Pioneering Harlem native Norma Merrick Sklarek dies
Became the first black female licensed architect in the U.S.
Norma Merrick Sklarek, a Harlem native who became the country’s first African American female licensed architect, died Monday in southern California at age 85.
Born a year before the Great Depression to a doctor and a seamstress, the pioneer attended both Barnard and the Columbia University School of Architecture. She went on to help design the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo and Terminal One at Los Angeles International Airport.
She died of heart failure compounded by a stroke, her stepdaughter told the Daily News.
“She was a very kind and cheerful person who was also passionate and devoted as a professional — as you’d have to be to climb the ladder the way she did. She had a litany of firsts,” stepdaughter Susan Sklarek told The News.
Indeed, Merrick Sklarek passed the New York state licensing exam in 1954 and was the first black woman to be elected Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. She was also the first black woman to form her own architectural firm.
Merrick Sklarek moved to Los Angeles in 1960 and joined Gruen Associates, where she withstood a double standard compared to her white male co-workers, one of whom drove her carpool.
“It took only one week before the boss came and spoke to me about being late. Yet he had not noticed that the young man had been late for two years,” she told California Architect magazine in 1985. “My solution was to buy a car since I, the highly visible employee, had to be punctual.”
She was married five times, including a union to fellow Gruen architect Rolf Sklarek.
She is survived by son David Merrick Fairweather, husband Dr. Cornelius Welch and three grandchildren.
ndillon@nydailynews.com
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