Back in March, we talked about how the city was getting ready to re-bury some bones unearthed 20 years ago during construction at the HFD complex off Houston Avenue and Dart Street. The fire department office/training facility was built in the 1960s on top of the old City Cemetery, where Houstonians of all stripes (including quite a few Confederate soldiers) were buried between about 1840 and 1870. UH anthropologist Ken Brown, who had criticized the city for continuing to dig after the bones were found, took the remains to his lab to study them. What happened for the next 20 years isn't clear: The city claims Brown hung onto the bones, but Brown says he asked the city to re-bury them and nothing ever happened. Whatever the case, the bones were forgotten until City Councilwoman Ada Edwards heard about them and led a push to have them buried again.
Results tagged “jeffdavishospital”
You've probably heard the stories about a Houston hospital that was built on top of an old cemetery — but you might not know the stories were actually true, and that a fire department facility also stands on top of the dead folks. The site is off Elder Street just northwest of downtown; Jeff Davis Hospital was built there in 1924 over the City Cemetery, which was used between 1840 and around 1900. In the 1960s, HFD built an office/training complex next door to the old hospital. The old cemetery last came up — no pun intended — in 1986, when workers were digging a utility trench at the fire department property and unearthed the remains of 27 people.
From Off the Kuff last week came a brief remembrance of the now-demolished Ed Sacks Waste Paper Co. complex at 440 Studemont. Houstonist had often wondered what was going on at Sacks, which never really looked like a bustling enterprise and apparently closed for good about a year and a half ago. We never did business with Sacks, but we remember thinking when we were kids that a paper recycling company named "Sacks" was pretty...