A standout feature of the Elm Street region is the Knights of Pythias Temple at 2551 Elm St. The building, begun in 1915 in French-inspired Beaux Arts architecture, was described as a glorious showplace designed by William Sidney Pittman, an early African American architect who later became the son-in-law to Booker T. Washington.
“They were not so much freedmen’s towns as there were freeman’s areas, and African Americans and Whites lived and farmed adjacent to each other,” Keaton stated.
A state of Texas marker on the Tenth Street Historic District Freedman’s Town reads as follows:
“The first African Americans to live in Oak Cliff were slaves, brought here by settlers such as William H. Hord in 1845 to work the land.
An important African American enclave within the historically white community of Oak Cliff.
The degree to which these historic buildings remain standing and in good repair marks the Tenth Street area as one of the more well-preserved African American communities of this time period remaining in the Dallas Metropolitan area.
