Anyone walking along U Street can see the name True Reformer Building on the side of 1200 U Street, but few realize the significance of its history.
As
a building designed by the first registered African-American architect in
Washington, D.C., one that was financed, built, and owned by the black
community as a testament to their abilities mere decades after the abolition of
slavery, and subsequently owned by benevolent organizations and prominent
blacks including John Whitelaw Lewis, the True Reformer building is indeed an
outstanding historical document in itself.
By 1902, the property holdings of
the Grand Fountain of the United Order of True Reformers were increased to
include a contract for the construction of the True Reformer building in
Washington, D.C., at “a cost of forty-five thousand nine hundred and fifty
dollars. The design of the building is
the work of a Negro architect, J.A. Lankford, and is a monument to Negro genius
and an ocular demonstration of the results of combination, concentration, and
co-operation” (Burrell, p. 293). The
organization owned a retail store in Washington
that opened in 1902, and had earlier owned a small lot at the corner of Vermont, I, and 12th Street, N.W.
The True Reformer
Building was dedicated on
15 July, 1903. Construction had begun just one year
previous. The Washington Bee of 12
July 1902 reported that the architect’s drawings had been
“submitted to the Engineer’s Department of the District Government and have
been fully approved.” The Reformer’s
Mercantile and Industrial Association, Inc., had secured the land in a 26 February 1902 deed
transaction.
Architect John Anderson Lankford had
moved with his wife to Washington
in 1902, to supervise construction and complete designs for the building. He continued maintain offices close-by for
the remainder of his career, which spanned well into the 1940’s. Lankford’s personal ties and utilization of
the building after it was completed are somewhat unusual, as he attended
concerts, held meetings, and even attended Law classes in the building
throughout his life in Washington. I wrote a chapter on Lankford that was included in the book African American Architects: A Biographical Dictionary, 1865-1945 by Dreck Spurlock Wilson (2004).
Lankford’s designs for the building
feature classical revival and Romanesque architectural features in a subtle
composition that is considered stately.
It clearly conveys a sense of monumentality for the black community for
which it was built, at the time Washington
itself was being revitalized as a result of the McMillan Commission
projects.
Independent builders S.H. Bolling
and A.J. Everett joined together to form Bolling and Everett of Lynchburg,
Virginia for the construction of the True Reformer building. They later combined once again in 1907 for
the Negro Exposition Building
(designed by William Sidney Pittman) at the Jamestown Ter-Centennial Exposition
in Norfolk, Virginia.
At the dedication Ceremony on 15
July 1903, Dr. W. L. Taylor of Richmond, Virginia, the National Grand Worthy
Master of the Grand Fountain of the United Order of True Reformers, offered a
brief history of the events leading up to the Washington DC building, and the
creative financing he had initiated to make it possible:
“I
was not willing to put any kind of a building in Washington.
This was the capitol of the nation.
The critics from all over the country center in Washington.
The Negro is the bone of contention, and there are many who say he is
indolent and only fit for a ‘hewer of wood and a drawer of water.’ Therefore, I made up my mind, in keeping with
Mr. Browne’s request, God being my helper, to put up a building in Washington that would
reflect credit upon the Negro Race.
In the meantime the Board voted forty thousand
dollars to put up a building in St.
Louis. It was
impossible to put up a building that would reflect the proper credit upon this
Negro national Organization for that money.
We found a building on the corner of Pine street and Jefferson avenue which, at a small cost,
could be made to suit our purposes. The
lowest price set on the building was thirty-five thousand dollars, and the
lowest figures anticipated by the owners was thirty thousand dollars, but we
succeeded in buying it for twenty-two thousand five hundred dollars. Take twenty-two thousand five hundred dollars
from forty thousand dollars; we had seventeen thousand five hundred dollars of
the money voted for St. Louis
to invest in property elsewhere.
We
went on from St. Louis
to Louisville, Ky.
We soon located a place there that was valued at twelve thousand
dollars. We got it before we got through
for four thousand six hundred dollars.
Take four thousand six hundred dollars from seventeen thousand five
hundred dollars, which leaves twelve thousand nine hundred dollars of the
amount that the Board donated to be spent in St. Louis.
