Born: 14 August 1895,
Died: 1984
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
Despite being prevented from a career as a professional architect as an African-American woman in the early and mid-1900s, Amaza Lee Meredith left a legacy through her work.
As an art teacher at Virginia State College / Virginia Normal and Industrial Institute (later Virginia State University), Meredith founded its art department.
Azurest South, the home she shared with her long-time partner Dr Edna Meade Colson (who served as dean of the Virginia State University School of Education), was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1993, described as a “significant landmark of African-American material culture and design.”
With her sister Maude Terry (1887–1968), Meredith co-founded the Azurest Syndicate, Inc. in Sag Harbor New York, a beachside vacation destination for African-Americans that grew in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.
Meredith was born in Lynchburg, Virginia to Samuel Peter Meredith, a Caucasian carpenter and Emma Pink Kenney, an African-American seamstress who were prevented from legally marrying due to the state’s anti-miscegenation laws. Eventually, the couple travelled to Washington, D.C. to marry, moving in together afterward. This resulted in her father losing business, and he committed suicide in 1915, the same year Amaza graduated from high school at the top of her class.
As a child, Samuel had taught Amaza how to draw blueprints and make models, inspiring her to pursue architecture. Her mother encouraged her children’s education, sending them to college, and was actively engaged with the local African-American community.
In her first year at Virginia Normal and Industrial Institute (now Virginia State University), Meredith met Dr. Edna Meade Colson, who would become her lifelong partner. She would later graduate as valedictorian. Her studies were interspersed with her own early career as a teacher, during which she built a parent/teacher association and worked with the Negro Organization Society of Virginia to try and improve conditions for her African-American students.
Meredith moved to New York City in 1926, living with her sister in North Harlem while studying fine arts at Columbia University. She earned her Bachelor’s in 1930. Her time here coincided with the Harlem Renaissance and given her new perspective on African-American society and community. After returning to Virginia Normal and Industrial Institute as an art teacher, she went back to New York to complete her Master’s at Columbia in 1934. Back in Virginia, she founded the arts department at the Institute in 1935, chairing the department until she retired in 1958.
Although Meredith was never registered as an architect, she was one of the United States’ first African-Americans to work as one at the time – the 1910 U.S. Census lists only 59, and 47 draftsmen. Although the number of her projects is unknown, she has been attributed houses in Virginia, New York and Texas, despite having no formal training, and received Virginia’s first land grant for African American scholars.
Long before her Azurest South became the home of the Virginia State University National Alumni Association in 1986, the building was home to Meredith and Colson after it was completed in 1939 until the end of their lives. It was her first building, designed in the International Style (one of very few in Virginia), showing off her interest in avant-garde design and her knowledge of modern materials and construction details.
It also housed Meredith’s art studio, where she painted and designed buildings into the 1960s. Her artwork has been exhibited at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and galleries in New York and North Carolina, and she contributed to the aesthetics of several buildings on VSU campus.
In 1947, Meredith, her sister Maude and others began developing Azurest North, a 120-lot community intended as a vacation destination for midd-class African-Americans. Meredith designed at least two of the cottages: Maude’s Terry Cottage (built in 1949, with similar aesthetics to Azurest South) and Edendot (in the Prairie Style)
Meredith also invented various devices, including a golf bag accessory and a top for recyclable containers. She also extensively documented bother her own life and work, as well as creating scrapbooks dedicated to different topics and people. Her archives have been invaluable to examining race, queerness and design in the mid-20th century.