Pioneer Information
One of the first-known African American women architects in the United States, Meredith was born and raised in Lynchburg, Virginia. In 1915 she earned a teaching certification from Virginia Normal and Industrial Institute (now Virginia State University) in Petersburg. Here she became acquainted with her lifelong partner, Dr. Edna Meade Colson. Meredith subsequently taught at African American schools across Botetourt County, Virginia, before returning to the Institute and earning a teaching degree in 1922. Following four more years of teaching, she moved to Brooklyn, New York, and enrolled at Columbia University’s Teacher’s College, earning B.S. and M.A. degrees in fine arts in 1930 and 1934, respectively. Returning to Virginia, she was hired as an art teacher at her alma mater (then Virginia State College for Negroes), and in 1935 became chair of the fine arts department.
In the 1930s Meredith began to expand her artistic reach into architecture, forming a small practice designing homes for friends and family in Virginia, Texas, and New York. Influenced by the wave of Modernism in the 1930s, Meredith’s style references The Bauhaus and International Style, but incorporates her own vivid use of color and patterning. In 1939 she designed Azurest South, a home in Petersburg she shared with Colson, and in the 1940s collaborated with her sister, Maude Terry, on the creation of Azurest North, a summer enclave for middle-class and professional African American families in Sag Harbor, New York, for which Meredith designed several homes. The sisters also helped to found Azurest Syndicate, brokering sales and financing mortgages to combat redlining practices.
Meredith continued to live at Azurest South and summer at Azurest North until her death at the age of 88; she is buried at Eastview Cemetery in Petersburg. Per Meredith’s wishes, after Colson’s death in 1985, the Virginia State University Alumni Association acquired Azurest South.
