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Avondale Addition, one of Houston's early residential neighborhoods, was
originally platted in1907 as a 31-acre subdivision of the former "Joe
Meyer pasture." The addition was located in open countryside at the
southwest corner of the city of Houston.
The planning of the addition and the design and scale of its houses reflects
a unique trend in the development of residential real estate and domestic
architecture in early 20th-century Houston.
Some of the most influential people in Houston
lived in the neighborhood, one of whom, John W. Neal, built the first house
there in 1909 on Avondale
Boulevard. Neal was the partner of Joel Owsley
Cheek, who founded Cheek-Neal Coffee Company (Maxwell House) which captured
1/3 of the US
coffee market by1928. To date one historic district, called Avondale East,
which encompasses the eastern third of the original Avondale Addition, has
been initiated by residents and designated by City Council as one of the
seven designated Historic Districts of the City of Houston.
Hyde Park, which was surveyed a little
earlier in 1905 from the Obedience Fort Smith Survey, followed the marketing
strategy of Houston
Heights which was
developed in 1891. At that time, Houston
Heights was promoted as
being 62 feet above sea level. Today, the area has been
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designated as a Multiple
Resource Area - National Register of Historic Places. Hyde
Park also claimed to be lofty as "the highest around the
city . . . about 12 feet above Main
Street at McGowen Avenue." Capt. J. C.
Hutcheson was president of the Hyde Park Improvement Company, which platted
each lot measuring a quarter of a block. Hyde Park too boasted of its grand,
stately homes, some of which were built by William A. Wilson, who had
developed Woodland
Heights in 1907.
Lovett Boulevard was platted as a unique,
grand thoroughfare of the Montrose Addition in 1911. Before that time, the
area included pastureland and dairy farms at the outskirts of Houston. In1910 and
1911 John Wiley Link, a lawyer, lumberman, real estate developer and former
Mayor of Orange, Texas purchased 260 acres of the Obedience Fort Smith land
grant, then formed the Houston Land Corporation, and spent a million dollars
developing "Montrose." The plan included four major boulevards, one
of which was Lovett Boulevard,
which was designed as the logical extension of Courtland Place (also designated both
as a City and National Register Historic District). Furthermore, Lovett Boulevard
was considered the main entrance to the Montrose Addition from Downtown. The
Roy Farrar House at 511
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Lovett Boulevard has been
designated as a Landmark of the City of Houston.
Platted much earlier in 1889 and located
closer to the Houston,
is the Fairgrounds Addition, the oldest in the area. Fairview Addition, which
is the next oldest neighborhood, was platted a few years later in 1893. Both
were part of Houston
which was called the South End, because they were located south of Downtown.
In the 1870s this area of Houston
had been the location of the socially important, but short-lived, 93-acre
Fair Grounds. Although it went bankrupt in the mid-1870s, it was not until
the late 1880s that the Fair Grounds Addition was created, platted and sold
by the Galveston
and Houston Investment Company as lots for single-family, frame dwellings. By
the 1920s, a new type of housing was introduced into the area, known as the low-rise,
"second generation" brick flats (apartments) which began to replace
many of the "first generation" wood frame, single-family houses
built there earlier. This type of multi-family dwelling, or apartment
building, also was constructed on the yet undeveloped lots and was
constructed also as "in-fill" to a lesser degree in the adjacent
neighborhoods of Montrose and Westmoreland (also designated as both a City
and National Register Historic District).
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