Lunada Consulting & Design: June 2020

Our April-June Design Trailblazer is Norma Merrick Sklarek (1926-2012), born in Harlem New York City, is known as “the Rosa Parks of architecture”.

Norma Merrick Sklarek (1926-2012)

Sklarek is highly praised and admired for her numerous pioneering achievements as the first African American woman architect in NY (1954) and CA (1962). Her intelligence, talent, and determination allowed her to overcome racism and sexism and became a prominent architect and leader in the industry. She is a woman of many firsts who paved the way for minority and women architects.

Sklarek was the only child of Walter Ernest Merrick, a doctor, and Amy Merrick, a seamstress, both of whom had immigrated from Trinidad to the United Sates. She was very close to her father and loved spending time with him fishing, house painting, and doing carpentry. During her schooling at Hunter College High School, Sklarek excelled in math and science, as well as showed talent in fine arts. Her father noticed her natural talent and suggested architecture as a career.

Growing up in New York (Harlem & Brooklyn), she attended predominately white schools. For college, this continued. She acquired prerequisites at Barnard College and transferred to the School of Architecture at Columbia University. At Columbia University she was one of two women in her class and the only African American. Many of her classmates were veterans of WWII, some had bachelor’s or master’s degrees, and they collaborated on assignments together, whereas Sklarek commuted to school and struggled to finish her work on the subway or at home alone. As she said later, “the competition was keen. But I had a stick-to-it attitude and never gave up.”

Upon her graduation from Columbia in 1950, with a Bachelors in Architecture, Sklarek faced discrimination in her search for work as an architect. She applied to nineteen firms and was rejected from all. She told a local newspaper in 2004, “They weren’t hiring women or African Americans, and I didn’t know which it was [working against me].” Continuing her job search, Sklarek took a civil service job at the City of New York’s Department of Public Works as a junior draftsperson, but felt her talents and skills were underused in the city position and it wasn’t challenging her skills. This prompted her to take the architecture licensing examination. Sklarek passed the exam on her first try becoming the first licensed African American woman architect in the state of New York in 1954.

She didn’t stop there. After becoming the first Black woman architect in NY:

She was hired at a firm shortly after receiving her license, but was given menial tasks such as designing bathroom layouts.
In 1955, she was offered a position at the architectural firm, Skidmore, Owings & Merill. There she was given more responsibility on large-scale projects.
While working at SOM, Sklarek took a second job and taught evening architecture courses at New York City Community College to support her two children as she was recently divorced.
In 1959, Sklarek became the first African American woman member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA).
In 1960, after five years at SOM, she relocated and took a job at Gruen Associates in Los Angeles.
At Gruen she became aware of her Supervisors extra scrutiny, as she was the only Black woman in the firm. As a new employee without a car, she started carpooling with a white male colleague who was consistently late. Norma said, “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. My solution was to buy a car since I, the highly visible employee, had to be punctual.”
In 1962, she became the first African American woman licensed as an architect in California.
Norma rose to the position of Gruen’s director of architecture, responsible for hiring and overseeing staff architects and coordinating technical aspects of major projects.
Like many women architects in corporate firms, for most of her career Sklarek served as a project manager rather than design architect.
She oversaw major projects such as the California Mart, Fox Plaza, Pacific Design Center, San Bernardino Hall, and the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo.
She collaborated with Cesar Pelli on the California Mart, Pacific Design Center, San Bernardino City Hall and the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, Japan.

According to Marshall Purnell, a former president of AIA, she was more than capable of designing large projects, but “it was unheard of to have an African American female who was registered as an architect. You didn’t trot that person out in front of your clients and say, ‘This is the person designing your project.”

Her son David Merrick Fairweather recalled how Sklarek considered the design of a building the easy part, but “she would make it real. What kind of concrete. What kind of nuts and bolts. What kind of glass. She was in production, and she would tell you production was the real work.”

Norma Sklarek, Gruen Associates, California Mart, Los Angeles, 1963.

