Designed to Compete 43RD STreet & SHERIFF RoaD NE
This quaint frame building has served several church congregations since its construc- tion in 1908. The first, Zion Baptist Church, stayed for more than 60 years. Since 1993 members of Joshua’s Temple First Born Church have wor- shiped within its walls. One of the city’s first academically trained black architects, William Sidney Pittman (1875–1958) designed this understated structure. Pittman trained at Tuskegee Institute, where he won the support of founder Booker T. Washington and later taught. In 1905 Pittman established a private architectural practice in DC. A year later, Pittman won the design competition for the “Negro Build- ing” at the Jamestown Ter-Centennial Exposi- tion. In 1907 he married Washington’s daughter Portia, and the couple moved to a house Pittman designed in nearby Fairmount Heights, Maryland, an all-black community he helped to plan. Among Pittman’s DC commissions were Garfield Elemen- tary School and the 12th Street Colored Young Men’s Christian Association (now the Thurgood Marshall Center for Service and Heritage). Pittman also designed the building to the right of the church, home of the Deanwood Chess House, a branch of the Big Chair Chess Club since 1991. The club uses chess to teach children and adults that their decisions in life, as on the game board, have consequences. Mentors demonstrate how the concentration and self-discipline required by chess are important life skills. “Always think be- fore you move” is the club’s motto. Chess instruc- tors occasionally take the giant chess set above the entrance to schools for teamwork exercises.
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