DUANE
Duane's take
Here's what the official marker has to say, and I'm just the voice that carries it. Now, if you drive through Fort Worth and your eye catches a tower rising up with stained glass catching the light just so, you might want to slow down and take a second look. Because what you're looking at has a story behind it worth knowing.
The congregation of Allen Chapel A.M.E. Church needed a sanctuary worthy of what they'd built together. And between 1912 and 1914, during the pastorate of the Reverend R.S.
Jenkins, they got one. Not just any building — a Tudor Gothic Revival sanctuary. That's a style that doesn't whisper.
It speaks. Now here's where the story deepens. The man they chose to design it was a black architect named William Sidney Pittman.
And if that name alone doesn't stop you, consider this: William Sidney Pittman was a son-in-law of Booker T. Washington. The weight of that lineage, the expectation that came with it — and Pittman answered it in stone and mortar and glass.
What he produced was a building representative of those erected by large black congregations in southern urban areas during that era. A statement of permanence. Of presence.
The modified Gothic style shows itself most clearly in the tower — that same tower that might catch your eye from the road today — and in the stained glass windows that filter the Texas light into something worth stopping for. Constructed between 1912 and 1914, designed by William Sidney Pittman, raised under the Reverend R.S. Jenkins — Allen Chapel A.M.E.
Church has been standing its ground in Tarrant County for well over a century now. Some buildings just refuse to be forgotten.
What the marker says
This Tudor Gothic Revival sanctuary was constructed between 1912 and 1914, during the pastorate of the Rev. R.S. Jenkins, for the congregation of Allen Chapel A.M.E. Church. Designed by black architect William Sidney Pittman, who was a son-in-law of Booker T. Washington, the church building is representative of those erected by large black congregations in southern urban areas. Elements of the modified Gothic style are particularly visible in its tower and stained glass windows. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark- 1983.