Louis Arnett Sargent Bellinger was Pittsburgh’s only Black licensed and practicing professional architect for more than 25 years. The Hill District resident designed and contributed to the construction of some of the city’s most historically significant buildings, including the Central Amusement Park, Greenlee Field, and the Pythian Temple (New Grenada Theater).

Bellinger was a South Carolina native who came from a family of builders and entrepreneurs. He was born in 1891 in Sumter, South Carolina, a city about 50 miles east of Columbia, the state capital. The Bellingers had deep ties to the Low Country and the Charleston area. That’s where Louis was raised and went to school.

He was one of 10 children of carpenter and self-employed contractor George Bellinger and his wife, Florence. Many Bellingers, by blood and marriage, worked in the building trades as carpenters and masons.

Before the Civil War, some Bellingers had been enslaved by the Middleton family. Their Charleston plantation is now a National Historic Landmark and some Bellingers use the Middleton name. Their ranks in South Carolina include religious and civic leaders, entrepreneurs, educators and at least one politician (and former Tuskegee Airman) — Earl M. Middleton, who was a state legislator in South Carolina.

Bellinger graduated from Charleston’s Avery Normal Institute and he enrolled in Howard University. At Howard, Bellinger was a member of the track team. He graduated in 1914 and moved to north Florida where he taught math. From there, he taught math at Allen University, a historically Black college in Columbia, South Carolina.

By 1916, Bellinger was living in the Philadelphia area. There he married music teacher Ethel Conner. The couple were living in a rented Camden, New Jersey, home when Bellinger enlisted in the army in 1917. He was commissioned as a lieutenant and trained at the “Reserve Officers Training Camp for Colored Citizens” in Des Moines, Iowa. Bellinger only served for three months before being discharged from the army.

Louis and Ethel Bellinger moved to Pittsburgh in 1919. They joined other family members who had traveled north looking for work. Bellinger’s father, George, was a self-employed general contractor in Charleston before moving to Pittsburgh in the early 1920s. Bellinger’s younger brother Walter was a carpenter who moved to Pittsburgh by 1926. After embracing Islam, as Saeed Akmal, he helped to build Pittsburgh’s Black Muslim community.

While living in a rented Hill District apartment, Louis began building his architectural practice. He hung out his shingle and opened an office at 525 Fifth Ave. Bellinger also enrolled in the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) where took classes in architecture. Between 1923 and 1926, Bellinger also worked as a draftsman in the City of Pittsburgh’s Architect’s Office.

Designing and building the Central Amusement Park was one of Bellinger’s first known commissions. Receipts for lumber delivered to Bellinger at the ballpark site show that he built the stadium’s wood grandstands in August 1920.

In 1927, Bellinger got the commission to design a new Pythian Temple (New Granada Theater) with facades on Centre and Wylie avenues. The building which housed meeting and entertainment venues, including indoor bowling and golf, quickly became a Hill District landmark.

Bellinger designed his second professional sports stadium in 1932. The Pittsburgh Crawfords hired the architect to design Greenlee Field. The brick and wood entertainment complex occupied a former brickyard on Bedford Ave. for six years before being demolished to build the Bedford Dwellings public housing development.

Between 1920 and the end of his career, Bellinger designed several notable institutional and commercial buildings. He designed a Masonic home in Linglestown, Pennsylvania, and a publications building (“Book Concern”) for a Philadelphia A.M.E. church. In Pittsburgh, he designed a new interior for the Rodman Street Baptist Church in East Liberty and a mixed-use building at 2801 Wylie Ave. for the Mutual Real Estate Corp.

In his private practice, Bellinger provided valuable experience for new architectural professionals. In 1924, Bellinger hired William Henry Robinson as a draftsman. The Kentucky native had graduated from the University of Pittsburgh. He joined the faculty of an HBCU, Prairie View State Normal and Industrial College (now, Prairie View A&M University) where he taught mechanical arts for a year before returning to Pittsburgh.

Robinson left Bellinger’s office and returned to the academe. He earned a PhD from Boston University in 1937. The next year he joined the faculty of the North Carolina College for Negroes (now, North Carolina Central University) in Durham. Robinson had a long and distinguished career, becoming chair of the Physics and Math Department. He authored several academic papers and won prestigious awards, including substantial National Science Foundation funding for his work. North Carolina Central University’s science building is named for Robinson.

As Bellinger’s architectural practice grew, Ethel enrolled in Duquesne University’s music school. She built a career as a music promoter and teacher, opening a studio in the Francis Street home that her husband designed in 1928.

Beyond architecture, Bellinger was active in Howard University alumni affairs. He also entered politics in the 1920s. He ran several unsuccessful campaigns to represent the Hill District in Congress. Bellinger’s campaign ads published in the Courier touted him as a “real Republican” and urged voters to “send an architect to Congress.”

Though Bellinger achieved prominence as Pittsburgh’s only registered professional Black architect and he was widely acclaimed for his work, he struggled with personal issues that likely held him back from achieving his full potential.

He was arrested at least twice for fighting in the 1920s and 1930s. He and Ethel suffered major financial setbacks in 1925 when the Steel City Bank failed (Bellinger was a shareholder) and in 1930 when their mortgage holder foreclosed on their Francis Street building.

In 1945, Bellinger became a member of the American Institute of Architects. He was one of less than 100 Black architects practicing at the time. Louis Bellinger died of a cerebral hemorrhage less than a year later, on Feb. 3, 1946. He was 54. He is buried on an Allegheny Cemetery hillside about 30 feet away from Negro Leagues (and Greenlee Field) slugger Josh Gibson.

Ethel Bellinger left Pittsburgh soon after Louis died. She moved to Philadelphia where she lived with her sister. After remarrying in 1952, she died there in 1977. Though eclipsed by her husband’s accomplishments, Ethel’s work in music education was part of a larger Black arts culture that included Mary Cardwell Dawson’s National Negro Opera Company.

Few of Bellinger’s buildings have survived. Shortly after my first articles about Bellinger appeared in local news outlets, Hill District Community Community Development Corporation President and CEO Marimba Milliones mentioned their lack of survival and documentation in a 2023 speech she gave at the New Grenada Theater site.

“I also just recently learned that on Francis Street, the home that he and his wife lived in, was demolished without regard to the contributions that he made to the design world,” Milliones said. “That’s worth documenting. That’s worth saving.”

© 2025 D.S. Rotenstein

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