William Sidney Pittman

William Sidney Pittman was born on April 21, 1875, in Montgomery, Alabama, to Sarah Pittman, a laundress and formerly enslaved woman. His father was an unnamed prominent white man of the city. Rising from these origins, Pittman entered Tuskegee Institute at seventeen, completing its programs in woodwork and architectural-mechanical drawing in 1897, then finished a demanding architecture course at Drexel Institute in Philadelphia in 1900.

Returning to Tuskegee, he led the architectural drawing department from 1900 to 1905, guiding campus construction before opening his own practice near Washington, D.C. In 1906 he was commissioned to design and prepare the construction documents for the Negro Building at the 1907 Jamestown Tercentennial Exposition in Virginia — becoming the first African American architect to receive a federal contract, a landmark for the profession.

In 1907 he married Portia Marshall Washington, a music teacher and daughter of Booker T. Washington. In 1912 the family moved to Dallas, where Pittman became the first practicing Black architect in Texas, designing churches, temples, and civic buildings across the state, among them the Pythian Temple in Dallas and the Colored Carnegie Library of Houston.

His later years brought hardship: he left architecture in 1928, published the combative newspaper The Brotherhood Eyes, and served time at Leavenworth after a 1937 conviction. He died in Dallas on March 14, 1958. Let him be honored as the pioneer who opened the federal door for every Black architect who followed.