Alabama Penny Savings Bank | |
Location | 310 18th St. N, Birmingham, Alabama |
---|---|
Coordinates | 33°30′54″N86°48′37″W / 33.51500°N 86.81028°W |
Area | less than one acre |
Built | 1913 |
Built by | Windham Construction Co. |
Architect | Wallace A. Rayfield |
Architectural style | Commercial style |
Part of | Fourth Avenue Historic District (ID82002041) |
NRHP reference No. | 80004471 [1] |
Significant dates | |
Added to NRHP | March 10, 1980 |
Designated CP | February 11, 1982 |
The Alabama Penny Savings Bank is a historic building built in 1913 at 310 18th Street North in Birmingham, Alabama, United States. The building has also been known as the Pythian Temple. Alabama Penny Savings Bank was the first black-owned bank in Alabama and financed construction of homes and churches for thousands of local black citizens. The bank was founded in 1890 and was the second largest black bank in the United States in 1907. [2] The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. [1]
Alabama Penny Savings Bank was founded by William Reuben Pettiford in 1890. [3] Branches of the bank were established in Selma, Anniston, and Montgomery. After Pettiford's death the bank merged and then closed in 1915. [4] [3]
Victor Tulane and William J. Robinson ran the Montgomery branch. Robinson was also general manager of The Emancipator newspaper. [5]
The bank building is a six-story Commercial style building with a buff-colored brick exterior. "It has a strong vertical appearance, emphasized by its proportions and the unbroken rise of four vertical piers." It has a projecting cornice. [2]
Its architect, Wallace Rayfield, was African American.
The building is significant as "a distinctive local example of 1910s office building design". It was built by a local black construction company and may have been designed by black architect Wallace A. Rayfield, who designed many other buildings for the black community in Birmingham. [2] [6]
It is also a contributing building in the Fourth Avenue Historic District. [2]
The Knights of Pythias is a fraternal organization and secret society founded in Washington, D.C., on February 19, 1864. The Knights of Pythias is the first fraternal organization to receive a charter under an act of the United States Congress.
The 16th Street Baptist Church is a Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama, United States. In 1963, the church was bombed by Ku Klux Klan members. The bombing killed four young girls in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement. The church is still in operation and is a central landmark in the Birmingham Civil Rights District. It was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 2006. Since 2008, it has also been on the UNESCO list of tentative World Heritage Sites.
Wallace Augustus Rayfield (1874–1941), was an American architect and educator. He was the second formally educated practicing African American architect in the United States.
Samuel M. Plato (1882–1957) was an American architect and building contractor in the United States. His work includes federal housing projects and U.S. post offices, as well as private homes, banks, churches, and schools. During World War II, the Alabama native was one of the few African-American contractors in the country to be awarded wartime building contracts, which included Wake and Midway Halls. He also received contracts to build at least thirty-eight U.S. post offices across the country.
The Martin Luther King Jr. Performing and Cultural Arts Complex is a historic building in the King-Lincoln Bronzeville neighborhood of Columbus, Ohio. It was built in 1925 as the Pythian Temple and James Pythian Theater, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places and Columbus Register of Historic Properties in 1983. The building was renovated into the King Arts Complex in 1987, and was vacated in 2019. Community leaders restored the building's use as an arts center in 2021.
The Pythian Temple, built in 1906 for Commencement Lodge Number 7 of the Knights of Pythias, is an historic building located on Broadway in the Theater District of Tacoma, Washington. It was designed by noted Tacoma architect Frederick Heath.
Pythian Temple may refer to:
The Pythian Castle Lodge, also known as Crystal Palace, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States, was built in 1927 by the Knights of Pythias, a fraternal organization. In 1988 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Walter Thomas Bailey was an American architect from Kewanee, Illinois. He was the first African American graduate with a bachelor of science degree in architectural engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the first licensed African-American architect in the state of Illinois. He worked at the Tuskegee Institute, and practiced in both Memphis and Chicago. Walter T. Bailey became the second African American that graduated from the University of Illinois.
The New Granada Theater, which is located at 2007 Centre Avenue in the Hill District neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was built between 1927 and 1928.
Mount Ararat Baptist Church is a historic church at 1920 Slayden Avenue, Ensley in Birmingham, Alabama. It is located in the Ensley suburb, west of downtown Birmingham, and overlooks Highway 239. It was originally built in 1929 but was modified in 1950 to add a red brick veneer.
St. Luke AME Church is a historic African Methodist Episcopal church at 2803 21st Avenue North in Birmingham, Alabama. It was designed by the pioneering African American Architect Wallace Rayfield. It was built in 1926 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2005. The church was significant in the civil rights movement.
African Americans in Alabama or Black Alabamians are residents of the state of Alabama who are of African American ancestry. They have a history in Alabama from the era of slavery through the Civil War, emancipation, the Reconstruction era, resurgence of white supremacy with the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow Laws, the Civil Right movement, into recent decades. According to the 2020 Census, approximately 25.8% of Alabama's population is African American.
The First National Bank is a historic bank building in Huntsville, Alabama. The temple-form Greek Revival structure was built in 1835–1836. Designed by locally famous architect George Steele, it occupies a prominent position, facing the courthouse square and sitting on a bluff directly above the Big Spring. It was the longest-serving bank building in Alabama, operating until 2010 when Regions Bank moved their downtown branch to a new location. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.
William R. Pettiford was a minister and banker in Birmingham, Alabama. Early in his career he worked as a minister and teacher in various towns in Alabama, moving to the 16th Street Baptist Church in 1883 and serving there for about ten years. In 1890 he founded the Alabama Penny Savings Bank. It played an important role in black economic development in Alabama and in the South during the 25 years it existed. Pettiford has been called the most significant institutional builder and leader in the African American community in Birmingham during the period in which he lived. In 1897 he was said to be next to Booker T. Washington the black man who has done the most in the South for blacks.
David Oliver Whilldin was an architect in Alabama. Several of the buildings he designed are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, including his office building the Whilldin Building. His designs include Legion Field and schools in the Birmingham City Schools district.
The Fourth Avenue Historic District in Birmingham, Alabama was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. The listing included 17 contributing buildings on 4.2 acres (1.7 ha). It includes the 1600-1800 blocks of 4th Ave., N. and part of the 300 blocks of 17th and 18th Sts., N.
Louis Hudson Persley (c.1888–1932), was an American architect. Persley became the first African American to register with the new Georgia State Board of Registered Architects on April 5, 1920. He was part of what was possibly the nation’s first black architecture firm, Taylor and Persley, a partnership founded in July 1920 with Robert Robinson Taylor. He had several spellings of his name including Louis Hudison Persely, Lewis H. Persley, and Louis Pursley.
William T. Warren was an American architect from Birmingham, Alabama. He practiced architecture there from 1907 until his death in 1962. Most of his works were designed in association with Eugene H. Knight, his business partner in the firms of Warren & Knight and Warren, Knight & Davis from 1917 until his death.
The Knights of Pythias of North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, also known as the Colored Knights of Pythias or the Knights of Pythias, was a fraternal organization in the United States. The Knights of Pythias, founded in 1864, did not allow African Americans and so this group formed on its own. The organization was established in Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1880 by Thomas W. Stringer, along with Thomas M. Broadwater, A. E. Lightfoot, George A. Place, W. D. Starks, Claybourne Julian.
Knights of Pythian Temple Building (1913)