We went from that point to Cincinnati, Oh., and
selected a site that had been sold twelve months before for twelve thousand
dollars on Sixth street,
with a double car line running by the door.
The agent told us that he thought we could get it for nine thousand
dollars. I said ‘If you want to sell the
place at proper figures, I will buy it.’
He became very anxious for me to make an offer, and I made an offer of
seven thousand dollars cash. The owner
came over and signed the paper. I asked
for the deed, which I gave to a guarantee company to examine the title. I sent Lawyer Robertson to put it on
record. Thus, you see I got a building
in St. Louis, Mo., Louisville,
Ky., Cincinnati, Oh., and still had some of the
money left.
Now,
we came to Washington. We found that the seating capacity of a
possible building at Washington,
on the old site, would not exceed three hundred and fifty persons. The agent offered us five thousand dollars
for the lot. We had paid ten thousand
dollars for it, so we could not take that.
He said it was all that he could give, but he had a lot on U street that he
would sell for eight thousand five hundred dollars. I said ‘I will not do that.’ But finally, we came to an agreement and made
an even exchange of the lots.
Then
we went to work to put up this building.
We called for bids, and the lowest was fifty-five thousand dollars. We threw them all out and called for other
bids. This time we succeeded in getting
a Negro contractor in Lynchburg,
Va., to bid. We wanted this building to put up as a credit
to the Negro Race. So we found a Negro
architect in the person of J.A. Lankford.
He drew up the plans. Then we
found the Negro builders at Lynchburg,
Messrs. Bolling & Everett. We said to the contractors, ‘If you cannot
get security in the Guarantee Company, give us a good bond elsewhere and we
will accept it.’ They found a Negro, Mr.
A. Humbles, who came to their rescue and gave us a certified check for twenty
thousand dollars, to hold until the building was completed. So we completed the job without a hitch. The building was completed and turned over to
us July 1st.” (Burrell, p. 319-322).
The event was indeed of great pride
and celebration in the black community at the time, and evidently lead to
additional commissions for Lankford, as he was to later design a residence for
Dr. Taylor.
Another speaker at the
dedication, W.S. Woodson offered an emotional insight into the current plight
of the race when he proclaimed:
“How
shines the light of True Reformerism through the darkness; how it burns its
fire upon the alter of Race development; how does it satisfy and help those who
are struggling upward through the gloom of a most unreasonable and unwarranted
prejudice.” (Burrell, p. 322).
Several writings and discussion of
the time reflect the attitudes of the black race during this age of electricity
and industrial revolution, when most could still remember the injustices of
slavery. Washington at the turn of the century had
one of the largest black communities that resulted in sizable achievements and
opportunities not available elsewhere to minorities. At the opening dedication ceremony, Dr.
Taylor replied, in an optimistic statement:
“The
starry flag has become a fixed constellation o’er the Asiatic seas, but better
than all, we have learned to love our native land. Gone, we trust, are the days of strife,
bitterness and doubt within the enclosure of this Organization, and welcome the
days of peace, of confidence and of lasting brotherhood. We come to you in the early dawn of the
twentieth century-a century of wonderful development, a century of great
achievement in both private and public affairs, an age in which science and
invention reign supreme, an electrical age.
Old Empires have passed away, and nations with them gone. Kings and czars have been born, have ruled,
and have been forgotten. Boundaries of
nations have been changed, thrones have fallen and old dynasties have been
destroyed, yet man remains and asserts his power.” (Burrell, p. 232).
Speaking at the National Negro
Business League convention in 1906, architect Lankford offered what
contributions blacks had made to the physical development of Washington, and what role the True Reformer
building played:
“In
the past three years, I have designed for Washington and fifteen states of the Union, nearly six million dollars worth of
buildings. I have designed, overhauled,
and built in Washington
and vicinity over seven hundred thousand dollars worth of property during the
same time. I had the pleasant pleasure
of designing and supervising the construction of the one hundred thousand
dollar office, lodge, and store room building for the True Reformers...and
being in Washington,
it stands out to the civilized world as a sample or example of what the Negro
can do and has done with his brain, skill, and money. The building was designed, built, paid for in
cash, is occupied and controlled by Negroes.
