Todd Litman and the Access Revolution

“Urban Freeway” Is an Oxymoron

Downtown

Is a Plaza a Type of Street

The Varro Paradox

Resolving the Varro Paradox

Jane Jacobs on Urban Socialization

Ancient Rome Did Not Have Sprawl

Image 1. “Whitehall Building, New York,” c 1904, Detroit Publishing Company. Image source: Library of Congress, Digital Archives.

Iain Montgomery recently published a thought-provoking essay, “The Quest for the Holy Grail of Downtown Recovery,” published on Challenger Cities. The title reveals a flawed major premise, that undermines the coherence of the argument, but I would like to start with the essay’s points of brilliance. I am taking this essay to be a critique of downtowns in North America, so my critiques of downtowns will also be directed at North America.

First, there is the subtitle, “Nobody is withholding the secret of a thriving city centre, because there isn’t one. Rebuilding a successful urban core takes imperfect and compounding actions, not another consultancy study.” Successful urban neighborhoods (which I assume as the objective) are structurally and socially heterogenous. However, downtowns, by definition are central parts of cities where there are high concentrations of commercial use. They are single-use by definition.1

If we want cities that are liveable, Montgomery claims:

1. You can live an ordinary week here. Groceries, schools, pharmacies, doctors, hardware shops, pubs, libraries, post offices and such are not “amenities”. They can be the unglamorous errands of any given day of the week.

In my view, what I call the Axiom of Urbanism, urbanism means to be bound by neighborhoods. This conception of urbanism is compatible with settlements of various scales, but as it is applied to populous cities, it implies that goods and services are well distributed, so that each neighborhood includes the goods and services that people depend on the most often. However, it is sensible to think of access to everyday goods and services as neighborhood amenities. None of this implies that urban dwellers should not be able to travel, only that it is a convenience that less travel is required.

Here is the last point of the essay that I would like to amplify:

6. Everyone sleeps in the same place. Think residents first, hotels second. Certainly not either or. If you reverse it, you get something like Lisbon, with a centre growing busier with tourists and emptier with locals in the same decade. In North America, downtowns have been conditioned to monopolise the expensive hotels, which leaves the visitors isolated in a district where nobody actually lives. We should have hotels in neighbourhoods, and we should have neighbourhoods downtown.

This is an imperative of the Axiom of Urbanism. If urbanism is being bound by neighborhoods, this implies that there are ample opportunities to work, play, and reside in the same neighborhood. Choosing an urban lifestyle is to opt in to such to working, playing, and residing in such a neighborhood. So planning and development cannot force people into urban lifestyles, they can do no more than make urban neighborhoods possible and make them attractive.

Ryan Puzycki throws down this great riff on the downbeat:

Puzycki makes a subtle point of language here: centro in Spanish is something different than downtown in American English. Historian Robert Fogelson makes a similar point in the introduction to Downtown: Its Rise and Fall, 1880–1950. According to Fogelson, the origin of downtown is the southern tip of Manhattan Island, which was the site of the emerging business district in New York City when Phillip Hone used the term in his diary recounting the 1830s and 1840s. As real estate values increased for their commercial values, property owners either converted their properties to warehouses or sold to developers who did. However, downtown denotes a sharp pattern of development that does not cleanly map onto centro in Spanish and Italian, centre in French, and zentrum in German.

Zak Yudhishthu published a review of Downtown for his newsletter, Pencilling Out that stressed downtown in its twentieth-century evolutionary state:

If you’ve lived in an American metropolitan area old enough to have been urbanized by the early 1900s — which is many of them — you’re familiar with your city’s downtown. Perhaps you’ve visited it regularly to shop, work, or attend events. It’s also quite possible that you almost never visit it. Nowadays, plenty of people work in suburban offices (or remotely, of course), and can access all of the shopping and entertainment that they need without trekking downtown.

However, after tracing the rise and fall of downtown in American cities, Yudhishthu raises the question of whether downtown should be saved:

Did the plight of mid-20th-century downtowns demand a publicly-supported solution? Or should policymakers let different districts of cities ebb and flow on their own? It can’t always be the role of local governments to subsidize individual businesses, or even spatial clusters of businesses, when they struggle. Private firms are constantly closing and opening, and the level and nature of economic activity will always be changing in any given part of a city. If business is flowing out of the downtown core and into other neighborhoods (or more generally, from one part of the city to another), it’s not clear that we should take policy measures to prevent that change.

Here lies the false major premise of “The Quest for the Holy Grail of Downtown Recovery.” Rather than understanding the success of Osaka as a city as a success of a downtown, perhaps we should understand that Osaka does not have a true downtown. Therefore, the problem of remaking downtowns in North American cities is not recovering downtown; rather, it is transforming downtowns into urban neighborhoods where we can live ordinary weeks and where we can all sleep there. But that’s contrary to the concept of downtown.

Review of Stephen Fox

David Gebhard, “Review of Houston Architectural Guide, by Stephen Fox,” Houston Review 13, No. 1 (1991).

Review of HFH

David Gebhard, “Review of Houston’s Forgotten Heritage, 1824–1914, Dorothy Knox Houghton Howe, Ed.,” Houston Review 14, No. 3 (1992).

Gilmore

Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, “The Past Before Us,” Journal of Southern Hi…

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Image 1. The Former Holland Lodge at 4119 Montrose Boulevard, Houston. Photo by author.

This piece is a response to a tip from a reader about the planned demolition of the Holland Lodge at 4119 Montrose Boulevard in Houston. At this writing, the mural is removed from the building. I cannot offer any insights about the Freemasons because I do not understand their language, but I learned a few things about their meeting places in Houston.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston owns the former Holland Lodge property and has already cleared it for a planned park to be designed by Nelson Byrd Woltz.1

I must admit that I forgot about this building despite having passed it countless times over several decades. I was literally married across the street, but I cannot recall giving this building any thought or recognition until the reader tip. I had never stepped foot on this lawn until I took these photos of the facade. Never to miss an opportunity to grind my favorite axe, I should point out that the walking experience on this part of Montrose is so bad that I have tried to avoid walking in that area. Like many of the other properties developed along the Chelsea section of Montrose, the Lodge itself was setback from the sidewalk by more than a hundred feet. This leaves pedestrians exposed since they lack the protection of looming building facades. It escaped my notice even when I rode the bus.

