The Kitchen Sisters Present

Born in 1895 in Lynchburg, VA, Amaza Lee Meredith was an African American architect, artist and educator who taught at Virginia State College where she founded the art department. Despite the fact she was never a registered architect, she was one of the few Black architects practicing at the time, and one of the country's very few Black women architects. In 1939, Amaza designed Azurest South, a tidy white International Style house on the edge of the Virginia State University Campus, where she and her life-long partner Edna Meade Colson lived. Both women maintained significant teaching positions at the University, living openly queer lives. In 1947 Amaza and her sister Maude began developing Azura North, a 120 lot subdivision and vacation destination for middle class African Americans in Sag Harbor, New York, near the summer haunts of Melville, Steinbeck, Betty Friedan, Spaulding Gray. During the 1950s & 60s the community grew as a Black vacation spot attracting celebrities like Lena Horne and Harry Bel