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.

John Saunders Chase Jr. — the first licensed Black architect in Texas and, in 1952, the first African American to graduate from University of Texas’ School of Architecture — designed all three striking buildings.