New suburban-style construction at Allen Parkway Village after destruction of historic public housing. Published in Cite 46, Fall 1999. Photo: Hester + Hardaway.
New suburban-style construction at Allen Parkway Village after destruction of historic public housing. Published in Cite 46, Fall 1999. Photo: Hester + Hardaway.

This essay is part of a special series about preservation in Houston, edited by Helen Bechtel. The writer Marta Galicki is a longtime historic preservationist living in Houston and a contributor to Cite.

I have lived in Houston off and on for three decades, marked by three momentous arrivals. Each time it seemed both brand new and older, ever more layered with histories. Like so many others, I never thought I would stay. What makes Houston a “Velcro City,” the kind of place where people move to temporarily and end up staying a lifetime? They have included formerly enslaved people in the late nineteenth century, Mexicans fleeing their 1910 Revolution, World War II émigrés John and Dominique de Menil, Vietnamese immigrants in the 1970s, and Katrina survivors. Why do we stay? This question resonates especially in a city known for shrugging off its own history and perpetually reinventing its landscape.

Ribbons of multilane freeways rise as they near Houston from every direction, providing us with glimpses from above of our flat city on its coastal plain. It is physically too huge to digest, with shimmering modern high-rises, strip malls, and builders’ cranes mixed among bayou greenways and the acres of tree canopies that obscure the city’s intimate neighborhoods. It takes a long time to understand this place.

Marta Galicki, left, and Karen Graham Wade, right, featured in a 1977 New Orleans monthly for their work as architectural historians for the Vieux Carré and New Orleans Landmarks commissions.

 

Arrival 1 — 1978

My first arrival was in the late 1970s. It was more of a drive-by, en route from my home in the historic core of New Orleans, where I worked for the Vieux Carré Commission, en route to an architectural history conference in San Antonio. Along with a carload of other young architectural historians, I had only one objective: to take photographs from the freeway of the Houston skyline featuring Philip Johnson and John Burgee’s recently constructed Pennzoil Place (1975). Without giving Houston a chance, we remarked that we would never live in such a barren place and continued on our journey. I’m still puzzled that we didn’t take time to seek out the Rothko Chapel (1971) and the Astrodome (1965), both widely published buildings of the age, or to explore Houston’s historic core, composed of six wards whose neighborhoods had retained their nineteenth-century character and pattern except where disrupted by natural bayous and later fractured by twentieth-century freeways.

Perhaps I should not be so hard on my younger self for being daunted by Houston’s messiness. Dan Solomon notes in his Texas Monthly article, “As If You Needed It, Further Proof That Houston Is So Much Bigger Than Most Cities,” the city’s incorporated area is about 660 square miles, but the Greater Houston geographic area (Houston-Woodlands-Sugarland) is enormous, approximately 7,780 square miles and 30-plus miles wide from west to east. Compared with other metropolises like New York, it would cover most of Manhattan plus Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and part of New Jersey. If it were superimposed on Honolulu, it would take up the whole Island of Oahu. The closest approximation in size is Greater London, a place I called home during the 1980s and early 1990s.

Pennzoil Place (1976) Johnson/Burgee Architects and S.I. Morris Associates. Photo: Wikipedia Commons, 2013.

 

As I learned later from Kelsey Walker’s maps and Stephen Fox’s commentary, it was during the period that started after World War II and ended with the early 1980s oil bust that most of what we call Houston today was built. Following the civil rights movement, the city experienced mass suburbanization, which meant not only white flight but the escape of middle-class African Americans from their segregated communities, leaving behind the working classes and the poor. Afterward, most of the vibrant historic wards became almost invisible to outsiders. Although the wards endured high unemployment, deteriorating public schools, and rising crime, much of the historic fabric of these neighborhoods remained intact, if rundown, because immigrants and African Americans who stayed in place persevered when others moved out.

Developers were not interested in such places in the 1970s and 1980s, but artists and activists were, including DeLoyd Parker, who helped found S.H.A.P.E. (Self-Help for African People through Education) Community Center in 1969 in the Third Ward; Alice Valdez, who founded MECA (Multicultural Education and Counseling through the Arts) in 1977 in the Sixth Ward; and Felix Fraga, who has worked for Neighborhood Centers since 1946 in the Second Ward. John and Dominique de Menil in 1971 brought an ambitious exhibition, “The De Luxe Show,” to the Black community of the Fifth Ward, mounted in an abandoned movie theater, which they renovated in collaboration with local businesses. One of the first interracial shows of contemporary art in the country, the exhibition and other Menil-funded initiatives of that decade energized the Fifth Ward.

