Neighborhood research 101

We're always looking for more ways to learn about our great city, so why not start at home? Not only is it interesting to know about the plat upon which you live, but it can also help to paint part of the picture of Houston's interesting, albeit short history, and there are quite a few on and offline resources to help with research.

An easy way to start is to find the specific name of your subdivision. Looking up an address in the Harris County Appraisal District database usually yields a neighborhood name under the lot/block number in the "Legal Description" section. You can now take that name over to the Harris County Block Book site, choose the letter it begins with under "Search by Subdivision/Survey Name," and select the name of the subdivision. A jpeg of the plat map should be available which will show the lots, street names (or what they used to be called, depending on how old the neighborhood is), survey name, and sometimes little scribbles of notes, dates, and other information.

Another mapping resource is Sanborn Fire Insurance maps, which were made starting in 1867 and show information about houses, buildings, and streets. These can be accessed digitally with a Houston Public Library account and at Rice University's Fondren Library, or in person in HPL's Texas Room. If you happen to be visiting the Texas Room, don't forget to look at the collection of Houston City Directories - they have listings by name or address, so you can also find out who was living where and when. Also, the Handbook of Texas Online is an easy way to search about people and places in Houston's history.

More after the jump...

From people...
For example, the Maryland Manor apartments/Ashby Highrise site at 1717 Bissonnet are listed as part of the O Smith survey (notice the different spelling of Bissonnet). Turns out that O is for Obedience, and she was a pioneer that received almost 3,400 acres of land from the Republic of Texas, which includes the Southampton neighborhood (the civic club has some information about her here), downtown (she and her son also opened the City Hotel in 1837), and much of central southwest Houston.

Northeast of downtown are areas of land named for Weisenberger (Colonia Weisenberger, or perhaps it was Weisenberger's colony). This included the land around Easy St., Linn at Crane (where a lot of land was ceded in 1964), as well as "Weisenberger's Lucky Seven" (still haven't figured that one out, yet).

to farms...
If you live in certain parts of Bellaire and near southwest you may notice your subdivision name is Westmoreland Farms, which was part of the almost 10,000 acre ranch bought by William Baldwin from William Marsh Rice in 1908, in the middle of which he founded the suburban city.

Also in Westmoreland Farms is Lantern Village Apartments, which everyone may better recognize beyond the Gulfton grime as Michael Pollack's swinging Colonial House of the eighties. Note that the site of Lantern Village/Colonial House was originally apartments named after civil war era military and political figures.

A big change in the area can be seen on some block book maps where a total of 190 homes along Post Oak Road were sold to the state around 1958-1960 for the excavation of the West Loop (note that the West Loop was Avenue C before it was Post Oak Rd., Gulfton was Oak St., Glenmont was Sycamore, and Fleetwood St. (adjacent to the Superior Oil Company in Bellaire) was abandoned).

to interesting names...
Traveling east to Crosby off of 90 and Lynchburg, you'll find a little enclave of streets that make up "Dreamland" with the names Winkin, Blinkin, Nod, Dreamland, Sleepy Time, and Gulf Pump (yeah, the last one doesn't have the same ring to it as the others, but neither does Lynchburg). Head a few miles north on Lynchburg (which turns into Huffman), and you'll be in the Happy Hide-a-Way neighborhood.

Neighborhood research toolbox: