Any alert observer passing along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard near Chestnut Avenue in East Austin inevitably notices two revolutionary sites. One is the David Chapel Missionary Baptist Church with its dramatically escalating roofline, color-block windows and soaring modernist steeple. The other is the radically geometrical and cantilevered residence located a bit to the east of the landmark church at MLK and Maple Avenue known as the Phillips House.
Hidden two lots behind the Phillips House is another multi-level masterpiece, one that for decades was home to the late Irene Thompson, longtime school secretary for the segregated L.C. Anderson High School, who knew just about everybody in East Austin at one time or another.
David Chapel s Pastor Joseph C. Parker Jr. (Photo by John Anderson)
David Chapel Missionary Baptist Church was born, phoenixlike, out of the darkness of Austin s racial history. The congregation originated in 1924, when members of a community then south of Austin, concerned about boys playing marbles on Sundays, established a church in a former blacksmith shop. They ve moved two times since: once in 1926 to the corner of 14th and Chestnut streets in East Austin, and again, as the church grew, to its current site at MLK and Chestnut in 1958.
With the second move, the church wanted to build a new sanctuary to accommodate its growing congregation, but white-owned banks refused to lend the money. Instead, David Chapel solicited funding from the St. John Regular Baptist Association (a coalition of churches in East Austin, still in existence) and hired John S. Chase – the first Black graduate of the UT-Austin School of Architecture – to design the sanctuary and Ol
A New Book Celebrates the Work of Architect John S. Chase
Chase was the state’s first licensed Black architect and the first Black person to receive a master’s degree from the University of Texas.
John S. Chase with sons Anthony and John Jr. University of Texas Press
Chase was the state’s first licensed Black architect and the first Black person to receive a master’s degree from the University of Texas.
John S. Chase with sons Anthony and John Jr. University of Texas Press
Lise Olsen
Dec 17, 2020, 10:00 am CST
John S. Chase is the Texas architect you wish you knew about or perhaps should have already heard of. Inspired by the work of Frank Lloyd Wright with his own postmodern twists, Chase’s work has left a mark in East Austin, on the Texas Southern University and University of Texas campuses, and in churches all over the state. Now, a new University of Texas Press book,