Ethel Bailey Furman, Architect and Activist
Ethel Madison Bailey Carter Furman (1893-1976) designed over 200 churches, homes, hotels, department stores, and other buildings during her lifetime. Furman was born in Richmond, Virginia, where she spent most of her career. The daughter of Black contractor Madison J. Bailey, Ethel Furman gained early experience at a drafting table in her father’s company that operated out of their home. Furman and her father worked together as design-builders for much of their lives.
Furman married in 1912, had two children, divorced, married again in 1918 and had a third child, and moved with her family to New York City. There she received private tutoring from Edward R. Williams, a prominent African-American architect. After receiving a diploma declaring her a certified architect in 1923, Furman returned to Richmond with her family. That same year, she designed a house that would later become the birthplace of Virginia’s first Black governor, L. Douglas Wilder.
In 1937, a Pittsburgh newspaper heralded Furman as “the only architect of her sex and race” in Virginia. As a Black woman, Furman’s design documents were often contested by local building officials. The same documents would be accepted when submitted by a male colleague or contractor.
Furman’s 1961 addition to Richmond’s Fourth Baptist Church (© Elias Wolman, 2025)
A 1928 photograph pictures Furman as the lone woman among about 30 men at the Negro Contractor’s Conference in Hampton, Virginia. Furman pursued additional architectural training through the Chicago Technical College between 1944 and 1946, possibly by correspondence course. Modernist design principles entered her work after this time.
St. James Baptist Church, Richmond. (© Elias Wolman, 2025)
In addition to her professional successes, Furman was known in her Church Hill neighborhood and beyond for her engagement in her church, her community, and in the fight against discrimination. She was said to encourage women pursuing all fields of work. Through her work with a missionary organization, Furman designed two small churches in Liberia. The East End Civic League, an organization Furman founded, honored her civic engagement with an award in 1954, and she earned a place on the Richmond Afro-American newspaper’s “Community Honor Roll” in 1959. She helped Black citizens register to vote in the 1960s.
While many of the buildings Furman designed have been lost to history, her community service was not forgotten. In 1985, nine years after she died, the city of Richmond renamed a neighborhood park Ethel Bailey Furman Park.
Please subscribe to The Architectress.
Sources:
Sarah Allaback, The First American Women Architects (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008): 80-83.
Meredith Gaglio, “Ethel Madison Bailey Carter Furman,” Pioneering Women of American Architecture, Beverly Willis Foundation.
“Architect,” The Pittsburgh Courier, January 23, 1937: 3.
Dreck Spurlock Wilson, Editor, African American Architects: A Biographical Dictionary, 1865-1945 (New York and London: Routledge, 2004): 162-164.