It has done more to give new life to the Negro architects and builders
and lift the standard of work of this kind and character in Washington and in fact, throughout the
country than any other one thing we know of.” (Landmark Application, as cited
from Etheridge, Harrison, p. 12-13).
In October of 1903, Mr. W. R.
Griffin received a promotion working for the True Reformers in West Virginia, Ohio, and Chicago, and came to Washington, as the Chief
of the local Division.
He organized ten
Fountains and two Rosebuds chapters in the District, making a total oversight
of 51 Fountains and 14 Rosebuds from the True Reformer building on U Street.
In addition, he served as the general manager
of the True Reformer store in the District, before later being appointed as a
notary public for the District by President Roosevelt.
Upon completion, the building was
used by a host of community organization, musical groups, and societies for
events and celebrations. A well
established local music school known as the Washington Conservancy was
established in the True Reformer Hall in 1903 by Oberlin trained pianist
Harriet Marshall Gibbs. In 1904, it
moved its headquarters to 902 T
Street (still standing) and had long associations
with Ellington.
In 1905, the True Reformer building
housed the newly formed D.C. branch of the
National Negro Business League, founded by Booker T. Washington in 1900
to encourage the advancement of black businesses.
Called the Colored Men’s Business League in
DC, the organization boasted 100 members only four months after incorporating,
despite long standing conflicts and opposition.
Interestingly,
John A. Lankford
was the chapter founder and it’s first President in 1905, and they met and
utilized their space in the very building he designed.
This trend would repeat itself as Lankford
was known to attend Law classes in the building in 1917.
“In 1913 the Magnolia Dancing Class
met Wednesday and Saturday nights in the hall, with music supplied by Carroll’s
Columbia Orchestra and the Yale Orchestra, admission fifteen cents” (Tucker,
pg. 50).
Following the bankruptcy declaration
of the United Order of True Reformers sometime in the early 1910s, the building
was eventually sold at auction and deed transferred on 2 May 1914 to John
Whitelaw Lewis, President and founder of the Industrial Savings Bank at 11th
and U Streets, N.W. Through a series of
transactions over the next few years, Lewis deeded the property on 4 January
1915 to the Laborers and Mechanics Realty Company, which he was a trustee.
John Whitelaw Lewis, a hod carrier
who came to Washington
in 1894 with Coxey’s Army of the Unemployed, eventually became one of the
District’s most successful black businessmen.
For African Americans at the time, it was extremely difficult to learn a
craft, but developer Harry Wardman gave Lewis the opportunity to learn to be a
bricklayer, and he used this skill to build his personal fortune.
At the time of his ownership of the True Reformer
Building, Lewis was
President of Industrial Savings Bank which he had founded in 1913.
The bank continues to operate at the corner
of 11th and U Streets, where it’s headquarters building was built in 1917.
By 1919, Lewis had opened the Whitelaw Hotel,
located at 1839 13th Street,
and hired Isaiah T. Hatton, a Washington
educated black architect to design the restrained, neoclassical structure, also
built entirely by black craftsman.
Hattan had previously designed his Industrial Bank building.
Through a series of transactions,
the property was deeded from John Whitelaw Lewis and the Laborers and Mechanics
Realty Company to the Trustees of the Knights of Pythias of North America,
South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia, Jurisdiction of the
District of Columbia. In January of
1917, they renamed the building Pythian Hall.
It was also affectionately known as the Pythian Temple (Washington Bee,
27 January, 1917), but to this day retains its first name designation, the True Reformer
Building. They continued to offer spaces in the
building for a myriad of community groups, musicians, and organization to meet,
host receptions, and special events.
In 1916, a social group called ‘The
Happy Four L.M. Club’ sponsored entertainment in Room 5 of the hall,
advertising ‘Good Music’ for a charge of fifteen cents (Tucker, pg. 50). The Hall was advertised as the “best equipped
public hall owned by colored people in the country,” (Tucker, advertisement unknown). An elegant and very formal affair took place
on February 23, 1917
at the hall entitled the “Masque L’Allegro Frolik” that included “serpentine
waltzes, confetti showers, characteristiques, etc., danced to the strains of
divine music under the direction of the unexcelled Louis M. Brown.” It was staged in the main auditorium and
featured an orchestra of ten to twelve players.
