Trailblazers: Meet The First Black Woman To Be A Licensed Architect In America

By Malaika Jabali ·Updated February 28, 2022 Photo Credit: ESSENCE

This week’s trailblazer shows us what happens when Black History Month and Women’s History Month link up.

With BHM 2022 coming to a close today, we’re highlighting Beverly Lorraine Greene, a lesser-known figure in Black history. In 1942, the engineer, architect, and urban planner became the first known licensed Black woman architect in the country at 27 years old.

Read more about her life and contributions!

01Beverly Lorraine Greene moved to NYC from Chicago to work on the Stuyvesant Town housing complexLorraine was born in 1915 in Chicago, Illinois. Highly educated, she received her Bachelor in Architecture in 1936, a Master’s degree in city planning in 1937, and a Master’s degree in architecture at Columbia University in 1945. Despite her credentials, and after earning a license in her home state of Illinois, she was often passed over for projects. So the urban planner and designer took her talents to the Big Apple. She left to work on Manhattan’s largest apartment complex, Stuyvesant Town. She is reportedly the first architect ever hired for the project. However, the complex prohibited Black people from living there and she won a scholarship to study urban planning at Columbia, which she pursued instead.

Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images 02Greene completed design work at Sarah Lawrence CollegeOne of Greene’s projects was design work on the arts complex at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York in 1950.

Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images 03Beverly Lorraine Greene worked on design projects across the globeGreene worked with international designers, including her work with architects on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) headquarters in Paris.

JACQUES DEMARTHON/AFP via Getty Images 04She designed some buildings on NYU’s campusBefore she passed at the age of 41 in 1957, she helped design buildings on the New York University campus. During her life, she served on the Council for the Advancement of the Negro in Architecture and focused on health care design from 1947-1955.