Rev. Ned Pullum House

The house at 1319 Andrews Street was constructed for Rev. Ned P. Pullum and his wife Emma circa 1898.  Pullum was a pastor at different times of two churches in Freedmen’s Town, and also owned a successful brickworks company in the area.  

Reverend Pullum, a native of Pickensville, Alabama, moved to Beaumont, Texas in 1895 to become pastor of a church there.  He moved to Houston a year later with his wife, Emma Eddings Pullum, to become pastor of a church in the Sixth Ward.  Upon the death of Rev. Jack Yates in 1897, Pullum was tapped to succeed him as pastor at Bethel Baptist Church in Freedmen’s Town.  Pullum remained pastor at Bethel until January 1903, when he resigned from the church and soon organized a new church, Friendship Baptist Church, also in Freedmen’s Town.  He later commented that he paid $25,000 to build this new church, where he would remain as pastor for twenty-four years.

Reverend Pullum and his wife purchased 1319 Andrews Street in 1898 for $1,000.  As the Houston City Directory lists them as residing at this site in that same year, the house was presumably constructed around the same time.  The 1907 maps of the Sanborn Fire Insurance Company show the house in essentially its current configuration.  In 1915, a photograph of the home was published in the Red Book of Houston, a compendium of the social, professional, religious, educational and industrial interests of the Black population of Houston. 

Beyond his ministerial practice, Pullum was active in business and in his community.  In 1907, he founded Pullum Standard Brickworks, purchasing a property north of San Felipe between Taft and Montrose, in a section of what is now Magnolia Cemetery, for use as the brickyard.  He was also the owner of two pharmacies, as well as a shoe repair store from 1908 to 1912.  Pullum served on the committee to establish the Colored Carnegie Library, which was achieved in 1914; was a contributor to Union Hospital, one of the first hospitals to serve Houston’s Black population; and in 1911 opened People’s Sanitarium on Andrews Street in Freedmen’s Town.  Reverend Pullum died on June 18, 1927 from acute indigestion after having been in poor health for some time.  He is buried in College Park Cemetery on West Dallas.

The house at 1319 Andrews Street is among the grandest surviving historic residences in Freedmen’s Town.  Its features include a wraparound porch, four gables and a prominent frontal bay, and it rests on brick piers that raise it several feet above ground level, noticeably higher than the other historic pier-and-beam structures in the area.  An intricate skirt of latticed brickwork closes off the crawl space underneath the house.   It is essentially Queen Anne-style in design, although the Doric porch columns mark it as a transitional structure also influenced by the later Colonial Revival style.  The interior features a fireplace, arched doorway, high ceilings, rounded doors, transoms, and elaborate decorative trim.  A pocket door, now missing, once separated the dining room and parlor.  The overall configuration of the building corresponds to the structure shown on the 1907 Sanborn map; the only significant architectural modification has been the enclosure of the rear porch into a bathroom and additional bedroom, which appears to have been done many decades ago.

The Pullum house was listed as a contributing property to the Freedmen’s Town National Register Historic District at its formation in 1985.  It was acquired by the Museum in 2007, and was designated a Protected Landmark by the City of Houston in the same year.  The Pullum house was one of a handful of Houston structures recognized by UNESCO as a “Site of Memory” in 2019 in connection with that organization’s international Slave Route Project.  The Museum is working to raise funds to fully restore it, with a plan to open it to the public as a health and business museum.

Two of RBHY Museum historic homes, the Workman’s Cottage (aka Barbershop) at 1404 Victor St. and the Rev. Ned Pullum and Emma Edding-Pullum historic home at 1319 Andrews St. have been designated as Sites of Memory associated with UNESCO's Slave Route project. Launched in 1994, the international and inter-regional project The Slave Route: Resistance, Liberty, Heritage addresses the history of the slave trade and slavery through the prism of intercultural dialogue, a culture of peace and reconciliation. It endeavors to improve the understanding and transmission of this human tragedy by making better known its deep-seated causes, its consequences for societies today and the cultural interactions born of this history.