At the same event, a solo dancer interpreted ‘Poor Butterfly,’ and the
Orphean Quartette sang Ethelbert Nevin’s ‘The Rosary” (Tucker, pg. 50).
One
of the most famous performers in the Hall was local musician Duke
Ellington.
“Ellington and others always
referred to it as True Reformers’ Hall,” despite the fact it had been bought
early in 1917 by the Knights of Pythians and officially renamed Pythian Hall,
or better known as the Pythian Temple (Tucker, page 50).
Ellington’s first job at the hall was a non-auspicious
occasion, assembling a group of three or four musicians in Room 5 or 10, two
rooms he mentions in his autobiography entitled
Music is My Mistress.
Members of his family had moved a block away to 1212 T Street, N.W. in 1919 or 1920, and
it is well known that Ellington frequented the house.
His own was on Sherman Ave., N.W.
In 1916, Ellington filled in for Doc
Perry at the Stenographers weekly afternoon meetings (Wednesdays from 4 to 8 p.m.) which featured matinee dances at the True
Reformer’s Hall (Washington Bee, 19
February 1916). And on 25 November of
1916, an advertisement in the Washington Bee newspaper features a musical
notice for the “Happy Four LM Club” at the True Reformers Hall.
While attending Dunbar High School
from 1914 to 1918, Washingtonian Roy Ellis belonged to a social club called
“The Rockaways,” comprised of a half dozen friends who promoted parties and
dances. Ellis remembers Ellington
bringing along only a drummer or a banjo player when the club would hire him
for events in the hall. In 1917,
Ellington was not yet well enough established to offer musicians regular work,
so he drew from a pool of friends as work permitted. Some of these men included three Miller
brothers; Bill (guitar), Felix (saxophone), and ‘Devil’ or ‘Brother’ (drums),
William Escoffery (guitar), and Lloyd Stewart (drums). Later, Otto Hardwick (bass fiddle), and
Arthur Whetsol (trumpet or cornet) joined the bands that Ellington had coined
“The Duke’s Serenades,” a name he would continue to use after leaving Washington in the 1920.
For at least the years 1917 and
1918, the basement was rented to the First Separate Battalion as an armory and
drill room, a black branch of the District of Columbia National Guard until the new armory was built after WWI. The segregated black troops who drilled in
the basement armory volunteered to go to the Arizona boarder in 1916 during the
Mexican-American crises, and to Europe in 1917
for World War One participation.
(Conversation with Col. West Hamilton, 10 January 1978, Washington,
D.C., as part of the HABS/HAER Collection #DC 234, Library of Congress).
Frelinghuysen University,
a Washington D.C. school for the self advancement of
working class African-Americans, held classes in homes and businesses located
throughout the city before purchasing 1800
Vermont Avenue, N.W., in 1921 (A house the author once owned and renovated). They also held classes in the True Reformer
Building, as evident in
an advertisement placed in the November
15, 1919 edition of the Washington Bee:
FRELINGHUYSEN
UNIVERSITY
The sessions of the college
of liberal Arts, the
Academy, the Commercial
College and the School of Theology...will be held at Lincoln Temple, Eleventh and R Streets,
northwest, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, from 7 to 9:30 p.m.,
until further notice.
The sessions of the John M.
Langston School
of Law will be held at the offices of Prof. Zeph P. Moore, Pythian Building,
Twelfth and U Streets, northwest, every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday evening,
at 7 o'clock...
The school of Pharmacy and the School of useful Arts will be held
at the apartment of Dr. and Mrs. W.H. Jackson, Cameron Apartment House, Vermont
Avenue at T Street, northwest, every evening...
The School of Fine Arts, Department of Photography, will be held
at the studio of Daniel Freeman, 1833 Fourteenth Street, northwest, everyday.
The College
of Embalming and Sanitary
Sciences will be held at the establishment of
Dr. Robert G. McGuire, 935
Florida Avenue.
Enter Now.
It is interesting to note that
architect John A. Lankford indicated the he had received two Law degrees from Frelinghuysen University, and actually attended
classes within the very building he had designed 20 years previously. From the University’s Decennial Catalogue, he
is listed in the John
M. Langston
School of Law classes for
the years 1917, 1918, and 1919, and for the year 1921, he was listed as a post
graduate for LL.M. with the Indiana
and D.C. Bars.
