As the first African-American woman to hold the architect license in New York and the first woman to earn a license in California, Norma Merrick Sklarek was also the first African-American woman who was selected as a member of the American Institute of Architects.
April 15, 1926 – February 6, 2012
Norma Merrick Sklarek was born on April 15, 1926, in Harlem, New York. She was the only child of a doctor and a seamstress. Norma Merrick attended predominately white schools, including Hunter College High School which is a public school for girls. She excelled in math and science and showed talent in the fine arts. Her talent for mathematics and art prompted her father to suggest choose architecture as a career. After one year of study at Barnard College, she was enrolled at Columbia University’s School of Architecture. She was one of only two women and the only African American woman to earn a bachelor’s degree in architecture from Columbia in 1950, which is really an accomplishment.
After she graduating from University, she was turned down 19 times. “They weren’t hiring women or African Americans, and I didn’t know which it was [working against me],” she told the Palisadian-Post in 2004. finally, she entered the city’s engineering department.
In 1954, she passed the licensing exam and became the first African-American woman to hold the architect license in New York. In 1955 she was worked with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and stay in their company for 5 years and also worked for the New York City College’s architecture department. From 1960 to 1980, the director of architecture at Gruen Associates in Los Angeles, and in 1962 she passed the California license, which was the first black woman to do so. In 1967, she married fellow Gruen architect Rolf Sklarek. Norma Merrick Sklarek died of heart failure at her home at age 85 on February 6, 2012.
Norma Merrick Sklarek changed the architecture area a lot. Since she first started work, among the 250,000 working architects in the United States, nearly 10,000 of them are African Americans. Norma Merrick not only set herself as an example but also promoted this change through her personal efforts. In 1990 she became the first African-American woman who was selected as a member of the American Institute of Architects. She is the pioneer for African American women Architect and brings more opportunity for the architecture area.
References:
“Norma Merrick Sklarek”. Architectuul.Com, 2020, http://architectuul.com/architect/norma-merrick-sklarek.
“Pioneering African American Architect”. Los Angeles Times, 2020, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2012-feb-10-la-me-norma-sklarek-20120210-story.html.
“Pioneering Women Of American Architecture”. Pioneering Women Of American Architecture, 2020, https://pioneeringwomen.bwaf.org/norma-merrick-sklarek/.
