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Jasper -- Vertner Woodson Tandy

By Anonymous

Vertner Woodson Tandy

Biography 

Vertner Woodson Tandy was the foremost African American architect practicing in New York City during the first half of the twentieth century. He was the first African American registered architect in New York State. Vertner was one of the seven founders of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity at Cornell University. He graduated from Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning with an architecture degree in 1907. (Alpha Phi Alpha: The Alpha Chapter Cornell)

His design output over the course of a forty-year career represents one of the most dynamic periods in domestic architectural history and, in particular, the emergence of Harlem as a majority African American community and cultural capital of Black America. Tandy embodied a number of important attributes that helped to ensure his success as an architect.  (Wilson, Dreck Spurlock. (2004))

Vertner Woodson Tandy in 1920


In 1908, Vertner Woodson Tandy and George Washington Foster Jr., who attended Cooper Union, founded their architect company Tandy & Foster. They designed St. Philip's Episcopal Church in Manhattan in 1910. Their office was located at 1931 Broadway in an African American neighborhood known as San Juan Hill in the west 60s in Manhattan near present-day Lincoln Center.(Wilson, Dreck Spurlock. (2004))

Work and Influence

After graduation, Vertner became the first African American who registered as an architect in New York State, and he had an office on Broadway in Manhattan. Later he designed the mansion Villa Lewaro for Madam C. J. Walker, which is one of his most famous work. 

Villa Lewaro

Ivet Delph Apartments 
St. Philip's Episcopal Church, Manhattan, NY

Tandy and Foster designed St. Philip's Episcopal Church new building was the fourth home of the church, which was originally established in lower Manhattan in 1818 as the city’s first African American congregation of Protestant Episcopalians. Following the movement of parishioners uptown, Saint Philip’s was the first church constructed in Harlem that was designed by a Black architect for a Black congregation. Foster designed Saint Philip’s in the neoGothic style with an impressive facade of contrasting orange Roman brick and cast-stone aggregate trim rising from a granite base. Pointed-arch, stained-glass windows were ornamented with tracery in the English Perpendicular style. The adjoining Parish House in the Queen Anne style is believed to be primarily the work of Foster. (Wilson, Dreck Spurlock. (2004).)

Reference: 

Wilson, Dreck Spurlock. (2004). Vertner Woodson Tandy (1885–1949). In African American Architects: A Biographical Dictionary, 1865-1945 (pp. 569-598). Routledge.

[1]"Alpha Phi Alpha: The Alpha Chapter", Rmc.library.cornell.edu, 2006. [Online]. Available: https://rmc.library.cornell.edu/alpha/sevenjewels/sevenjewels_7.html. [Accessed: 05- Jun- 2020].



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