Vertner Woodson Tandy

Vertner Woodson Tandy Biography

By Lauren Walser

Vertner Woodson Tandy was the first African-American architect registered in New York State and one of the first African-Americans to become a member of the American Institute of Architects. Born in 1885 in Lexington, Kentucky, Tandy trained under Robert Taylor at Tuskegee Institute. He graduated from Cornell in 1908.

Through his architecture firm Tandy & Foster, he designed a number of notable buildings. The Gothic Revival-style St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in Harlem was dedicated in 1911 and brought Tandy into national prominence. The church has been designated a New York City Landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1948, a year before his death, he designed the six-story Ivey Delph Apartments, a housing project in New York City’s Hamilton Heights neighborhood.

In 1918, he completed one of his most famous commissions: Villa Lewaro, the estate of Madam C.J. Walker, who created beauty and hair products for black women and became America’s first, self-made, female millionaire. The three- story house, a National Historic Landmark, sits on 3 1/8 acres in Irvington, New York, and was named a National Treasure in 2014.