The William Sidney Pittman House

William Sidney Pittman was born in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1875 to a laundress and an unknown father. At age seventeen, he began studying at Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama, later attended Drexel Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and received a degree in Architectural and Mechanical Drawing in 1900. He returned to Tuskegee Institute and taught there until 1905, then opened his own architectural office in Washington, D.C.'s Shaw neighborhood. In 1907, he married Portia Washington, daughter of his former mentor Booker T. Washington, and after their marriage they moved to the house he designed in the developing suburb of Fairmount Heights. Known to the family as "The White Top," possibly for its white roof decorations, the house reflected his active role in the new community, where he established the Fairmount Heights Mutual Improvement Company, while Portia Pittman, a professional musician, gave frequent piano recitals there. The front-gabled dwelling stood on high ground overlooking the boundary between Prince George's County and the District of Columbia, with a one-story porch wrapping halfway around the east side and a one-story shed-roof projecting bay whose three windows lit the dining room. In 1906, Pittman won a national competition for the design of the Negro Building at the Tercentennial Exposition in Jamestown, Virginia, and that building's completion in 1907 brought him widespread fame and respect among a new but increasing group of African-American architects. His other buildings and designs included Zion Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., and the nearby Deanwood Chess House in Washington's Deanwood neighborhood. The Pittmans left Washington at the end of 1912 for Dallas, Texas, where he spent the rest of his life. The house was sold in 1915 to Ellen Adams and remained in her descendants' ownership until 2012; after being damaged by fire, it was demolished in 2013.

Fairmount Heights, Maryland · United States