Norma Sklarek

Norma Merrick Sklarek was born on the fifteenth of April 1926 at Harlem, New York, the daughter of Walter Ernest Merrick — a Trinidadian-born Harlem physician — and Amelia Willoughby Merrick, a homemaker. She was raised in the West Indian-Harlem of the late inter-war period and educated at the Hunter College High School at Manhattan.

She enrolled in 1944 at the Barnard College and took architectural drawing as a Barnard junior at the Columbia University School of Architecture. She transferred fully in 1946 to the Columbia architecture school and completed the Bachelor of Architecture there in 1950 under William A. Boring — one of two women and the only Black student in her graduating class.

She was registered in 1954 as the first African American woman licensed architect of the state of New York by examination of the New York Department of Education Board for Architecture — the second African American woman licensed architect in the United States after Beverly L. Greene (placed in this archive).

She was hired in 1955 by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill at the New York office and served the firm for five years.

She moved to Los Angeles in 1960 and joined the firm of Gruen Associates in 1960. She rose to director of architecture at Gruen in 1966 — the first African American woman in such a role at any major American firm.

She was registered in 1962 as the first African American woman licensed architect of the state of California — the first such registration by either coast.

She was the project director at Gruen of the Pacific Design Center at West Hollywood (1971–1975) — the blue-glass building known as the Blue Whale — and of the United States Embassy at Tokyo (1972, in collaboration with César Pelli, then design principal at Gruen).

She was elected in 1980 the first African American woman to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects.

She co-founded in 1985 the firm of Siegel-Sklarek-Diamond at Santa Monica — the largest American architectural firm owned entirely by women — and partnered there until 1989.

She died at Pacific Palisades on the sixth of February 2012 of complications of pulmonary disease, at eighty-five.

She is honored here as the first African American woman in the AIA College of Fellows.