On the other hand, driving on an arterial such as Montrose makes buildings and their functions practically invisible. Here’s a question for the hive mind: is anyone aware of neuropsychology research on the the ability to perceive complex physical environments at speed? How does speed impair a driver’s ability to process points of interest? Or has dependence on GPS changed the wayfinding paradigm completely? Have drivers chosen to be captive to whatever these data systems feed them?

Reporting on the Holland Lodge is a challenge because I do not understand the language of Freemasonry. However, according to the Handbook of Texas Online, six Freemasons gathered in Brazoria, Texas in March 1835 for the purpose of organizing a lodge. They petitioned the Grand Lodge of Louisiana for a charter, which was granted by John Henry Lodge. While it is unclear if the Holland Lodge was active in Mexican Texas, in 1837, Freemasons convened the Holland Lodge in Houston, then the temporary capitol of the Republic of Texas. The Holland Lodge borrowed the use of the Senate Chamber in the Capitol Building for its first meeting and continued regular meetings on Wednesday evenings.2

Its first dedicated meeting place was the upper floor above Kessler’s Arcade on Travis Street, which the lodge leased from the Silesian barkeeper. The Holland Lodge did not persist there long because Kessler barred the door and seized their property. The Masons eventually reconvened at the Capitol Building. Although I am not clear about the distinctions of the Masons’ groups, Masons moved their meeting places at least a dozen times throughout the nineteenth century, mostly in rented facilities.3

In the early 1950s, the Holland Lodge developed a site that it owned on Montrose Boulevard, and the building was completed in 1954. This is a building that I barely noticed until I stopped to take some photos of the bas relief some weeks ago (Image 1 and Image 2)).4

The Houston Architectural Guide attributes the design to Milton McGinty and characterizes the former Holland Lodge thusly, “The centerpiece of this windowless box (from the heroic age of air-conditioning) is William M. McVey’s inset mural. Executed in situ in Texas cream limestone, it depicts the founding of Masonry and its transmission to Texas.5

Image 2. Close up of bas relief mural on the former Holland Lodge at 4119 Montrose, Houston. Photo by author.

The Kennedy Hotel was named for John Kennedy (1819–1878), who immigrated to Houston during the Republic of Texas and started with a bakery facing the north Market Square. Continuing up to the Civil War, he invested his profits in real estate and a small local chain of steam grist mills and bakeries. By 1860, Kennedy owned not just a bakery, but also other buildings located on Block 19 of the 1836 Borden Survey, a block bounded by Congress and Franklin avenues, and Travis and Milam streets. He lost all of these improvements on the block in a fire on 20 August 20 that spared only a single small building. In the 1860s, he redeveloped the Travis side of the block and rebuilt at the approximate site of his original bakery after 1873 and before 1877. One of these properties in 1877 was just around the corner from his first bakery location in Houston. He also acquired lots on the east side of Travis, where he established Kennedy House, a hotel. During Reconstruction, Kennedy operated a bakery in the Fifth Ward and a steam flour mill and bakery at the northwest corner of Caroline Street and Congress Avenue in the Second Ward, in addition to his original bakery location in the First Ward. Kennedy House was not listed in the 1877 city directory, but was depicted as a three-story brick building on the 1877 Sanborn Map. The hotel was supplied with gas and water, and included 37 sleeping rooms.1

Unlike other hotels in Reconstruction Houston, for which there is usually only knowledge through advertisements, city directories, and census records, Kennedy House was revealed by a series of newspaper reports about a murder. Around 28 May, Dr. J. W. Brown was assassinated in Kennedy House during dinner service. The assassin fired two shots into the victim, one in each shoulder. Several witnesses identified the shooter as Fayette Grissom, who was indicted for murder. What is most unusual about this story is the rare chance to hear the voices of nineteenth-century hotel workers, even if they come to us second hand. Among the eyewitnesses were a hotel clerk and a dining room steward, who both saw the shooting. During the trial, the prosecutors, who included Michael Looscan and Decimus et Ultimus Barziza (both of whom were former hotel residents), but also Mrs. Gerstemann and Albert Buttlier. Gerstemann was the wife of Otto, the Kennedy House barkeeper:2

I was standing at the dining room door at the time of the shooting. I saw the killing of Dr. Brown. I did not at the time know the man who killed him, but he had on a light blue coat. I saw him whirling his pistol in his hand. I did not know he was going to shoot before I saw Dr. Brown fall. The man who did the shooting flourished his pistol around then fired. He hollered a little, but did not know what he said. Did not think he would shoot. He shot twice.

Among the other witnesses were “a white cook,” “a negro dishwasher,” a local patron, and “a colored employee.” The previously mentioned steward was Carlos Martino, “an actor by profession, but who was employed at the Kennedy Hotel. James Masters, “the colored employee,” testified that a conspirator to the murder attempted to bribe him with $150 in exchange for providing false testimony.3

Image 1. 1877 Sanborn Map showing parts of Block 19 and Block 20. Image source: Perry Castañeda Map Collection, University of Texas, Digital Archives.

Image 2. 1878 advertisement placed in the Galveston Daily News for Kennedy House. Image Source: Portal to Texas History.

Read more

William C. Davis, Lone Star Rising: The Revolutionary Birth of the Texas Republic (New York: Free Press, 2004).

De León

Arnoldo De León, Ethnicity in the Sunbelt: Mexican Americans in Houston (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2001).

HHRC: 976.41411 D346

Arrival and Consolidation, 1528–1930

The Making of a Colonia

(3–21)

Houston’s ‘Little Mexic…

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Image 1. The Weekly Telegraph (Houston), Advertisements for Houston’s three breweries, 7 December 1859. Image source: Portal to Texas History.

Houston’s early history is soaked in alcohol. However, much of the history of drinking in early Houston is shrouded in myth. Fortunately, the history of beer in Houston is better understood than the history of alcohol generally. There is anecdotal evidence for drinking preferences at two bars in the late 1830s. Both Arthur Guild and Henry Kessler catered to wine drinkers, and kept only small amounts of beer on-hand. For beer drinkers in Houston, the only known choices were ales and porters, and there is no evidence for local beer production during the Republic of Texas (1837–1845).1

Peter Gabel was the first known brewer in Houston. Gabel, a native of Bavaria and a cooper by trade, hired a cooper named Henry Schulte away from the Beauchamp Springs waterworks. According to one account, Gabel promoted Schulte to Brewmeister, after which sales increased. By 1854, Schulte left Gabel to found his own brewery at the former Houston Arsenal in the Second Ward. Houston supported two local lager beers, so the Gabel Brewery and the Schulte Brewery both thrived. With Houston growing in population and with more German immigrating to the town, a third brewer emerged in 1859. Schulte moved his brewery to the corner of Commerce Avenue and Caroline Street, and sold his old location to Martin Floeck, who produced his own brew there.2

Image 1. “New York. —The New Arcade and Post-Office on Broadway, Saratoga,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Magazine, 3 August 1878, 393. Image source: Hathi Trust via Pennsylvania State University.