I missed the innovative and inspiring work of Parker, Valdez, Fraga, and the Menils of Houston as I buzzed by on the freeway, leaning out with my camera pointed at Pennzoil Place. Later, though, my life would tie back into this history.

Houston Astrodome (1965), Hermon Lloyd & W. B. Morgan and Wilson, Morris, Crain & Anderson. Photograph from Cite 49, Fall 2000.

 

Arrival 2 — 1994

After leaving New Orleans and living more than a decade in England and Norway, I arrived in Houston for the second time in 1994. This time I settled here. By 1994, my husband and I with our children had been abroad for 14 years, and we wanted to return to the US. Houston was a city where my geologist husband had a secure job and where I hoped to become employed in historic preservation as I had been in New Orleans and London.

Arriving here, I encountered a profoundly different place this time because I got off the freeway. I also met Houstonians and preservationists who guided me, especially Stephen Fox. I had met Stephen the previous year at an architectural historians conference in Charleston, and the following week I came to Houston for a “look-see” visit. Over drinks on the front patio of the Black Lab, he and Phoebe Tudor, who I knew briefly from working in New Orleans, persuaded me that Houston was “do-able” for an architectural historian. Even though Houston did not visually read as urban or urbane, in many ways it was or had the potential to be both, rooted in its rich twentieth-century building stock.

Houston’s residential neighborhoods now captured my attention, from the various pre-World War II neighborhoods surrounding Rice University, such as Southgate where we moved into a small 1930s house that looked like an English cottage, to Montrose, to the National Register Historic Districts of Freedmen’s Town (in the Fourth Ward), Sixth Ward, and Houston Heights. Although the city’s first preservation ordinance was in the process of being passed, it was weak. Few of Houston’s architectural landmarks and little of its historic fabric were safe from demolition, and many buildings had already been lost. However, some neighborhood deed restrictions that retained lot sizes proved to be one of the more effective tools of preserving neighborhoods.

Photographs from William Stern's article, "The Lure of the Bungalow," in Cite 16, Winter 1986.

 

I did not become the first Preservation Officer of the City of Houston as I hoped but instead I undertook freelance work as an architectural historian, researching and writing the nominations for buildings to be placed on the National Register of Historic Places for clients, either nonprofits or private owners of historic buildings. I also was a consultant to neighborhood groups that sought historic district designation on the National Register since Houston’s preservation ordinance did not yet permit district protection.

Then I volunteered to help residents and others save Allen Parkway Village, attending a community meeting in a conference room provided by artist Rick Lowe at Project Row Houses. I had heard glowing reports about his recently completed neighborhood project, but I was stunned when I drove down Dowling Street (renamed Emancipation Avenue in January 2017) and saw the long row of white-painted shotgun cottages like those that I’d been familiar with in the historic neighborhoods of New Orleans. Project Row Houses, an internationally admired community-based initiative, was largely responsible during the 1990s for preserving the northern part of Houston’s Third Ward, one of the city’s oldest African-American neighborhoods. A few years later, Westmoreland Historic District and Independence Heights Historic District were listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Independence Heights, along with Highland Heights and others, was an African-American town/subdivision that had been annexed by the City of Houston in 1929. In all these cases, because the city ordinance did not recognize historic districts, they remained unprotected, though leaders were working hard to manage change through preservation work.

Project Row Houses. Photo: Peter Molick, published in Cite 96, Spring 2015.

 

The effort to save the Historic District of San Felipe Court/Allen Parkway Village (1940-44), one of Houston’s extensive collection of modern buildings, was hard fought. Deemed to be of “exceptional significance” when listed on the National Register in 1988, Allen Parkway Village reminded me of the avant-garde municipal housing in the Netherlands of the 1920s and 1930s that I’d seen on a trip. We fought long and hard to save Allen Parkway Village. Support came from the International Committee for the Documentation and Conservation of buildings, sites, and neighborhoods of the modern movement (Docomomo International), based in the Netherlands, and from the National Association for African-American Heritage Preservation (NAAHP). I wrote a well-received op-ed in the Houston Chronicle and joined resident activists such as Lenwood Johnson and advocates such as Stephen Fox and Sissy Farenthold in testifying at various hearings before the Houston Housing Authority, HUD, the Department of the Interior, and the US Federal District Court. But instead of ordering that it be rehabbed and restored, the Houston Housing Authority, with the encouragement of HUD and the acquiescence of the Department of the Interior, demolished two-thirds of Allen Parkway Village and replaced it with traditional construction with gable roofs. A planned garden community complex with the clean horizontal rooflines of mid-century modern buildings was reduced to a wing.

