This year, the Rice Design Alliance is publishing a limited-edition book as an accompaniment to afterWARDS: An Architecture Tour of Houston's Wards and Beyond, its 40th annual tour, taking place Saturday, April 11, and Sunday, April 12, from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. Architectural historian Stephen Fox was commissioned to write self-guided driving tours of the wards. Titled forWARDS, the book, designed by Houston's Spindletop Design and illustrated with photography by Peter Molick, will be sold for $15 during the tour at five cashier locations.
First Ward illustrates what became one of the political problems of the ward system by the turn of the twentieth century. Its residential population was much smaller than that of Third, Fourth, and Fifth Wards. But like the other wards, it elected two aldermen to the City Council. Consequently, residents of more populous wards felt they were not getting their fair share of representation.
At the Main-Congress intersection, going south on Main street, turn right on Congress.
The Union National Bank Building (now Hotel Icon) at 220 Main (1912, Mauran, Russell & Crowell) lies on the First Ward corner of this crucial intersection. Turn right on Travis. In the next block: The W. L. Foley Dry Goods Company Building at 214-16 Travis Street (1889, Eugene T. Heiner), and the Houston Cotton Exchange at 202 Travis Street (1884, Eugene T. Heiner). Turn right on Franklin. The Southern Pacific Office Building (now Bayou Lofts) at 915 Franklin Avenue was the economic heavy hitter in the Downtown sector of First Ward. Turn right on Main Street. The Houston National Bank (now Islamic Da’wah Center) at 201 Main Street (1928, Hedrick & Gottlieb) architecturally anchored the Main Street financial district. Turn right onto Congress again and cross Travis. The Kennedy Bakery Building (now La Carafe) at 813 Congress of 1861 is the oldest commercial building surviving in Downtown Houston.
Houston Cotton Exchange at 202 Travis Street. Photo: Peter Molick.
Follow Congress and turn left onto Franklin Avenue. Immediately you will pass in front of the modern U.S. Post Office at 401 Franklin (1962, Wilson, Morris, Crain & Anderson, formerly the site of the Grand Central Station of the Southern Pacific Railway, which dominated First Ward’s economy, as it did that of Sixth Ward. This complex might be recycled to become Houston’s metropolitan station for the projected Texas Central high-speed rail line.
You now pass inadvertently out of First Ward and into Sixth Ward, thanks to the projection of the line of Congress Avenue west of Buffalo Bayou. Follow Franklin as it leaves Downtown and turns into Washington. Turn right from Washington onto Houston Avenue. Not until you emerge from the tunnel beneath the old Houston & Texas Central/Southern Pacific track on Houston Avenue do you re-enter First Ward.
Turn right onto Edwards Street and follow Edwards past the house at 1411 Edwards (2002) by MC2 Architects. In the next block, the pair of small side-gabled cottages at 1314 and 1310 Edwards likely date to the third quarter of the nineteenth century. Victorian cottages are interspersed among increasingly aggressive townhouses. Take Edwards two blocks and turn right onto Beachton, then left onto Dart, then immediately right onto Elder Street. Pass the old Nurses Home and turn around on Girard Street in front of Jefferson Davis Hospital (now Elder Street Artists Lofts) at 1101 Elder Street (1924, W. A. Dowdy). This was Harris County’s first public health hospital. In 2005, it was rehabilitated as artists’ housing by W. O. Neuhaus Associates for the Avenue Community Development Corporation (CDC). Retrace route on Elder Street. Turn right onto Dart and follow it under the freeway overpass. Turn around and take Dart to Houston Avenue. Can you believe you’re in the center of the fourth largest city in the U.S.? Turn right on Houston Avenue.
Pass over the railroad tracks. The 1600 block of Houston features a pair of raised Victorian cottages followed by commercial buildings at 1702 Houston, 1714-18 Houston, and 1719 Houston. At 1919 Houston is Fire Station No. 3 (1903), a fraternal twin of Fire Station No. 2 on Sampson Street. The Houston Electric Company’s Woodland Heights, Watson, and Studewood streetcar lines were all routed along Houston Avenue.
Fire Station No. 3 at 1919 Houston. Photo: Peter Molick.
Turn left on Ovid Street. At 1614 Ovid Street is a modern house by architect John David Smith (2009). This neighborhood was until recently a repository of nineteenth-century vernacular houses. But without historic district designation, the residential fabric of First Ward was partially destroyed by speculative real estate development. Part of the First Ward was newly designated as a Historic District in 2014. Turn left on Colorado Street and right on Spring Street. The presence of warehouse structures is your clue that for much of the twentieth century, Spring Street was the right-of-way for the Missouri-Kansas-Texas (MKT) Railroad line. The Spring-Sawyer intersection marks the northwest limit of development in First Ward by 1905. Houston Heights, farther west, was a separately incorporated city until 1918.