Introduction

Addison Del Mastro posted about the Glenmont Arcade, a mid-century suburban shopping mall near Silver Spring, MD. The photos are great. The “Glenmont Arcade” sign is so whimsical that I am tempted to forget how much I hate suburbia and long for pollo a la brasa from Don Pollo. Speaking of Metropolitan DC, Ghosts of DC has an old article on the Arcade Market in Columbia Heights in its former glory. My interest, however, is how the first example of architecture and land use confounds the categories of arcades and malls. Perhaps these categories are easy to confound. This post is a preliminary attempt to sort out mess.

Allegedly, Victor Gruen created the first indoor shopping mall. If true, the first indoor shopping mall was opened in Edina, MN on DATE. The architectural and land use innovation is undeniable, but historical claims about firsts are fraught. For once, how different are malls from arcades? And what is an arcade? I have no thesis to offer here, just some cases to consider.

Arcades

Arcades, the doorstop written by Johann Geist, is the broadest text on the subject. Given the various languages expressing architecture, Geist includes a list of terms for what he considers to be different ways of referring to arcades: bazar, boulevard, cité, colonnade, corridor, durchgang, galeria, galerie, galleria, halle, passage, passaje, pasaz, stoa, and walk. The working definition of arcades:1

From these usages, we may construct a general definition of arcade as a glass-covered passageway which connects two busy streets and is lined on both sides with shops. Stores, offices, workshops, or dwellings may be located in the upper stories. The arcade is the organizing force of retail trade. It offers public space on private property as well as an easing of traffic congestion, a short cut, protection from the weather, and an area accessible only to pedestrians.

Not only is this a definition of an architectural form, but it also includes important real estate and legal components. Unlike a street, which is wholly public, the corridor within an arcade is private property with a presumption of public use.

Passages Couvertes

In Paris, there are both open and closed passages, though under the definition formulated by Geist, only passages couvertes enclosed in glass qualify as arcades. Here is a list of such arcades identified by Geist in Paris still standing as of 1983:2

• Passage du Caire (462–3)

• Passage du Grand Cerf (487–9)

• Galerie Vivienne (489–98)

• Galerie Vero-Dodat (503–10)

• Passage du Havre (529)

• Passage Jouffroy (529–534)

• Passage Verdeau (534)

• Galerie de la Madeleine (534–6)

• Passage des Princes (536)

Geist, however, equivocates on his own definition as an arcade as a private retail corridor covered by glass. On his map of arcades in Paris, he also includes colonnades and passages with open plans. He defines arcades as enclosed facilities, includes colonnades and passages as alternative terms for arcades, yet depicts colonnades and some passages as partly open.3

Read more

Charles Calhoun, Jane Turner Censer, Eric Foner, and Andrew Slap, “Reconstruction,” Civil War History 61 (September), 400‒44.

Campbell

Randolph B. Campbell, “Statehood, Civil War, and Reconstruction, 1846–76,” in Texas Through Time: Evolving Interpretations, Walter L. Buenger and Robert A. Calvert, eds. (College Station: Texas A&M University…

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Image 1. Houston Daily Post, “Japanese Restaurant,” 3 March 1913. Image source: Portal to Texas History.

In nineteenth-century America, adjectives Chinese and Japanese refer to the ethnicity of the proprietors and not to the style of cuisine. So this is less of a story about foodways and more of a story of how what brought Asian immigrants to the US and how they adapted their lives after arriving.1

Many natives of China sought opportunities in the US in the last half of the nineteenth century. Railroad construction was the largest employer of Chinese immigrants, who toiled as common laborers excavating land, laying rails, and driving spikes. The Southern Pacific was a railroad hiring many Chinese common laborers. The Southern Pacific competed against the Texas Pacific to be the first company to complete a southern transcontinental route, first by acquiring existing railroads--including the Texas & New Orleans Railroad and the Galveston, Houston & San Antonio Railroad—and second by extending their roads west through Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. The Southern Pacific and Texas Pacific both chose El Paso as its preferred crossing across the Rockies, so this railroad construction competition can be characterized as a race to El Paso.2

Western expansion of Texas railroads stalled during the Civil War. The Buffalo Bayou, Brazos & Colorado Railway, the first railroad to operate in Texas, established its eastern terminus in 1851 and pushed as far west as the Brazos River at Alleyton by 1860. The Galveston, Houston & San Antonio acquired the Buffalo Bayou, Brazos & Colorado Railway, and the Southern Pacific acquired the Galveston, Houston & San Antonio. However, westward construction did not restart until 1873. The Southern Pacific reached San Antonio in 1877. It reached El Paso in 1881. In the meantime, some Chinese common laborers quit the railroads and settled in towns and cities in Texas.3

Image 2. “1885 Sanborn Key Map of El Paso.” The Southern Pacific Railroad operated tracks and its depot in central El Paso. The depot was located on Main Street between Stanton and Kansas. Image source: Perry-Castañeda Map Collection, University of Texas Libraries, Digital Archives.

Many Chinese immigrants settled in El Paso. While Chinese natives working in American settlements most often worked in laundries, some entered the hospitality business, but especially restaurants. In 1886, El Paso was home to no fewer than three Chinese restaurants. Joe Song operated a restaurant at 120 S El Paso Street (Image 1). Two other Chinese restaurateurs were Ah Hong and Jimmy Wings.4

Image 2. “1885 Sanborn Map of El Paso,” Facet 4. The thick black rectangle marks the location of the Joe Song restaurant at 120 S El Paso Street in 1866. Image source: Perry-Castañeda Map Collection, University of Texas Libraries, Digital Archives.

