Texas’
First Black Architect

Designer of Dallas’ Knights of Pythias Temple

by David Preziosi

William Sidney Pittman was a trailblazer for Black architects in the early 1900s. He designed over 50 substantial buildings during his 28-year career. The commissions he worked on gained him national prominence in the architecture field at a time when few Black architects practiced. Pittman’s Black contemporaries mainly designed churches for Black congregations; however, Pittman expanded his scope of projects beyond that to include exhibition and meeting spaces, civic buildings, fraternal lodges, manufacturing facilities, and buildings for higher education. Most of his work served the Black community and he made it a point to use Black construction workers for his projects. Pittman designed many significant buildings in Texas after moving to the state in 1912. A good portion of those projects have not survived. Those that did are located in Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Waco, and Waxahachie.

Born in Montgomery, Alabama, on April 21, 1875, Pittman was the son of a formerly enslaved laundress and an unknown father. He attended segregated public schools before he enrolled in the Tuskegee Institute in 1892. The school was home to Booker T. Washington who also influenced Pittman’s studies and life. Pittman studied the wheel-writing trade and received his apprenticeship in three years. He then transferred to the Architectural Drawing De-partment where his talent for architectural design became apparent. In 1897, he graduated with a degree in architectural drawing.

Washington realized Pittman’s talents and helped him enroll in what was then the all-white Drexel Institute of Art, Science, and Industry in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Washington also arranged for Tuskegee to provide financial support to Pittman for three years at Drexel, contingent upon his return to Tuskegee to pay off his debt by teaching. Pittman graduated in 1900 from the five-year architecture program in only three years. He was the first African American to graduate from Drexel and was one of three honor students in his class.

Pittman honored his agreement and returned in 1900 to teach at Tuskegee. He also served as the resident campus architect and oversaw all campus construction. He drew the plans for the 1901 Carnegie Hall and 1903 Rockefeller Hall at Tuskegee, both of which still stand.

In 1905, Pittman moved to Washington, D.C., where he worked for the architect John Anderson Lankford before he set up his practice. Pittman won a competition in 1906 to design the Negro Building at the Jamestown Tercentennial Exposition of 1907. He received a federal contract for the project, the first for a Black architect. The design received national acclaim and helped to elevate Pittman’s career. President Theodore Roosevelt even admired the building.

The success brought additional commissions, including the Twelfth Street YMCA Building in Washington, D.C. President Roosevelt laid the cornerstone for the building, the first YMCA for Blacks. It still stands and is now the Thurgood Marshal Center for Service and Heritage. Pittman also designed schools, churches, and even a town hall while in D.C.

The Colored Carnegie Library of Houston was Pittman’s first project in Texas. It opened in 1913 and was the only library in Houston that Blacks could patronize. | Courtesy Houston Public Library

Pittman met his future wife Portia, daughter of Booker T. Washington, at Tuskegee in 1902. They married in 1907 and had three children. In 1912, the family moved to Dallas so Pittman could work on projects in Texas and further his architecture career as the first Black architect to practice in the state. Pittman’s first Texas project was the Colored Carnegie Library in Houston, the only library in the city that Blacks could patronize. It opened in 1913 and survived until 1962 when freeway construction necessitated its demolition.

One of Pittman’s most important works in Texas, which also received national acclaim, was the Knights of Pythias Temple in Dallas. Established in 1884-85, the Texas Grand Lodge of the Colored Knights of Pythias was a Black fraternal organization that offered social activities, life insurance, and burial benefits. It rapidly became the largest Black fraternal organization in Texas. The Grand Lodge of the Knights of Pythias authorized the construction of the Pythian Temple in Dallas for $100,000 in 1912.

Just east of downtown Dallas, the temple was built in Deep Ellum, a former “freedmen’s town” settled by the formerly enslaved after the Civil War. The area grew to become the center of the Black community, with shops, restaurants, and clubs. The dedication of the Beaux Arts-style Pythian Temple took place on July 13, 1916. It quickly became a landmark and symbol of achievement for Blacks in Dallas. The building served as a center for civic, business, and social life in Dallas when segregation offered few alternatives. When the building opened, it had a grocer, barber shop, and offices for physicians, dentists, attorneys, realtors, and insurance agents serving the Black community. The top floor contained a two-story auditorium for lodge rituals, meetings, concerts, political gatherings, and school graduations.

The Knights struggled during the Great Depression as most of their insurance contract payments lapsed because of non-payment from members. The loss in revenue took its toll on the organization and its ability to pay the death and burial expenses for those able to maintain their insurance payments. After much legal wrangling and non-payment of contracts, the building sold in 1944 for only $6,500. In 1956, the Physicians Life and Accident Insurance Company of Texas acquired the building. The Union Bankers Insurance Company purchased the building in 1959 and changed the building extensively. They remodeled the storefront, removed many of the decorative features of the building, replaced the original wood windows with metal ones, and painted the entire building gray. Because of the significance of the building architecturally and to the Black community, it became a City of Dallas Landmark in 1989. Union Bankers moved out of the building in the mid- 1990s and sold it to a developer who could not make a project work. Westdale Properties purchased the property in 1998. It sat vacant until the mid-2010s when redevelopment plans took shape as part of a massive development of the site and adjacent vacant land.

