When I arrived in this city seven years ago, the old Knights of Pythias Temple, the Deep Ellum landmark that was once the epicenter of Black commercial life in Dallas, was a derelict block of a building, lonely and whitewashed. Its languishing state was especially troubling to preservationists, who feared its deterioration and eventual removal in the churn of “progress.”
That progress has come, and the good news is that the temple still stands. Indeed, its red brick exterior has been conscientiously restored, and its interior meticulously adapted, although in a radically new setting. It is now the front half of the luxury Pittman Hotel — a large addition has been linked behind it to give the hotel an expanded footprint — that, in turn, is part of the mixed-use Epic development.
Conceived by the Westdale Company and billed as the Gateway to Deep Ellum, this micro-neighborhood includes the 26-story, 310-unit Hamilton luxury residential tower, the 16-story, 251,000-square-foot Epic office tower, and the 164-room Pittman Hotel. Another commercial tower is under construction, nevermind that the chief tenant of the complex, Uber, has already given up much of its space in the project.
Epic is the mot juste for a complex that is emblematic of changes seen throughout Deep Ellum, which has been subjected to such a paroxysm of luxury development that the advocacy group Preservation Dallas put it on this year’s Most Endangered Historic Places list. The so-called Freedom Colony was established in the wake of the Civil War as a place adjacent to downtown where African Americans could own and operate businesses. It quickly emerged as the commercial and entertainment center of Black Dallas. Its clubs birthed such blues legends as Blind Lemon Jefferson, Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter and Bessie Smith.
Like many Black communities, Deep Ellum was on cheap land adjacent to railroad tracks, which meant it also became a site for industry in the early years of the 20th century. The loft manufacturing buildings of that period define the character of Deep Ellum, and also make it a desirable place for high-end development.
In that context, the Pittman makes for a very comfortable place to have a very uncomfortable conversation about race, erasure, appropriation and urban development.
The hotel draws its name from its architect, William Sidney Pittman, the first Black architect to win a commission from the federal government, and the son-in-law of Booker T. Washington. Pittman studied under Washington at the Tuskegee Institute (now University), and completed his architectural education at Drexel University. Although denied the opportunities of his white architect peers — a bitter pill that would all but destroy him — he built a significant practice designing institutional commissions for Black communities. He was known as both an exceptionally gifted and difficult man: a taskmaster and a perfectionist.
Among his still extant works are the Allen Chapel AME Church in Fort Worth of 1914, and the former St. James AME Temple (no longer functioning as a church), of 1919, on Good Latimer, just blocks from the Pythian building.
His most important commission was the Grand Lodge of the Colored Knights of Pythias, as it was formally known. Designed by a Black architect for the state’s largest Black fraternal organization, it was built by Black labor, and paid for with money raised from Black men and Black women — the Pythians had to take a loan from their sister organization, the Order of Calanthe, to pay for it.
The primary material was red brick, which was as much a political as an aesthetic statement. At Tuskegee and then in his autobiography, Up from Slavery, Washington advocated for the use of brick as a means of developing a Black industry that would provide employment and wealth to Black communities, and (controversially) inspire racial healing when whites recognized Black competence.
Pittman was true to his father-in-law’s material philosophy.
When the Pythian temple opened, in 1916, the five-story building became the hub of middle-class Black life in Dallas. In addition to space for the Pythians, it was a headquarters for Black professionals of all types: doctors, dentists, optometrists, lawyers, real estate agents and insurance brokers. It also had a barbershop, a drugstore, a grocer and a restaurant — an entire downtown in a single building.
If you close your eyes in the Pittman’s fourth-floor ballroom, you can imagine what this double-height space, with its tall arched windows, must have been like on celebratory nights a century ago. It would have been bustling then, with dapper men and their stylish partners letting go on a dance floor famous through the Southwest. After hours, the pioneering jazzman Alphonso Trent, who led the house band at downtown’s staid Adolphus Hotel, would arrive with his orchestra to fill the hall with the new swing sound. Here, they could really swing.