Chinese immigrants settled in Houston in the 1890s. While Chinese-Americans in Houston most often established laundries, a few opened restaurants. A small group of Chinese residents of Houston clustered within a few blocks of Market Square. In 1900, there were four Chinese restaurants on the 400 block of Travis Street.5

The most notable Asian immigrant in Houston, however, was Tsunekichi Okasaki, an immigrant from Japan, who styled himself as Tom Brown or Tom Brown Okasaki. He opened a “Japanese Restaurant” on Congress Avenue which was known for its steaks. Okasaki opened a second restaurant at the northeast corner of Milam Street and Prairie Avenue in a two-story building that still stands today.6

The First Railroads in Texas

Streets of Houston: Grant Street

Second Ward Railroads

Image 1. John L. Trout, “Panoramic View, City of Cincinnati,” Illustration, 1900, Henderson Lithographing Company. Image source: Library of Congress.

The Uses of Pre-Industrial Streets

Pre-industrial streets were multi-functional. The modernist trend in social and legal uses of street diminished multi-functionality in favor of single-use mobility corridors. The literature of ancient Rome and the archaeology of Pompeii provide an ample body of evidence that streets were used for trade, the provisioning of food and water, religious practice, and social activities, in addition to the streets’ mobility functions. Two early modern bridges in Europe, Ponte Vecchio and Pont Neuf, exhibit different functional objectives. Ponte Vecchio in Florence financed its construction through the development and leasing of storefronts along its flanks. By contrast, Pont Neuf in Paris was completely undeveloped. Henri IV financed the construction of Pont Neuf with a wine tax, with the consequence of removing the pre-industrial urban functions of a street. With no buildings, there would be less reason for Pont Neuf to serve as a destination, thus leaving the right-of-way clear for more traffic.

Even with this early modern example of a functional turn, however, the uses of streets evolved slowly and multi-functional streets persisted to a large degree throughout the nineteenth century. One means of regulating the social uses of streets was regulation of traffic, especially vehicles and fast-moving objects. Ancient Rome promulgated municipal law restricting access to wagons. Oxen and horses were two other urban hazards dating back to ancient times. How were they regulated? Were people allowed to run in the city?

Railroads on Urban Streets

This piece raises the question of how railroads were regulated on urban streets. Local governments enjoyed broad authority over streets within their jurisdictions. Railroad developers sought use of local streets for right-of-way and access to depots and other facilities. New York and Baltimore are two examples of major US seaport cities where local governments were sometimes resistant to granting railroads access to urban streets for their operations.

Aaron W. Marrs explores how the steam locomotive captured the American imagination as a part of the American transportation revolution that started with the invention of Fulton’s steam engine in 1807 and continued through 1860. Even though the speeds of early trains were slow by present-day standards, most people of the day never experienced travel at speeds exceeding human locomotion. Horses could attain top speeds of thirty miles per hour, but most people did not travel via horse power, and even those who did would not necessary be propelled by a horse moving at-speed. Americans were largely positive about the idea of fast travel promised by the railroads and the steam technology that made them possible. In the case of most Americans, this acceptance of steam technology, railroads, and fast travel preceded their direct experiences with them.1

Marrs relates a compelling social and cultural history, but one that is one-sided. However, Marrs acknowledges the analytic approaches of social constructivists, “For historians of technology, one particularly fruitful line of inquiry has been to examine how users of a technology change or alter it from what the original designers intended.”2

Yet The American Transportation Revolution is still heavily weighted toward the perspectives of travelers and the public who imagined themselves as travelers. However, travelers and prospective travelers were not the only relevant groups. While Marrs considered the land values of real estate owners, who might benefit from adjacent railroad development, he neglected urban residents. For example, in his depiction of how contemporaries weighed the safety of steam travel, “Therefore, while it is important to understand the threat of accidents and to recognize people’s concerns, the overall trajectory was that Americans became ‘inured to the hazards of travel’—or were, at a minimum, willing to accept those risks.” While this is a sensible understanding of an important social phenomenon, this only considers safety and risk from the perspectives of travelers and consumers.3

The safety impacts of railroads, however, also play out in urban streets. Steam locomotives were loud, belched coal dust, and were large, heavy objects capable of running at-speed. They are objectively dangerous. Therefore, as much as Marrs is correct in stressing how much people embraced the idea of steam railroads as a positive trend, some urban interests sought to regulate how railroads operated within cities.

The New-York and Harlem Rail Road (NYH) was chartered in 1831 as a railroad to run north-and-south along the spine of Manhattan. Organized as a scheme to boost uptown real estate values, the City of New York granted a concession to the NYH to run two, parallel tracks from the Harlem River as far south as City Hall (14th Street?). An important concession was the right to lay and operate tracks on Fourth Avenue; however, the southern terminus of the NYH lay at the northern edge of densely developed New York City. Construction began in 1832 and the line was complete to the Harlem River in 1837. In the early years when only the southern part of the line was complete, the NYH ran steam locomotives into the edge of the city. After a explosion in 1834, the city prohibited the NYH from operating steam engines south of 27th Street. According to this ordinance, the southbound NYH trains switched to horse power before entering the northern entrance to the Murray Hill tunnel.4

Recent scholarship reveals the negotiations between the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad (B&O) and the City of Baltimore for access to urban streets in great detail. The B&O planned a eastern terminal depot on Pratt Street in West Baltimore. During the 1830s, the railroad attempted to assert its use of municipal local right-of-way, while the city considered citizens who sought to constrain such access. While the city was a supporter of the railroad, opponents emerged challenging the railroad’s right to use Pratt Street as a threat to other uses.5

Residents of Philadelphia’s Kensington District staged several riots in the early 1840s in protest of the construction of the Philadelphia and Trenton Railroad on their neighborhood streets. Anti-railroad rioting in Kensington flared in 1840, 1842, 1844 and was characterized by the vandalism of train tracks and the hurling of paving stones. Michael Feldberg claims that the rioters were responding to the hazards posed by the railroad operations, including fire risks, and crash risk to pedestrians, especially children. Yet one of the Kensington riots was most notable because of who the participants were. On 12 March 1842, women and children heaved paving stones at beleaguered construction workers.6

Baltimore still limited access to B&O locomotives as late as 1860. Northbound trains for Washington terminated at Camden Station in a southern part of Baltimore. With the B&O still without rights to operate locomotives through Baltimore, northbound passengers on the B&O boarded horse railcars bound for the Baltimore & Wilmington Railroad depot.7

Other settlements regulated railroads within their jurisdictions. Most common were speed limits, such as those mandated in Charlotte, NC (4 mph); Chester, PA (5 mph); and Newburyport, MA (6 mph). Charlotte also required trains to ring bells while crawling through town. Baltimore and Newburyport regulated how long a train could remain stopped in the streets.8

Samuel Abell and G. Douglass Inglis, “Of Documents and Archives: The First Modern Census of Texas,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 122:2 (2018), 176‒200. [Spanish Texas]

“The census, however, has attracted little attention from historians, and even when it has, it has not been correctly interpreted. In 1974, for example, Alicia V. Tjar…

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Image 1. Juan Pablo Salinas an Adolf Closs, “Hochzeitsmahl,” Postcard, 1895. Image source: New York Public Library, Digital Collections.

