Chatman House
This site is part of the Black Springs tour, a partnership with Our Story, Inc. Visit the Tours page for the tour introduction and complete list of sites.
The house at 265 Kennedy Drive appears to be the first house constructed on site in the neighborhood, in 1948. Thurman Carthen remembers it as the prettiest one in the neighborhood when he moved to Black Springs with his family in 1956.
Curtis Campbell Chatman applied for a building permit for a four-room house and detached garage in Black Springs in July of 1948, suggesting that the Sweatts had made an arrangement with him prior to formalizing the sale in 1949. Chatman was a Navy veteran and his wife, Berta, was on the publicity committee for a colored auxiliary to the American Women’s Voluntary Services, which was established in Reno in February 1943.
Chatman was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and prior to this lived on Sutro Street in Reno while he worked for the Southern Pacific Railroad in Sparks. The Chatmans’ house in Black Springs was a sizable one, with a permit worth $8000 at the time of its construction in 1948.
On the house's exterior, original board-and-batten siding (believed to be redwood) sits above a brick veneer wainscot. A unique touch is the small hexagonal window on the front facade.
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