Building at 441 East Main

This two-story frame commercial building at 441 East Main in Waxahachie dates to 1893, with a brick veneer added in 1937. It has a flat roof, wood double-hung windows with two-over-two lights, three single-door entrances with transoms, and a three-bay shed-roofed porch on slender round columns set on brick piers. Its original three-part organization remains intact. A parapet with a triangular inset panel marked for the Knights of Pythias and a corbeled brick cornice are the main decorative details. The building sits in a mixed residential and commercial area east of the central business district, near the center of the town's historic Black neighborhood. For many years the ground floor held the James Funeral Parlor, owned by a locally prominent Black family. The upper floor served as a meeting hall for Black fraternal groups, including the Knights of Pythias Unity Lodge No. 37 and Black Masonic lodges that later split into two. It is one of two surviving buildings from the city's once active Black business center.