Table d’hôte, in literal French, means “table of the host.” In practical terms, it referred to the old innkeeping practice of guests dining at a common table with the innkeeper. Implicit in this practice was meals served at appointed times. Boarders paid for the option of sitting for all meals, but if they missed a meal, they still owed the same amount for board.1

In the nineteenth-century, as the practice in France changed from old innkeeping practice to restaurant-style service, table d’hôte persisted in North America, especially in taverns and boardinghouses. Ironically, this French term associated with old practice delinked from France and Europe. North American hotels were progressive institutions, but the table d’hôte persisted even at hotels in the early 1800s, although hotels were more likely to adopt restaurant-style meal service than taverns or boardinghouses. Such progressive venues sometimes advertised “meals served at any time.” In terms of billing, some hotels offered the “American Plan” (lodging and meals as one price) and more progressive hotels offered the European Plan (pay by the meal). There are abundant contemporary accounts of foreign travelers remarking on table d’hôte in North America.2

Eating together is an important part of everyday human experience. Social scientists classify eating and drinking together as commensal acts. A compound word combining the Latin roots mensa and com to form a word meaning eating and drinking together, it refers to an important part of shared experience.3

Image 1. Casimir Goerck, surveyor, “Plan of the City of New York,” 1803. Image source: New York Public Library Digital Collections.

Sam Bass Warner, Jr invoked the notion of the “walking city” in Streetcar Suburbs. For Warner, the footprint of the city was most relevant. Warner cited the compact city of Boston and its compact radius of two miles in 1850. In the subsequent decades, however, emerging communications technologies extended the range of residents, reducing the need for walking and in-person communications. Range was also limited by the geography of Boston, which was bound by water and hills.1

Yet none of the characterizations above of the walking city define it:2

One can only guess just how large metropolitan Boston would have grown had there been no invention of new communication devices. If the spread of the city had begun to exceed the distance a man might walk in about an hour, say a three-mile radius, the shops and the offices of the metropolis would have fallen out of easy daily communication with each other. The result would have been the destruction of a single unified communication network and the development of semi-autonomous subcities which would have had to duplicate many of the services and facilities offered in other parts of the city. One of the principal contributions of nineteenth century transportation and communication technology was to preserve the centralized communication of the walking city on a vastly enlarged scale. [bold added]

From the quote above, we can tease out Warner’s definition of the “walking city.” Warner imagines the defining function of the city as the persistent business communications between all of its nodes, operating according to some centralized system. So the walking city is merely the centralized communications of the city bound by the geographical imperatives of walking and face-to-face contact.

Richard C Wade, another pioneer in urban history, also considered the walking city:3

The eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American city, however, was quite different from the modern metropolis. It was most importantly a compact city. The rich and poor lived close together; residential and commercial uses of land were mixed; industrial facilities were located amid shops and homes. It was a ‘walking city.’ The boundaries were determined by the distance one could walk—to work, to shop, or to visit. This limitation governed both the size and the shape of the early city.

Kenneth T Jackson, like Wade, generalized the walking city without focusing on a particular example, and devised five characteristics: congestion, sharp edges between town and country, mixed land use, short commutes, and central locations being the most desirable. Martin V Melosi offered an alternative quintet of characteristics: compact footprints, houses combined as workplaces and residences, short journeys, mixed land use, and central areas reserved for elites.4

David Gordon and Betsey Blackmar anticipated Jackson’s and Melosi’s centralized land value observation, while using it as their central critique of Warner: “David Gordon [and others], have refined the concept of the walking city by noting that because of the differentiation of land values, classes settled in different areas of the city, thus revealing spatially the economic stratification of mercantile society.”5

In 2000, Carole Shammas challenged Warner’s model of the walking city indirectly in “The Space Problem in Early American Cities.” US population concentrated in a few major seaport cities between 1790 and 1830, even while the footprints of these settlements barely expanded. In 1800, most US settlements had small populations and small footprints, when the average population density was six persons per square mile. By contrast, the seaport cities of Baltimore, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia jammed large populations footprints similar to those of much less populous settlements. New York and Philadelphia each boasted populations per square mile of over 40,000.6

However, Shammas was unsatisfied with the conventional explanations for the small footprints of these seaport cities. She pointed out that London, a more populous city than any city in North America, was less dense.

Samuel P Hayes offered “pedestrian communities” as an alternative to the walking city:7

Prior to industrialization, cities had been relatively small, compact and integrated. They were ‘pedestrian communities’ in that the location of activities was determined by the time it took to walk between them, between residence and occupation, church and school, store and recreation facilities. The community tended to be a face-to-face community, in which human relationships were established by personal contact over limited areas. These relationships were close. Individuals could not live free from the view of others, from their approval or disapproval. In such a social situation, those who became dominant in economic, social, and religious life established and maintained acceptable patterns for the entire community. Differences in values which might lead to differences in public demands were not readily revealed in political affairs.

Does Hayes offer “pedestrian communities” as a competing concept to the “walking city,” or is this just alternative terminology? While Warner stressed the importance of the need for all nodes of a walking city to be interconnected, Hayes omits this requirement. When Warner objects to “subcities”; that is, to the duplication of services in different parts of the city, he is merely dismissing urban neighborhoods by another name. The proximity of goods and services to where people live should be the defining characteristic of an urban neighborhood.

Timeline

1868

25 March

First streetcar line on McKinney Street (Fuglaar (2008), 35; Baron (1994), PAGE; Baron (1995), PAGE)

McKinney Street service ended …

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Image 1. French & Sawyer, “Harris & Co.’s new boarding house,” c1860s. Image source: Library of Congress, Digital Archives.

