William Sidney Pittman
| William Sidney Pittman | |
|---|---|
W. Sidney Pittman, ca 1916
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| Born |
April 21, 1875 Montgomery, Alabama |
| Died | 14 March 1958 (aged 82) |
| Occupation | Architect |
William Sidney Pittman (April 21, 1875 – March 14, 1958) was an African-American architect who designed several notable buildings, such as the Zion Baptist Church and the nearby Deanwood Chess House in the Deanwood neighborhood of Washington, DC. He was the son-in-law of Booker T. Washington.
Pittman was born April 21, 1875, in Montgomery, Alabama, to an ex-slave laundress and a prominent white man of the city. At the age of 17 Pittman attended Tuskegee Institute, where he completed programs in woodwork and architectural-mechanical drawing in 1897. He was awarded a scholarship to attend the all-white Drexel Institute in Philadelphia, where he completed the five-year architecture and mechanical drawing program in only three years, graduating in 1900, after which he returned to Tuskegee to teach for the next five years.
Pittmann designed a number of buildings for the Tuskegee Institute, including Collis P. Huntington Memorial Building, Tuskegee, Alabama (1900–05). He then moved to Washington, DC, and developed his own successful architectural practice, receiving many important commissions. He developed the Fairmount Heights housing development for blacks in the suburbs of Maryland. In 1907 he married Portia Washington (daughter of the celebrated head of Tuskegee, Booker T. Washington), and the family home that Pittman designed in Fairmount Heights is a notable landmark. Pittman went on to become the first African American to win a federal commission for the Negro building at the national Tercentennial Exposition at Jamestown, Virginia.
After having established a name for himself, Pittman made his way to Texas in 1913, in order to escape the influence of his famous father-in-law. Once in Texas, Pittman built the Pythian Temple (1915–16) and the St. James African Methodist Episcopal Church (1920) in Dallas, the Allen Chapel A.M.E. Church in Fort Worth (1914); the Joshua Chapel A.M.E. Church in (Waxahachie 1917) and the Wesley Chapel A.M.E. in Houston (1926).
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