The 1918 City Directory lists Banks
and Burnell, drugs, Armory, DC National Guard, and True Reformer Hall as
occupants of 1200 U Street.
The True Reformer building was
deeded to the National Savings Bank and Trust Co., following the default of a
trust, on 1 May 1934. It was eventually sold to the Boys Club of
the Metropolitan Police of the District
of Columbia on 4 January 1938.
First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt dedicated the new use of the building
before a crowd estimated at well more than
2,000, and within a month of the opening, the club’s membership stood at
1,600. Two months later, it swelled to
over 4,100, and was thus the largest of the city’s four clubs.
The
Boy’s Club of the Metropolitan Police had been established in 1934 to combat
juvenile delinquency and provide supervised activities for segregated Washington’s black
children at the time. It first leased
the True Reformer Building
in 1937, and had John Lankford supervise the extensive interior renovation
necessary for the building’s new use.
The $17,000 project provided a gymnasium, locker room, library, music
room, and game room.
Following tradition, the building
was witnessing a continuation of uses by various organizations and societies in
the community. In 1951, a fashion show
at the Turner Arena was presented by the XI Omega of Alpha Kappa Alpha entitled
“Fashion Novelty.” A brochure for the
event featured an advertisement for “Chapman Tailoring and Designing School,
at 1200 YOU Street, No. 4978, Philip Chapman, director.” (Historical Society Washington, DC
Collection, U Street
vertical file)
In 1957, the District Commissioners
banned Police participation in fundraising after court cases and demonstrations
challenged the Boy’s Club policy of racial segregation in its branches and
summer camps around Washington. As a result, the Boy’s club in the True
Reformer building closed following difficulty in fundraising without the Police
Department leadership. On 19 November 1959, the Boys
Club of the Metropolitan Police sold the building to Gary H. Lebbin, et ux, et
al who shortly thereafter opened the first distribution center for Duran Paints
in the District.
In 1947, the ground floor display
windows and front entrance were altered along the U Street facade to meet fire code. The columnar and arched entry portico was
modified, and encapsulated in a cast stone facade.
The DC Landmark and the National
Register of Historic Places Nomination application was heard before the
Historic Preservation Review Board on September 16, 1987.
It was sponsored by the LeDroit Park Preservation Society (Theresa
Brown) and the Evans Tibbs Collection (Thurlow E Tibbs, Jr.). Mr. Tibbs lived close by at 1910 Vermont
Avenue, and his grandfather was on the building committee during the design and
construction phase of the building. At
the time, Gary H. Lebbin, et ux, et al, still owned the building.
The
abandoned building was photographed by the author (above) about 1992, when it was for
sale and was eventually renovated by the Public Welfare Foundation after
several attempts by former owners. Duran
Paints was the ground floor tenant for decades, while the upper floors and auditorium
were vacant. In 1993, Metro ridership
for the U Street/Cardozo station averaged just 2,800 passengers per day! The station opened on May 11, 1991. G. Byron
Peck's mural to Duke Ellington on the side of the building that used to
overlook the U Street Metro station was completed in 1997.
Burrell,
William Patrick. Twenty Five Years
History of the Grand Fountain of the United Order of True Reformers, 1881-1905. Westport,
Connecticut, Negro University
Press, reprinted. (Library of Congress Call No. HV5827.U553B84)
Decennial
Catelogue of Frelinghuysen
University. Anna J. Cooper Papers, Moorland- Springarn Research
Center, Howard University,
c. 1939.
Etheridge,
Harrison. The Black Architects of Washington, D.C.,
1900-Present. Dissertation,
Catholic University, 1979. Washington,
DC: Catholic University,
1979.
Etheridge,
Harrison. True Reformer
Building.
Historic American Buildings Survey Documentation,
HABS No. DC-362. Washington, DC:
Historic American Buildings Survey,
1979. Prints and Photographic
Division, Library of Congress.
Historic
Landmark Application, Washington
D.C. Architectural Review Board,
dated 3 March, 1987.
Tucker,
Mark. Ellington. The Early Years. Urbana
and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991.
Vertical
Files on Metropolitan Police Boys Clubs, Washingtoniana Division, Martin Luther King Memorial Library.