You will have to press your imagination to conjure that dynamic moment. The ballroom is still there, but its history is well concealed beneath a plush carpet with the kind of inoffensive modernistic design that says “corporate hospitality environment.” Blah.
A kind of perfunctory relationship to the building’s history is an issue throughout the interior design of the hotel, carried out by Busta Studio. There are occasional historical photographs, but no serious attempt to address or embrace the building’s past life. Certainly there were opportunities for creativity. A historical display in the lobby, for instance. Trent-era swing instead of generic contemporary music on the sound system. Even these rather cosmetic solutions don’t satisfy what would seem to be an obligation to embrace the legacy of the building and its Deep Ellum environs. Naming the hotel for Pittman, while a nice gesture, is hardly enough.
A more serious means of addressing Deep Ellum’s history should have entailed the inclusion of some affordable housing component in this development, but there is none. This is, sadly, true throughout the neighborhood. According to city records, since 2005 some 2,237 apartments have been built or are currently under construction in Deep Ellum. Exactly zero of these used city tax incentives for mixed income or affordable housing. There are no federally subsidized affordable housing projects in Deep Ellum, either. It is entirely market rate.
It is a shame. Allowing for virtually unchecked development in a historic district would be bad under normal circumstances. A failure to ensure wide accessibility, especially within walking distance of downtown, is all but criminal.
It is a shame, too, because from a purely architectural standpoint, the new hotel, which combines the Pythian temple with a linked seven-story addition, manages to be respectful of the past while introducing an industrial modernism that is a worthy complement. The design team was led by Ron Stelmarski, principal of the Dallas office of Perkins and Will, assisted by the preservation consultant Gary Skotnicki.
The centerpiece of the design is the restored Pythian temple. Approached on Elm Street, its warm red brick and classical white trim look much as they did when it first opened more than a century ago. The dignified serif lettering on the cornice that spells out “Knights of Pythias” has been cleaned and restored. An attempt to fill in those letters in the 1980s, an act of literal erasure by its then-owners, prompted an outcry, and the eventual landmarking of the building by the city in 1989. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2017.
The ground floor is given over to the restaurant Elm & Good (named for the adjacent streets, Elm and Good Latimer), that brings a welcome bit of activity to the street. For the most part, Stelmarski’s design strategy — when not shrouded by Busta Studio’s frippery — has been to simply peel back as much as possible, and let the bones of the building speak to its history.
That aesthetic is most clearly announced in the addition that links to the temple, attached at its rear-end by a single-story passage at ground level. That addition is a rectangular brick bar, with offset punched windows, that doglegs in response to the curve of Good Latimer, which borders it to the east. The staggered pattern of the windows gives a liveliness to the massing, which matches the scale of the Pythian building,
The hotel entry is on the opposite, western side of the addition, on an internal street that Stelmarski has run through the development, dividing the hotel, on one side, with the Epic and Hamilton towers on the other. It is a deft bit of urban design, creating a sense of place among these disparate buildings, while creating connections to the city’s traditional street grid.
It represents a remaking of Deep Ellum for a corporate era: comfortable, anodyne, exclusive, and without recognition of the frictions and complexities of the history on which it trades.
Which brings us back to William Sidney Pittman. In the years after the completion of the Pythian temple, and despite its success, his architectural practice declined. His wife, the former Portia Washington, left him. He founded a newspaper, the Brotherhood Eyes, and in it he accused Black churches — among his most important clients — of betraying their race by taking kickbacks to hire white architects. In 1932, following a complaint by the pastor of Oak Cliff’s Greater Shiloh Baptist Church, he was convicted of criminal libel and sent to federal prison for two years. He eventually returned to Dallas, where he died in 1958.
You have to wonder: What, exactly, would this man who devoted his life to the development of Black community have thought about seeing the defining work of his career turned into a luxury hotel — with his name on the marquee?
