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.
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by Steven Doyle
