Every neighborhood should be so lucky as to have its history hold the best corner. In Deep Ellum, that corner is 2551 Elm Street, where the Knights of Pythias Temple has stood since 1916, designed by William Sidney Pittman, Texas’ first Black architect and son-in-law of Booker T. Washington. It was the first commercial building in Dallas built by, for, and with the money of Black citizens, and for more than two decades it served as the social heart of Black Dallas — its top-floor ballroom hosting dances, graduations, and the Fisk Jubilee Singers, its lectern held by the likes of George Washington Carver, while out on the street below, Blind Lemon Jefferson and Lead Belly were turning Deep Ellum into the blues capital of the Southwest.
Today the building carries its architect’s name as The Kimpton Pittman Hotel, and it remains the best argument in town that a building can change jobs without losing its soul.
The hotel, opened in 2020, pairs the century-old Beaux-Arts exterior with a modern glass-and-steel interior that earned LEED certification, and fills its common spaces with contemporary work by local artists, a quiet nod to the creative lineage of the address. The 165 rooms, including 23 suites, run residential in feel, with Frette linens, a clean white palette, and pops of green and orange. Kimpton’s signature touches carry the stay: a hosted evening social hour, a morning coffee bar, loaner bikes for exploring the neighborhood, a fitness center, and a pet policy that welcomes any animal of any size at no charge, on the theory that if your pet fits through the door, it’s a guest.
Summer belongs to Deep End, the 8,000-square-foot pool deck that has become the neighborhood’s semi-secret oasis. The seasonally heated pool comes ringed with lounge chairs, private cabanas, and fire pits, with DJs supplying the daytime soundtrack and the scene shifting to frozen cocktails and skyline views after dark. Locals without a room key can buy their way in through day passes, which makes it one of the better staycation plays in the city limits.
Downstairs, Elm & Good handles the eating. The upscale American tavern opened under chef Graham Dodds and now runs with executive chef JV Hernandez at the helm, cooking over a wood-fired grill with Gulf seafood and seasonal Texas produce, Southern staples given global technique, and a serious craft cocktail program alongside. It’s the rare hotel restaurant that draws the neighborhood in rather than merely feeding the lobby.
Then there is the neighborhood itself, which is the real amenity. Step out the front door and the murals begin immediately, with the Traveling Man sculpture standing guard nearby and Kettle Art Gallery, the longtime champion of Dallas artists, two blocks down Main. Music, the reason Deep Ellum exists, surrounds the hotel on all sides: Trees, the storied club where careers have been made and occasionally ended, sits a block up Elm; The Bomb Factory hosts the big touring names on Canton; and Sons of Hermann Hall, the creaky century-old dance hall at the far end of Elm, still runs swing dancing on Wednesdays like the last hundred years never happened.
The eating within walking distance embarrasses most zip codes. Pecan Lodge smokes some of the city’s most celebrated brisket and giant beef ribs on Main Street, with Terry Black’s Barbecue three blocks further doing the Lockhart barbecue dynasty’s jalapeño cheddar sausage and smoked turkey proud. Deep Ellum Brewing Company pours its Dallas Blonde in the taproom that became the first craft brewery to open in Dallas in more than two decades, and Saaya brings hookah and Mediterranean mezze to Swiss Avenue for the long evenings.
Plenty of hotels sell location. The Pittman sells belonging — a building that spent a century at the center of Deep Ellum’s story and now hands its guests a room inside it. Book the cabana, borrow the bike, and let the neighborhood do what it has done since 1916.
