St. Paul United Methodist Church
Dallas, Dallas County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1873, several inhabitants of Freedman’s Town, a community of recently freed people just north of the Dallas city limits, met with Methodist ministers Rev. H. Oliver and Rev. William Bush under a brush arbor to organize the area’s first African American Methodist Episcopal Church. Oliver became St. Paul’s first pastor. Dallas postmaster Anthony Norton donated the first church site upon which the congregation built a small frame sanctuary, which was also used as a school for African American children. In partnership with the Perkins School of Theology, the church provided training for African American ministers. Samuel Huston College (later Huston-Tillotson University), organized in 1876, held its first classes at the church. In 1901, the congregation began constructing a new brick-clad sanctuary by digging and finishing a concrete basement, called “Noah’s Ark,” where services were held during the 26 years it took to complete the sanctuary. Construction proceeded fitfully as material became available. Tradition holds that the façade has five different shades of brown brick because, for many years, parishioners brought bricks for the offering. Finally completed in 1927 under the leadership of Pastor George Deslandes, the sanctuary cost $80,000. The gothic revival style was derived from a design by William Sidney Pittman, Dallas' first African American architect. Although around 1950 highway construction began to demolish the north Dallas neighborhoods served by the church, St. Paul endured as a political, cultural and spiritual center under the leadership of Pastor I.B. Loud (1948-1980) and his successors. (2013)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1873, recently freed people in Dallas's Freedman's Town gathered under a brush arbor with Methodist ministers to organize the area's first African American Methodist Episcopal church, with a sanctuary that doubled as a school for Black children. The congregation helped train ministers and even hosted the first classes of the college that became Huston-Tillotson University. Its brick sanctuary, designed after a plan by pioneering Black architect William Sidney Pittman, took 26 years to build—reportedly in five shades of brick brought by parishioners as offerings—and the church endured as a spiritual and political anchor even as highways demolished the surrounding neighborhoods.
Why it matters
St. Paul embodies the church-centered world that freed African Americans built after emancipation, serving at once as sanctuary, schoolhouse, and civil-rights meeting ground for generations.
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Related people
- · William Sidney Pittman
- · H. Oliver
- · I.B. Loud
Themes & tags
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