Fourth Ward residents and members of Houston Housing Concern picket the Founders Park forum on 18 August 1990. Photo courtesy Sikes, Jennings, Kelly and Brewer, published in Cite 26, Spring 1991.

 

The adjacent Historic District of Freedmen’s Town in the Fourth Ward, listed on the National Register in 1985, was not preserved either. Freedmen’s Town was the earliest settlement created by freed Black people in Houston. In addition to housing Houston’s former enslaved population, it attracted other African-Americans who migrated from rural parts of Texas and the South in the post-Civil War period as well during the great migrations of the twentieth century. For more of this history, I recommend Bernadette Pruitt, The Other Great Migration: The Movement of Rural African Americans to Houston, 1900-1941 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2013). Residents such as Gladys House, the Trustees of the Rev. Jack Yates Museum, Catherine Roberts, and other supporters labored long and hard to protect this exceptional neighborhood, but with glacial progress and numerous setbacks. Many buildings were lost, so many that its integrity as a National Register Historic District was in doubt.

Now, more than 30 years after being designated as the Freedmen’s Town National Register Historic District, the neighborhood is being protected by the city’s preservation ordinance. In December 2016, the City Council designated 22 houses in Freedmen’s Town, nominated by the Houston Housing Authority, as protected city landmarks. Mayor Sylvester Turner, who has been instrumental in returning the original bricks to historic Andrews Street, stated that the city was going to take further steps to establish an historic cultural district in Freedmen’s Town, ensuring that the buildings will be protected in perpetuity even if the city sells them.

My last consulting project was the nomination of Philip Johnson’s Rothko Chapel (1974) to the National Register of Historic Places on behalf of the Board of Trustees of the Chapel during the last year of Dominique de Menil’s life. This was a particular challenge because of the complexities of the “50-year rule,” which meant that it could not be designated unless it was proven to be of “exceptional significance” in the areas of art, architecture, and social history in connection with John and Dominique de Menil. The final meetings were contentious, but eventually a consensus was reached. The Rothko Chapel is one of the few buildings in Houston to have passed the threshold; others were San Felipe Court/Allen Parkway Village and the Apollo Mission Control Center (1950-74). We lost numerous mid-century modern buildings to demolition before they reached their 50-year mark, although recently many surviving structures of this period have been recognized by Houston Mod and others.

Rehabilitated buildings at Allen Parkway Village. Photo: Hester + Hardaway.

 

The Menil Collection (1987), Renzo Piano and Richard Fitzgerald & Partners. Photo courtesy the Menil Collection.

 

While carrying out research on the Rothko Chapel, I spent a lot of time at the Menil Collection and later was hired by Director Paul Winkler to establish the Menil’s membership programs. Working for the Menil meant that I could be surrounded by exceptional twentieth-century architecture, including Renzo Piano’s seminal museum building of 1981-87. Later I was part of the Strategic Planning Committee, which initiated the idea of the master planning process for the Menil neighborhood, as well as the Green Committee, which established protocols for shifting the Menil to a “greener” institution.

With a son attending Lanier Middle School and my job at the nearby Menil Collection, I was constantly dodging the closures of various streets that crossed the Southwest Freeway as I drove from Southgate. It took me a while to comprehend that this was no mere road repair operation. In fact, it was one of the most important initiatives to enhance Houston’s historic neighborhoods in the early 2000s. Called the “U.S. 59 Gateway Project,” it involved the dramatic trenching of the Southwest Freeway, which had split Montrose from the Boulevard Oaks/Southampton neighborhoods. Advocates established SWAP (Southwest Freeway Alternative Project) to stop a massive freeway expansion project that included a five-story HOV lane. With the support of the Boulevard Oaks Civic Association, the Museum District, the Medical Center, and Rice University, as well as local businesses, the seemingly impossible happened: four distinctive, steel, tied-arch bridges, designed by architect Rey de la Reza, with car and bicycle lanes as well as sidewalks, were constructed at street grade over the trenched freeway to stitch these historic neighborhoods back together.