Much of the boardinghouse research presented on What Are Streets For is the fruit of the manuscript, Lodging in Houston: Residential Hotels, Boarding Houses, and Restaurants, 1837–1877. The first draft, completed in August 2021, was poorly organized and lacked a clear thesis. Yet I continued researching and re-writing the chapters while I sent this idea out as a book proposal. I also stripped out three pieces from this manuscript and rewrote them as essays and submitted them to journals.

A few early posts on What Are Streets For were brief think-pieces on residential boarding research. These included “Residential Hotels and Boarding Houses,” which explained why Victorian workers needed boarding and not apartments:

“What we call an apartment is presumed to include a bathroom and a kitchen. Victorian workers typically could not afford the space required for a kitchen, nor did they have the capital required to purchase kitchen equipment. Victorian workers could not afford a kitchen, nor did they have use for them.”

“Boarding Houses, Households, Homes, and Families” considered how the common table promoted commensality:

“First, a boarding house was a house divided into rooms for sleeping and privacy. Sometimes boarders had private rooms; sometimes they shared rooms. However, boarding houses also had a semi-public realm. Boarders shared use of common areas, including the parlor and the dining table. In these areas, they socialized with their housemates (or ‘inmates’). Dining at the table of the host, or at the table d’hôte, brought together the housemates to eat the same food at appointed times.”

The third of these early think-pieces was “The Language of Housing in Houston.” I re-wrote this as an essay and submitted it to journals. It was reviewed and rejected for publication by three journals. Meanwhile, I updated this idea in 2025 in the article, “The Language of Nineteenth-Century Housing.” After receiving the third rejection, I re-wrote and republished it as a series, with first titled, “What Is a “House?” The Language and Uses of Housing in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Houston, 1837–1880: Thesis.”

“This paper starts with detailed analysis of the use of house in mid-nineteenth-century newspapers published in Houston. Commonly house was used synonymously with the present-day use of building. This study also considers house compounded or qualified, as in courthouse, warehouse, and dwelling house, for just a few examples. Since the period studied here runs from 1837–1880, it is sensible to call this time Victorian, as well as using this as a noun for the people living at that time. This stipulation avoids many awkward expressions. Victorians, thus understood, sometimes distinguished buildings by use and compounded these words for uses with house to refer to a kind of building. Yet Victorians used house freely as part of a dispositional flexibility that was also a reflection of buildings which were themselves often poorly distinguished in design and form.”

Another finding of this research was restaurants as residential boarding in nineteenth-century Houston. For example, an Irish immigrant, Joseph Blessington ran “Our House” restaurant as a residential boarding venue:

“Restaurants featured prepared meals and the few examples in 1870 Houston suggests that their sometimes their lodging facilities were limited, and mainly housed employees. However in 1870, “Our House” restaurant in Houston housed the owner, his wife, a teenaged son, three restaurant workers, and fourteen boarders, with their occupations ranging from common laborer to lawyer. With twenty persons residing in the restaurant, it housed more people than some local hotels, but far fewer people than a hotel which was a little more than a block away.”

The problem of studying early boardinghouses is a lack of good record sets. From 1837 through 1865, records for boardinghouses are limited. The Portal to Texas History newspaper archives contain a wealth of information for this period. For Houston, the Telegraph and Texas Register (Houston) published under various mastheads throughout this period. Morning Star (Houston) published advertisements for boardinghouse and other residential boarding venues, but it there are only issues for a few years. However, in order to learn about who lived in boardinghouses, city directories and census records are needed. The first US census recording the identities of all free residents of the household was the Seventh Census in 1850. Yet the canvasses of Houston were of poor quality and boardinghouses and other group quarters were often missed. Location cannot be determined through the 1850 census. The Eighth Census in 1860 was better, but still lacking.

The first city directory for Houston was published in 1866. Not everyone published their information in the city directories, even women who were running boardinghouses. It is not known what percentage of boardinghouse residents published their information in the city directories. The Ninth Census in 1870 was a substantial improvement over the previous two, and residential locations can be inferred from the 1869 Wood Map and the 1870 city directory. The 1870 city directory also includes a classified business directory. Yet many boardinghouses were probably missed in the 1870 canvass, too.

Image 1. Red squares indicate boardinghouses located in Houston, First Ward, North Side, Buffalo Bayou and in the Fifth Ward. Image source; Houston History Research Center, Digital Archives. Annotated by author.

Elizabeth Graham Tompkins Ewing Hay

Elizabeth Hay was unique among the seven boardinghouse women profiled on What Are Streets For. Alexander Ewing left a significant estate to her, including the large homestead on Walker Avenue at Main Street. There is only direct evidence that Hay ran a boardinghouse for one year, in 1870. Her third husband was Dr AJ Hay, a physician with an interest in a local drug store, but he otherwise remains a mystery. Whether he left or he died, Elizabeth Hay ran a boardinghouse as a head-of-house.

Bridget Gallagher

Bridget Gallagher and John Gallagher were Irish immigrants who settled in Houston’s First Ward, North Side, Buffalo Bayou before 1860. They resided near the Houston and Texas Central Railway. John was a common laborer, and the railroad would have provided ample opportunities for poorly-compensated manual labor. In 1860, Bridget served boarders. These boarders, like John, were Irish common laborers. Plausibly, John used his work contacts to recruit bachelor workers who needed lodging and meals that were convenient to the same jobs that John had access to. Thus Bridget contributed a second income to the household while putting to use extra space in their dwelling. John was blind and living in the local hospital in 1870, leaving Bridget as the sole earner for the household by running a boardinghouse with a grocery. She must have been successful in her businesses because she later acquired Young’s Brick Yard.

Paulina Rosenfield

Paulina Rosenfield was the only Jewish boardinghouse keeper from Houston profiled. She and her husband were both Polish Jews native to Posen, Prussia and married in Houston. Rosenfield sued her husband in probate court in order to seize the community property of the marriage for the benefit of her daughters. In 1877, she opened a boarding house in the Nichols-Rice Cherry House (should it be the Nichols-Rice-Rosenfield-Finnigan-Evershade-Cherry House?) and operated boardinghouses at other locations on Congress Avenue, within the same neighborhood as the synagogue for Congregation Beth Israel. Her boardinghouse was located on a main mulecar line and Rosenfield House specialized in serving streetcar drivers. However, there is no evidence that she served a predominantly Jewish clientele.