Don't
Miss

Kimpton The Pittman
2551 Elm Street
Dallas, TX 75226
(469) 498-2500
pittmanhoteldallas.com

Allen Chapel AME Church
116 Elm St.
Fort Worth, TX 76102

Joshua Chapel AME Church
110 N. Aiken St.
Waxahachie, TX 75165

Wesley Chapel AME Church
2201 Emancipation Ave.
Houston, TX 77003

St. James AME Church
(converted to office space)
624 N. Good Latimer Expressway
Dallas, TX 75204

Greater El Bethel Missionary Baptist Church
1130 E. Ninth St.
Dallas, TX 75203

Paul Quinn College
William Decker Johnson Hall
1020 Elm Ave.
Waco, TX 76704

The exterior of the former Knights of Pythias Temple was restored as close as possible to Pittman’s original design. The storefront was recreated, missing architectural features fabricated, wood windows installed to match the originals, and the paint was painstakingly removed.

As part of the mixed-use development project, the Knights of Pythias building returned to its former glory with an extensive rehabilitation, this time as part of a boutique hotel. With the original plans long gone and pieces of the building missing, architects relied on renderings published in the newspaper and old photographs of the exterior to restore it as close as possible to Pittman’s original design.

The exterior restoration work included the recreation of the original storefront design, replication of the missing architectural features and elements, installation of new wood windows that matched the profile and design of the originals, and painstaking removal of the gray paint to reveal the original deep red and orange brick colors. Rehabilitation of the interior on the first floor created a new restaurant space. The upper floors received a conversion to hotel rooms. On the fourth floor, the original auditorium space divided into two floors by Union Bankers was restored to its two-story volume to once again host events. To the rear of the original building, a sevenstory architecturally compatible addition for the hotel lobby and the bulk of the hotel rooms was built. The hotel opened in 2020 and in honor of William Sidney Pittman and his work on one of the most significant buildings in Dallas and Texas associated with the Black community, it received the name “The Pittman.”

Unfortunately, due to many changes to the interior of the Knights of Pythias building over the years, the stairs are the only surviving feature from the building when it was built in 1916. It was restored as part of the conversion of the building into the Pittman Hotel. | Courtesy David Preziosi

During his career in Texas, Pittman designed five churches for Black congregations. The oldest and largest AME church in Fort Worth, founded in 1870, hired Pittman to design the Allen Chapel AME Church in 1914. It remains much as it did when built, except for the corner bell tower. A lightning strike at the tower in 2011 forced the removal of the tower’s upper portion. In 1917, the Joshua Chapel AME Church in Waxahachie opened. Near the Knights of Pythias building, Pittman designed the St. James AME Church in 1918. Two of his churches completed in 1926 include the Greater El Bethel Missionary Baptist Church in Dallas and the Wesley Chapel AME Church in Houston. The St. James church received a conversion to office use; however, the rest remain in active use as churches. Wesley Chapel is the only one of the five not listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Pittman designed two buildings for the Paul Quinn College in Waco. Paul Quinn is the oldest African American liberal arts college in Texas, founded in 1872 by the African Methodist Episcopalian Church. It started in Austin before it moved to Waco in 1877. In 1990, it relocated to Dallas. Pittman’s Grant Hall dormitory opened in 1921 but succumbed to fire in 1954. The other building Pittman designed was the 1922 William Decker Johnson Hall, which served as a chapel, dormitory, classroom space, and library. The building has been vacant since the college moved and has fallen into disrepair. Redevelopment efforts started in 2021 and in 2023, the building received a local historic landmark designation for its historic significance.

Unfortunately, five additional buildings Pittman designed no longer survive. Freeway construction caused the demolition of the 1915 United Brothers of Friendship Lodge in San Antonio and the c. 1918 John P. Starks Residence in Dallas. The 1923 Riverside Park Auditorium in Dallas burned while demolition claimed the 1923 West Texas Manufacturing Co. building in Dallas. A parking lot replaced the 1924 United Order of the Odd Fellows Lodge/Atlanta Life Building in Houston.

From Left Allen Chapel AME Church, Fort Worth 1914. Wesley Chapel AME Church, Houston 1926. William Decker Johnson Hall 1922.

Pittman found it hard to keep clients with his perfectionist attitude toward design and his railing against the Black community for not hiring him. With little work, he ceased to practice as an architect in 1928. Portia left him the same year and moved back to Tuskegee. To survive, Pittman picked up construction work and started a weekly newspaper called The Brotherhood Eyes. He printed gossip about the middle-class Black community and attacked their hypocrisy and lack of support of the Black community with their business. One business owner brought legal action, which led to Pittman’s conviction in 1937 for sending obscene literature across state lines. His sentence included five years in Leavenworth Penitentiary; however, Portia appealed to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, resulting in Pittman only serving two years. Upon his release, he returned to Dallas and lived a quiet life.

Pittman sadly died penniless at 82 in 1958 and was buried in an unmarked grave in Glen Oaks Cemetery in Dallas. In 1985, architect Ensile Oglesby, Jr. purchased a marker for Pittman’s grave so that he would be properly remembered. William Sidney Pittman had a storied career in architecture when few Black architects practiced in the country. He was a trail-blazing architect who designed many significant buildings and left an indelible mark on Texas with his incredible designs that still stand today around the state.