Arrival 3 — 2015

In 2010, due to my husband’s posting to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, I left Houston for five years, and worked as a volunteer mentor and teacher for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). When I returned for the third time, I discovered the city transformed once more. I had departed a few years after Hurricane Katrina had brought massive numbers of Louisiana residents to resettle in Houston, and after Hurricanes Rita and Ike damaged or destroyed many of Houston’s more vulnerable historic buildings. The financial crisis had also recently hit America, though Houston’s economy was somewhat inoculated against the national downturn by high oil prices as well as a growing healthcare sector. In fact, in my absence an epic economic and building boom had begun, and I was shocked on my return at how long it took me to drive places compared to five years previously.

Townhouses at 4300 Rose. Photo: Ben Koush. Originally appeared in Cite 83, Fall 2010.

 

I was also staggered by Houston’s transformation with the influx of millennials who had brought along their tastes, values, and expectations. Many of them, like the empty-nesters returning from the suburbs, wanted to live in the center of Houston in a diverse, urban community with sidewalks and access to bike lanes/trails and light rail lines. I was excited to see the high-density, in-fill housing that had been built on many of the previously vacant tracts of land in strategic locations.

Unfortunately, many apartment complexes and townhouses were not pedestrian-friendly, lacked shops and grocery stores within walking distance, didn’t address the city’s subtropical climate, and were cheaply constructed. In appearance, most shouted “anonymous mediocrity” when world-renowned or talented local architects could have designed them instead. This was dispiriting compared to what I’d recently observed with new residential construction in the tropical urban cores of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Singapore.

More reassuring was that Houston’s historic districts had increased dramatically in number and were now protected by newly strengthened City of Houston preservation ordinances (2010, 2015), along with minimum lot size ordinances and tax incentives. As Barry Moore wrote for OffCite, Houston had turned a corner in terms of preservation.

Surprisingly, however, I saw few designated districts within the original Second, Third, Fourth, and Fifth Wards. This might have been due to a lack of interest by preservationists, adverse developer influence, or the strategic resistance of current landowners and community groups wary of residents’ displacement. Once an area becomes designated as an historic district, property values stabilize or increase in value, and the existing community may be slowly edged out as the area becomes more popular. Reports like the University of Houston’s Hobby Center for Public Policy’s study of 2010 for Preservation Houston tend to note the positive impact of historic district designation but not the negative impact of gentrification.

Still, the lack of historic district designation left these wards unprotected. Dowling Street (now Emancipation Avenue), once the hub of the African-American neighborhood of the Third Ward, retained the Eldorado Ballroom, Houston’s foremost African-American blues nightclub during the 1940s and 1950s, and a few retail buildings and churches. But even before I left, from 2005 to 2010, this area just southeast of Downtown suffered intensive demolition, approximately four times more frequently than in Harris County as a whole.

I now found that other historic neighborhoods in the old wards, such as Midtown (originally divided between the Third Ward and Fourth Ward), had been even more thoroughly demolished and redeveloped with multi-use, in-fill construction. While it is a newly walkable urban district, it has kept little of its pre-World War II character or building stock, and most of the new construction is unremarkable, except for MATCH and the Ensemble Theater. The original neighborhood of single-family houses that transitioned, starting in the 1920s, into denser housing with low-rise apartment houses had become known in the 1970s and 1980s as “Little Saigon” after Vietnamese immigrants and refugees settled there. But with the building of the first light rail line, Midtown became a neighborhood of choice for Gen-Xers and millennials, and the Vietnamese community left for Bellaire’s China Town on the edges of Houston.

MATCH (2015), Lake|Flato and Studio RED. Photo by Luis Ayala.

 

Still, while only an astonishingly low 11.2 percent of buildings inside the city are of the pre-World War II period (according to the Kinder Institute in 2016), a lot of old Houston remains in the original wards. Noting that these historic neighborhoods are now in transition, with fluid cultural boundaries, Stephen Fox makes this important point in his series of driving tours through each of Houston's six wards:

The wards retain a strong sense of Houston as a sprawling Southern town with a legacy of mixed use. You can tell from the lines of commercial and institutional buildings in otherwise residential neighborhoods where the streetcars once ran. Since the U.S. planning establishment embraced mixed-use development and residential density in the last quarter of the twentieth century, Houston’s wards look more and more like potential models for re-urbanization. What is imperative is to expand the City of Houston’s historic districts to protect what remains of the historic fabric of these inner-city neighborhoods rather than surrendering them to thoughtless destruction. -
Stephen Fox

For now, the Second Ward retains a lot of its residential stock, plus Houston’s first Spanish-language parish, and many of its institutional and warehouse buildings have been converted to lofts. The East End Cultural District on Navigation Boulevard still conveys its strong Mexican-American heritage. Recently, I explored the Sunday community market there, which opened in 2015 and preserves the tradition of mariachi music and local food. The original Ninfa’s restaurant is thriving nearby. And Marron Park and Guadalupe Plaza are being tied into the Bayou Greenways project. But how will the character of the community be protected?