Millie Gray

Millie Gray followed her husband to Texas from Virginia and arrived in Houston by January 1839. William Fairfax Gray was a land attorney who worked on behalf of a DC investment firm. He left his family to scout land in Texas as early as 1835. He ended up being one of the organizers of the Republic of Texas. In 1838, William contracted with a carpenter/landlord to build a house facing Courthouse Square in Houston, with some features to accommodate boarders. Presumably, Millie ran the boardinghouse as a second income, while William maintained a modest legal practice as a notary public and a drafter of deed contracts, and he also acted as a trustee.

Emma Angell

Emma Angell was the widow of a railroad engineer who moved to Houston’s Fifth Ward no later than 1884. She ran a rooming house there starting in 1886. From 1890 through 1910, Angell managed rooming houses or boarding houses out of various locations in the Third and Fourth wards. Further research is needed to follow her life during the 1910s and 1920s, but she retired to the stylish Plaza Hotel on Montrose Boulevard, where she died in 1936.

Henrietta Bottler

In the late 1860s, Henrietta Bottler moved in to a neighborhood adjacent to the Houston and Texas Central Railway depot and yards. Bottler was at that time a widow with sons from two marriages. Bottler (nee Karcher) arrived in Galveston with her four brothers in 1838. Her parents both died during the voyage from New York, leaving the Karcher children orphans. Henrietta married twice and lived in rural Harris County before moving to Houston. The twice-widowed German immigrant operated boardinghouses in First Ward, North Side, Buffalo Bayou for two decades. She resided within the same neighborhood until her death in 1909.

Charles and Marie Kodtler

The Kodtlers for at least a short time made hospitality the primary household income. Charles managed the Tremont House restaurant in Houston in 1858. The Kodtlers lived in and operated a Fourth Ward boardinghouse in 1860. Charles went into the upholstery business in 1867, which he continued until 1870. Charles probably died in 1871. Marie sold fruit and cigars as her first occupation as a widow, but went into the boardinghouse business in 1877. She operated boardinghouses or furnished rooming houses through 1907. She retired in 1908 and lived in a furnished rooming house run by her daughter.

Tarr, Finholt, and Goodman

Joel A. Tarr, Thomas Finholt, and David Goodman, “The City and The Telegraph: Urban Communications in the Pre-Telephone Er…

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These include aspirational readings that are not distinguishable on this list from titles that have read and not yet recorded notes. Since these notes may contain errors, please vet them before using them.

Salerno

Roger A. Salerno, “Theory and Action in Wirth’s ‘Urb…

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Image 1. Die Wöchentliche Texas Post (Houston), “Frau C. F. Kodtler,” 19 May 1872. Image source: Portal to Texas History.

Other Boardinghouse Keepers

Elizabeth E Hay, Boardinghouse Keeper and Boardinghouse Client

Bridget Gallagher, Boardinghouse Keeper and Grocer

The Paulina Rosenfield Boardinghouse

Millie Gray and Her Boardinghouse on Courthouse Square, Houston

Emma Angell, Housekeeper

Henrietta Bottler, Boardinghouse Keeper

The Wilson Sisters, Boardinghouse Keepers?

Charles and Marie Kodtler, Boardinghouse Keepers

Houston Boardinghouse Biographies: A Summary

Book Review: Boardinghouse Women

Charles and Marie Kodtler

Charles F “C. F.” Kodtler (b 1837) was possibly born as Karl Friedrich Kodtler in Anhalt-Saxony, Prussia. Augusta LM “Marie” Rochow boarded a ship in Hamburg bound for New Orleans and Galveston in 1854 with Johann, Dorothea, Marie, Wilhemina, William, and Joseph Rochow. The earliest evidence of Kodlter’s residence in Texas was his marriage to Augusta Rochow on 6 March 1856 in Galveston.1

Of all of the housekeepers I have studied, the Kodtlers were the most mobile. Although they spent most of their time in Houston, they frequently changed their residence within the city. The Kodtlers moved from Galveston to San Antonio, where they managed the Union Hotel and Boarding House, starting in 1857. The following year, Charles leased the Tremont House restaurant on Congress Avenue between Main and Travis Street. The property was under the control of William Rochow & Company, the senior partner being Charles’s brother-in-law. Two deeds earlier in 1858 suggest possible complications of the restaurant business in antebellum Houston. Charles paid for equipment and supplies from Ephraim Milsaps, most of which was $313 in two promissory notes. Milsaps was probably the previous tenant proprietor of Tremont House. Yet Kodtler did not appear to directly manage Tremont House since he also conveyed to S Meyer for five dollars, “goods and chattels, furniture and utensils appertaining to my restaurant room lately bought of E Milsaps,” while Meyer was charged with, “The said S Meyer shall immediately enter upon the said Restaurant Room and take into possession the said goods and chattels furniture and utensils. . . .”2

The restaurant inventory included:3

2 double bedsteads

3 single bedsteads

4 cots

2 double mattrasses

7 single mattrasses

3 wash stands

3 [ILL] pitcher

2 tables

3 bolsters

15 pillows

12 pair blankets

7 mosquito bars

20 bill[?] sheets

15 pillow cases

1 dozen glass jars

1 clock

1 desk stool

1 gallon measure

1 alcohol can

2 demijohns

1 glass drainer

1 tub

1 show case

1 oyster box & stand

1 shovel

6 chaver dishes

1 dinner bell

1 small bell

1 lamp

1 plate

1 dining table

4 small tables

2 lamps

6 calico curtains

5 dozen plaids

6 cartons

10 sugar barrels

1 dozen tumblers

2 water pitchers

3 cream pitchers

4 preserve dishes

2 dozen spoons

1 dozen tea spoons

2 [ILL] knives & forks

3 long dishes

34 chairs

1 kitchen table

I stove & fixture

2 frying pans

1 dining room stove

1 set of tin pans

1 steamer

1 butcher knife

1 coffee mill

1 wardrobe

1 lantern

1 little parlor stove

S Meyer did not stay on as the manager. A month later, Charles conveyed the restaurant inventory to William Rochow and Charles was retained as the restaurant manager. While there are no other records of Charles’s tenure at Tremont House, but the ultimate fate of the restaurant is certain. A catastrophic fire consumed all but one building on the block in February 1859 that also destroyed two hotels.4

In 1860, Charles and Marie Kodtler ran a small boardinghouse in Houston’s Fourth Ward. The Kodtlers lived in the boardinghouse with their infant daughter and four male boarders (all natives of Germany).5

