In conversation and in historical research “place” takes on a variety of meanings. It can represent a physical location, a space within the community, a position in society, or our diverse identities. Exploring Houston history is more than just looking at our location; we consider all the things that make up our environment, from the […]
Just over a decade ago Houston Public Library’s Jo Collier brought together a group of local lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community historians,archivists, and scholars as part of the library’s LGBT speaker series. Recognizing commonalities and opportunities in their diverse organizations and programs, the group formed Houston Area Rainbow Collective History (ARCH) as a […]
History comes from stories, often told in grand narratives, and one of this nation’s grand narratives is the rise of the offshore energy industry. History tends to be written from documents, but oral history collections preserve the memories of ordinary and extraordinary people. Where could one find answers to the question: Who were the people […]
Mujeres Unidas, Taking the Initiative: The First Decade of Hispanic Women in Leadership By Christian Kelleher On March 11-13, 1988, about 200 women attended the YWCA Hispanic Women’s Leadership in Houston Texas, “Celebrating Excellence.” It had been ten years since the last of such conference. Soon after, twenty of those women, inspired by their experience […]
The M. D. Anderson Memorial Library lies at the crossroads of the sprawling University of Houston (UH) campus. The library is the heart of the university, serving as a retreat for students in between classes and a resource for the experienced and aspiring scholars. The 250,000-square-foot behemoth—representing just one part of the UH Library System—began […]
Houston will become “ …beyond all doubt, the great interior commercial emporium of Texas.” Thus bragged the Allen brothers in an August 1836 advertisement. Thirteen months later rains from a hurricane in September 1837 flooded the city’s Main Street to a depth of four feet. This inundation did not deter the city from its predicted […]
Legendary architect Lucian T. Hood had a career that spanned more than three decades, and style that transcended the modernism of the 1950s and the conservatism of the 1980s. His attention to detail created a reputation that garnered the attention of Houston’s famous and wealthy, designing houses in River Oaks, Riverside Terrace, and Memorial Villages.
Download the full pdf. Vol. 15, No. 1 (Fall 2017) Letter from the Editor by Debbie Z. Harwell 2 Seeing Frost Town from the bottom up: Using Archeology and Archives to Reconstruct a Forgotten Houston Neighborhood By Jason W. Barrett, Douglas K. Boyd, and Louis F. Aulbach 8 The 1947 Texas City Disaster: Changing Lives […]
By Matthew Crow Few of Houston’s residents today realize that during World War I Houston had a military base just west of downtown. Camp Logan, one of sixteen auxiliary military training camps established during the era, sprawled across much of the area that is now Memorial Park, south from Washington Avenue and across the bayou […]
On September 2, 2002 a group of city officials and Houston’s then-mayor, Lee P. Brown, solidified the fate of an abandoned brick building at 1300 Victor Street in Freedmen’s Town Historic District. Through a significant restoration effort, Fourth Ward’s late-1920s-era African-American elementary school, vacant since 1984, was to become a dual-purpose cultural center and research […]
Follow