Another related and positive trend over the last five years has been the greater use of outdoor settings. There is more outdoor seating in restaurants, with fans to make it usable during the hot season supplementing heaters for outdoor seating in winter. Even though Houstonians are often stuck in their cars, they have always been drawn to outdoor pedestrian shopping precincts where they can walk in an urban setting, such as Rice Village, Houston Heights, Lyons Avenue, and more recently Midtown. I explored the new River Oaks District a few months ago, and it is one of the few places in Houston that has finally addressed our challenging subtropical climate by incorporating broad overhangs and ceiling fans above the sidewalk. This is a simple fix and one that is used all over Southeast Asia on new and historic structures.

The neighborhoods and towns along the 50-mile Ship Channel deserve a closer look. They have romantic names like Magnolia Park, Pasadena, Galena Park, Deer Park, and Goose Creek. Together they make up the largest area of working-class communities in Houston. Magnolia Park in the East End is one of Houston’s most historic Latino neighborhoods, settled by Mexican-Americans in the wake of the Mexican Revolution.

I must confess to going outside the Loop only rarely before, but the world beyond is not “placeless” or anonymous to me any longer. CityCentre is a pedestrian-friendly district with green space in the Energy Corridor of west Houston. The Hong Kong Market area of Bellaire is a distinctive district that I love to visit because it reminds me of my wonderful years in Southeast Asia and where I’ve also discovered my favorite Malaysian restaurant.

In 2013, Mayor Annise Parker contributed to making Houston a more livable city by introducing an executive order for a “Complete Streets” program, which mandated that the local communities, pedestrians, people of all abilities, and bicyclists were stakeholders equal to motorists in Houston’s traffic plan and street improvement projects. I saw the effects of this program shortly after my return to Houston when the city proposed to upgrade and widen Greenbriar Drive near my home. Local residents were invited to provide public comments, and a number of us relied on the Complete Streets program for guidance. Unlike my previous experiences interacting with the city, this time the planners listened, and we found mutually beneficial solutions that avoided further fracturing of our neighborhood and saved our live oaks. The City of Houston should go further with changing public attitudes and implementing the sharing of streets with non-car traffic and consider lowering speed limits in residential areas. The World Health Organization’s “Slow Down Days” would be a good first step. “Vision Zero,” the international traffic safety project that started in Sweden, has been adopted by numerous countries and endorsed or adopted major American cities such as New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Austin. Safety is prioritized over speed or convenience. A Vision Zero Plan has been promoted here by local advocates but not yet adopted.

Upon my return to Houston in 2015, I also found that the aptly named Discovery Green (Hargreaves Associates) and Hermann Park Conservancy’s McGovern Centennial Gardens (Hoerr Schaudt) were now bustling every day of the week. European expats told me that living within walking distance of the 285-acre Hermann Park (George Kessler, 1916; master plan 1995 by Olin Studio) and the light rail was a top priority when choosing an apartment or house. After checking out the extensive improvements to the park’s natural habitat and trails, I began to use it in the early mornings with a walking group. The Hermann Park Conservancy has recently initiated a newer master plan by the landscape architecture firm, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates. Mimi Schwartz's article "Green Acres" gives a sweeping overview of this transformation.

McGovern Centennial Gardens at Hermann Park. Photo: Allyn West, 2015.

 

Access to green space is now becoming more equitable across Houston. The city’s original 1913 plan by landscape architect Arthur Comey got shelved with the onset of World War I and subsequent events, including the growing primacy of development and oil interests. It has now been revisited, extended, and updated, and many Houstonians seem to be shedding their close relationship with air conditioning. Buffalo Bayou Park (SWA) had been in existence before I left for Malaysia, but it was only after I returned that I went there. One weekend afternoon, I persuaded my husband to go with me to Allen Parkway. The parking was challenging, but once we found “The Dunlavy” building, we walked around the area, which was pleasantly full of families strolling along the bayou, crossing the new pedestrian bridges, or sitting on the terrace having lunch in the winter sunshine.

