Houston’s Boynton Chapel Receives Protected Historical Landmark Designation

Boynton Chapel Methodist Church, located in Houston’s Third Ward community, was designated as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, the highest honor the State of Texas can give a historic building.

The church was built in 1957, designed by John S. Chase, Texas’s first Black licensed architect and a founder of the Texas Southern University art department. According to the Houston Chronicle, some of the church’s members included Houston civil rights activists Christina Adair and Magdelean “Mama” Bush and Dr. Forde B. McWilliams, one of the first Black veterinarians in Texas.

The congregation’s history stretches back to the early 1880s when the church was known as Dallas Street Methodist Episcopal Church, and it met in the home of one of its founders. Later, the property was purchased at Dallas and Paige Streets, and the church’s name was changed to Boynton Chapel Methodist Episcopal. Since Black people were not allowed to swim in public swimming pools, the church provided areas like a swimming pool, gym, and classrooms where vocational training was provided to adults.

Boynton Chapel provided John S. Chase with one of his first major opportunities. After he designed the church, he designed TSU’s Thurgood Marshall School of Law, the Martin Luther King Jr. School of Communications, and the Booker T. Washington High School in Houston. Chase’s son, Tony, told the Houston Chronicle, “Dad’s honors thesis for his master’s at UT was about the Black church and the design and spirit of the Black church, so he was heavily invested in the development of the Black church, both physically and spiritually. It was also a practical matter … because, frankly, that’s the place in the Black community where there was capital and a lot of growth and construction going on.”

The University of Houston is also located in Third Ward, and two of its students were integral in ensuring the church received landmark status. In 2021, Walker Shores helped the church become a Protected Landmark of the City of Houston along with Sam Osemwingie, who helped ensure the church became a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark. The church currently needs repairs to its air conditioning system, drainage system, sanctuary windows, and bell tower, but received help from Urbano Architects, who offered to perform an architectural building survey, which usually costs $15,000, for no cost.

The church has been a fixture in Third Ward for many years, and one-half of the first couple married in the church remembers what it meant to the community that Chase designed the church. Eighty-six-year-old Dorothy Murphy, whose husband, Albert, has since passed, told the Chronicle, “I remember when it opened, it was new and different from most of the other churches, both inside and out.”

“People heard John Chase’s name and knew who he was—that he was the first Black architect in Texas and graduated from UT. It was something people wanted to drive by and see.”