A Self-Reliant People

— Greater Deanwood Heritage Trail —

This quaint frame building has served several church congregations since its construction in 1908. The First Zion Baptist Church stayed for more than 60 years. Since 1993 members of Joshua's Temple First Born Church have worshiped 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 the founder Booker T. Washington and later taught. In 1905 resigned from Tuskegee to move to Washington and establish a private architectural practice. By the fall of 1906 Pittman had entered and won the competition for the "Negro Building" at the Jamestown (Virginia) Ter-centennial Exposition. In 1907 he married Washington's daughter Portia. The couple returned to this area and lived in a house Pittman designed in nearby Fairmont Heights, Maryland, an all-Black community he helped plan. Among Pittman's DC commissions were Garfield Elementary School and the 12th Street Colored Young Men's Christian Association (now Thurgood Marshall Center for Science 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 before you move" is the club's motto. Chess instructors occasionally take the giant chess set above the entrance to schools for teamwork exercises.

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