The Bayou Greenways 2020 initiative has been a revelation. Wow, I thought, this is a new, reimagined city. I had only remembered the bayous as concrete ditches before, and now they were hosting recreational greenways that are connecting our historic neighborhoods once fractured by ribbons of freeways. Maybe the greenways will even replace the freeways, similar to the Garden Bridge over the River Thames in London that English architect Thomas Heatherwick has proposed.

Given my previous connection to the Menil Collection, I was eager to see the changes to its campus. In 2013 Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates had created a landscape master plan for The Menil Collection’s campus. By the time I returned to Houston, the first phase had been completed at the north entryway from Alabama Street, near the Menil Bistro and Bookstore. Arriving in the parking area I was struck by how the well-chosen native plantings made it seem almost more like a garden than a parking lot, complete with shade trees. This lot and the elegant lot designed for McGovern Centennial Gardens offer models for designs and redesigns of Houston’s many dispiriting parking lots (including those of prominent institutions). Nearby, the Rothko Chapel Foundation is starting its own master planning process and has hired New York’s Architecture Research Office (ARO).

I was on my way to the Weaver’s Guild in a warehouse in the evolving East of Downtown (EaDo) district when I saw a massive green space with a striking modern community center. I stopped to investigate. The City of Houston in collaboration with the Emancipation Park Conservancy had just completed a $34 million renovation of 10-acre Emancipation Park in the northern area of Third Ward, the location of the annual Juneteenth celebrations. Four previously enslaved men purchased the park in 1872, and their history and vision are celebrated in the renovation. It is expected to become a “destination” park for visitors from across the nation. Joining the renovated buildings are state-of-the-art recreation and sports facilities and playing fields. Renowned architects Perkins + Will designed the new community center, with Phil Freelon as the lead. (The park’s rededication program and grand re-opening schedule was on Juneteenth 2017.)

Emancipation Park. Photo: Lee Bey Architectural Photography.

 

I found parks being refurbished everywhere. Memorial Park (Hare & Hare, 1924) now has a redesign and a new long-term master plan created by Nelson Byrd Woltz, Landscape Architects, focusing on ecological and cultural connectivity. The Design Workshop and Reed Hildebrand are enhancing Houston’s nearby Arboretum and Nature Center. The Office of James Burnett just completed a new phase for Levy Park in the Upper Kirby District. And Houston’s Botanic Garden is being created by West 8, a landscape architecture firm, on a 120-acre site along Sims Bayou in the Glenbrook area of Houston.

Re-stitching Houston’s historic neighborhoods together with greenways and hike and bike trails is great, but Houston is still among the most segregated cities in the US. This uncomfortable fact was pointed out last year by Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, when he spoke at the Rothko Chapel about the Foundation’s newly articulated focus: combating inequality.

Rick Lowe, founder of Project Row Houses and a MacArthur Fellow, has said that people and businesses that move into a low-income neighborhood have an obligation to help out:

When you move into an area where there’s not as much privilege, you’re inviting yourself into a situation where you need to take on a little bit more responsibility.” - Rick Lowe

Artist Robert Pruitt, whose work I had seen a decade ago at the Menil when he was part of the Ottabenga Jones artist collective, agrees. Pruitt, who grew up in the Third and Fourth Wards, describes how gentrification has “fragmented those once-rooted black communities…. Honestly, watching my neighborhood change…I don’t want to see it. It’s like I don’t want to be here for the full-blown version of this…. These days to make art,…for a specifically black Houston audience, is to speak to a community undergoing a seismic disruption."

Should in-fill and new housing in Houston’s neighborhoods be equal in quality to our parks and greenways? Do we need to start expecting less square-footage per unit for quality and affordable housing in the center of Houston? Being the city of second, third, or fourth chances, Houston has more freedom to direct our next steps, to learn from our missteps, and make it better. As Oveta Culp Hobby, former publisher of the Houston Post, famously said in 1946, “I think I’ll like Houston if they ever get it finished.” [1] And Matthew Urbanski of Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates recently stated: “A city can’t be what it’s not ready to be, but it can grow into what it wants to be when the time is right. The time is right for Houston.” There seems to be a consensus building behind a pent-up desire for us to achieve something better for all our citizens.

[1] Cited by Ben Koush p.10 from McComb, David G. Houston: The Bayou City. Austin: University of Texas Press. 1969. 190.

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