only woman. In 1949 she passed the architect’s licensing exam was registered as an architect. She was a member of Alpha Gamma Alpha an organization for women in architecture.

Louise also had an interest in structural engineering. She worked in the firm of a well-known high rise structural engineer Frank Kornackers from 1949-1953. At this time she completed a course is structural engineering at night at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Louise was the lone woman in that office. At this firm Louis Harris Brown worked on the structural designs on two Mies van der Rohe buildings including Lake Shore Drive apartments. She considered her contact with Mies van der Rohe one of the most significant and interesting events in her life. Louise and another architect also moonlighted with their own firm. But Louise still felt that discrimination limited her choices and advancement.

By 1954, Louise had divorced her husband, left her two children with her mother and moved to Sao Paulo, Brazil to work. After working a few years, Louise returned to the US to bring her children to live with her. When she left the engineering firm, she had taken with her a letter from Kornackers recommending her as both an architect and structural engineer.

In Sao Paulo, she worked for various architectural firms as a consultant where she designed and supervised construction on several large projects. She also had her own firm and designed more than 50 projects including more than two dozen residencies. Louise worked until 1993 when she began to experience health problems. She moved to Washington, DC where her brother lived. There she died in 1999 of breast cancer complications.

9. Norma Sklarek

1954 –

Norma is the daughter of West Indian parents whose father was a physician. She attended Barnard College in New York for a year as a prerequisite to enrolling in Columbia University’s School of Architecture. She received a Bachelor of Architecture degree in 1950. She was licensed as an architect in New York State in 1954 becoming the first African American woman to pass the exam in New York State. Upon graduation, she recalls that she applied to 29 different architecture firms before being hired at a civil service job in New York City.

It was difficult due to racism of the time for black architects to find a job in an architectural firm, but after a year working for the City of New York City, she landed a job at SOM (Skidmore, Owings & Merrill) one of the largest architectural firms in the City. In 1960 she moved to Los Angeles and with five letters of recommendation went job hunting. She was hired at the first firm who interviewed her – Gruen Associates. Among the projects for which she was responsible as project manager are The American Embassy in Tokyo and the San Bernardino, CA City Hall. There she was advanced to head of the architectural department and stayed on for the next 20 years.

Norma was licensed in California in 1962. In 1980, she joined the firm of Welton Becket Associates as a vice president. At Welton Becket Associates she was project director for the Passenger Terminal One at Los Angeles International Airport. In 1985, she and two other female architects started their own firm- Siegel-Sklarek-Diamond, which she left after a few years. From 1989 to 1992 she was a principal in charge of project management at the Jerde Partnership. Norma Sklarek was elevated to fellowship in the AIA in 1980 – almost a century after the first woman – Louise Bethune was made a fellow. Norma later served as a Master Juror for the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards and as a member of the California State Board of Architecture.

In 2008 she became the first black woman to receive the AIA’s Whitney M. Young Award for social action based on her long list of trailblazing activities. Norma Sklarek is currently retired and lives with her husband in Los Angeles. In 2008 she became the first black woman to receive the AIA’s Whitney M. Young Award for social action based on her long list of trailblazing activities. Norma Sklarek is currently retired and lives with her husband in Los Angeles. In 2008 she became the first black woman to receive the AIA’s Whitney M. Young Award for social action based on her long list of trailblazing activities. Norma Sklarek is currently retired and lives with her husband in Los Angeles. In 2008 she became the first black woman to receive the AIA’s Whitney M. Young Award for social action based on her long list of trailblazing activities. Norma Sklarek is currently retired and lives with her husband at 500.

10. Henrietta Harney

1958

She is a graduate of Howard University. She was a senior architect at Coler Memorial Hospital on Roosevelt Island, NY. Previously she worked for various Health and correctional facilities in New York. She later worked with a construction company located in Harlem. She is a graduate of Howard University. She was a senior architect at Coler Memorial Hospital on Roosevelt Island, NY. Previously she worked for various Health and correctional facilities in New York. She later worked with a construction company located in Harlem. Previously she worked for various Health and correctional facilities in New York. She later at 100.