William Sidney Pittman

William Sidney Pittman (April 21, 1875 – March 14, 1958) was an 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, D.C. He was the son-in-law of Booker T. Washington.

Biography

Pittman was born April 21, 1875, in Montgomery, Alabama to an ex-slave laundress and a prominent white man of the city. 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. He designed the Colored Carnegie Library of Houston, built in 1913 as the only library available to African Americans of that city.

Pittman moved to Texas in 1913 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).