The glass portion in the foreground is a later addition. © Gruen Associates

Norma Sklarek, Gruen Associates, San Bernardino City Hall,

San Bernardino, Calif., 1973. © Gruen Associates

Norma Sklarek and Cesar Pelli, Gruen Associates, The U.S. Embassy,

Tokyo, Japan, 1976. © Gruen Associates

Norma Sklarek, Gruen Associates, Pacific Design Center, Los Angeles,

1978. © Gruen Associates

She stayed at Gruen for 20 years.

During her career she also served on the architecture faculty at University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Southern California.

In 1980, Norma was the first African American woman elected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects for her outstanding contributions to the profession, the first woman in the Los Angeles AIA chapter to be awarded this honor.

That year she joined Welton Becket Associates firm as a vice president, where she was responsible for Terminal One at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), a $50 million project that she completed before the start of the 1984 Olympic Games.

In 1985, she cofounded the first woman owned firm, Siegel Sklarek Diamond, with Margot Siegel and Katherine Diamond.

Norma Sklarek, Welton Becket, Terminal One, Los Angeles

International Airport, Los Angeles, 1984. © Map data: Google

Though her firm worked on large projects such as the Tarzana Promenade, a 90,000 square foot medical and retail center, remodeling the Lawndale Civic Center, and additions to schools and other institutional buildings. After four years, Sklarek left since her and her partners were not able to get commissions for large-scale projects, and she missed the income and challenges they brought. From there, Sklarek joined the Jerde Partnership as principal of project management. At Jerde, she worked on the Mall of America in Minneapolis and other significant projects. In 1992, she retired from the practice, but still continued working in other areas to pave the way for minority and women architects.

Norma Sklarek, Jerde Partnership, Mall of America, Minneapolis,

1992. Creative Commons

During the 1990’s, Norma was engaged with public and professional service, lecturing at Howard University, Columbia University, and elsewhere, and mentoring younger minority and women architects. While she herself had no mentor, she felt an obligation to mentor others. She coached aspiring architects for the state licensing exam, drawing on her own experience on passing the exam on her first attempt.

“In architecture, I had absolutely no role model. I’m happy today to be a role model for others that follow.” - Norma Merrick Sklarek

Sklarek also served on many professional committees:

In 2003, she was appointed to the California Architects Board (CAB), of which she served on the Professional Committee and the Regulatory Enforcement Committee.

She also served on the California State Board of Architectural Examiners

The AIA National Ethics Council, and as juror for the National Council of Architecture Registration boards (NCARB).

She was director of the Los Angeles American Institute of Architects.

In 2008, the AIA honored her with the Whitney M.Young Jr. Award, which recognizes an architect or organization embodying the profession’s responsibility to address social issues. This is where she was named “the Rosa Parks of architecture” by AIA Board Member Anthony Costello. In her honor, Howard University offers the Norma Merrick Sklarek Architectural Scholarship Award. Throughout Sklarek’s career, she didn’t let anything get in the way of her stick-with-it attitude and helped pave the way for minority and women architects in the industry.

Photos:

https://pioneeringwomen.bwaf.org/norma-merrick-sklarek/

Article References/Sources:

https://www.architecturaldigest.com/gallery/barrier-breaking-african-american-architects

https://pioneeringwomen.bwaf.org/norma-merrick-sklarek/

https://www.archdaily.com/341730/the-10-most-overlooked-women-in-architecture-history

https://www.interiordesign.net/articles/17613-10-pioneering-african-american-architects-and-the-legacy-buildings-they-designed/?utm_campaign=Daily%20Newsletter&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=83712029&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9Gr9YlCQsZU3hcXHbXPO1Xq2pwwbSiFtD5das-aNUYWDoxikhhuW8Ub1PEolvhnOpKhz_tzAqDNGaVGp-4OBfDznIGBWTlEA7JES9IW-Xi0L8Y8L4&_hsmi=83712029