Charles worked as an upholsterer in 1867 and 1870, otherwise his life in he late 1860s is a mystery. In 1872, however, Marie was running a confectionary and tobacco stand at the corner of Preston Avenue and San Jacinto Street. Charles died before 1877, when Marie published a listing for her boarding house on upper Main Street, between McKinney and Walker avenues. Yet the 1880 census only recorded one boarder at her residence in the Third Ward on San Jacinto. Perhaps the census taker shaved some years off the age of Marie, who should have been age 44 the 1860 census were correct, she had two teenaged daughters and a teenaged son living with her in 1880. Kodtler’s residence was located on San Jacinto Street in the Third Ward.6

If Kodtler ran a boardinghouse in the rest of the 1880s, it was a poorly advertised one. However, she did establish a stable residence starting in 1882 on Austin Street between Dallas and Polk avenues, also in the Third Ward, where she remained until at least 1886. Kodlter’s living arrangements are unknown in 1887, but she did change addresses that year. She resided on the third floor of a building at 65 Main. There are no Houston maps marked with street numbers for 1887, but the 1885 Sanborn Map is a good fit for 1887. That map depicts 65 and 65-1/2 Main as a three-story brick building with stores on the ground floor and offices on the second floor. Just around the corner from 65 Main was Dissen House hotel. Kodlter lived at this address until 1891. In 1892, however, the city of Houston mandated a uniform system for street numbers. That year 65 Main was renumbered as 405-1/2 Main (Image 2), where Kodtler rented rooms. This was a convenient location for people renting furnished rooms since the Dissen House hotel (renamed Hotel Denver by 1896) served meals just across the alley. In the addenda to the 1895 city directory, however, Kodtler announced a move of her boardinghouse to 109 Chenevert Street. Located near Commerce Avenue in an eastern neighborhood within the Second Ward, Kodtler’s youngest daughter Tillie lived there and worked as a dressmaker. Two years later Kodtler moved her boardinghouse more than a mile away to 808 Milam Street in the Fourth Ward and moved again in 1899 to 814 Main Street.7

Image 2. “1896 Sanborn Map,” Facet 4. Outlined in thick black: on Main Street is Marie Kodler’s residence in 1892; fronting Preston Avenue was Dissen House hotel, which had been renamed as Hotel Denver by 1896. Image source: Annotated by author.

In 1900, Kodtler gave up her household while keeping her residence. The Dubois family established their household at 814 Main, which included six servants and Kodtler as a lodger. The 1900 census provided yet other conflicted vital information for Kodtler. According to this record, Marie Kodtler was born in April 1829 and was 71-years-old. She had given birth to six children, but only two were living in 1900.8

Kodtler re-established the boardinghouse at 814 Main in 1902 and operated it through 1907, after which she retired from the business. Tillie set up a furnished room house at 1108 Walker Avenue, where Kodtler lived until her death in 1911.9

Image 1. The known residences of the Wilson sisters living in Houston in 1860. (A) Alisanna Wilson Niles resided at the edge of the Second Ward, facing Courthouse Square. (E) Elizabeth Wilson Stevens also lived at the edge of the Second Ward, just two blocks east of Alisanna. (S) Susan Wilson Sterrett lived in the Third Ward at the corner of McKinney Avenue and San Jacinto Street. Mary Warner Wilson the elder lived with the Sterretts in 1860. Mary Warner Wilson the younger was also residing in the Third Ward in 1860, but her address has not yet been determined. Image source: Houston History Research Center, Digital Archives. Annotated by author.

Other Boardinghouse Biographies

Elizabeth E Hay, Boardinghouse Keeper and Boardinghouse Client

Bridget Gallagher, Boardinghouse Keeper and Grocer

The Paulina Rosenfield Boardinghouse

Millie Gray and Her Boardinghouse on Courthouse Square, Houston

Emma Angell, Housekeeper

Henrietta Bottler, Boardinghouse Keeper

The Wilson Sisters, Boardinghouse Keepers

Charles and Marie Kodtler, Boardinghouse Keepers

The Wilson Sisters

The citations to this article are incomplete.

The intended subjects of this brief essay are Alisanna Wilson Niles (1810-1861) and Elizabeth Wilson (?-?), two women whom I researched as possible boardinghouse keepers. Little is known about Elizabeth’s activities in Houston, but Alisanna is better known through primary sources. As yet, evidence is lacking for Alisanna and Elizabeth as boardinghouse keepers. Two other Wilson sisters held interest in a hotel, though. Hester Wilson League briefly owned town lots and chattels of Houston House before her husband withdrew from the hotel partnership. Mary Warner Wilson was married to Peter Wilson, who was at first a partner of Houston House before eventually becoming its sole proprietor. Mary also owned lots and chattels of Houston House under her name. All of the Houston House property passed to Mary after Peter died.1

Esther (or Hester) Yarnold Wilson League (1812–1884) was the daughter of Nixon Wilson (1777–1842) and Mary Warner Wilson (1783–1855). Esther arrived in Houston either in 1837 or 1838. She followed Thomas M League‚ her husband, from Baltimore to Houston. Around the same time Alisanna Wilson Niles (1810–1861) followed her husband to Houston. She was married to John Warner Niles, the seventeenth child of Hezekiah Niles, the publisher of the Baltimore-based publication, Niles Register. John Warner Niles (came to the Republic of Texas in order to start a publishing business. While he attempted to organize investors, he never published a newspaper to compete with the first established newspaper in Houston, the Telegraph and Texas Register, which had relocated to Houston in May 1837. He allied himself politically with Mirabeau Lamar and established the Matagorda Bulletin‚ but sold the paper in June 1839.2

By September 1839, John Warner Niles was in partnership with Dudley W Babcock as tenant proprietors of Houston House, then owned by Thomas League and Peter Wilson, two brothers-in-law of Niles. There is no direct evidence of where the Niles’s lived in Houston, but it is possible that they resided in the hotel and that Alisanna helped to manage the housekeeping. It is not known how long Niles & Babcock operated Houston House, but he was running the Niles Coffeehouse in 1841.3

Death stalked people arriving in antebellum Houston and claimed the life of John Warner Niles in 1845. However, before he died, he acquired a labor of land from G Stevens in the George Stevens headright. George Stevens was a brother-in-law of John and Alisanna, and Stevens was married to Elizabeth Wilson Stevens. While I have not positively identified the buyer, “A Niles” purchased Block 22, Lot 4 on 18 November 1845. This location is also known as the north side of Congress Avenue, between Fannin and San Jacinto streets. This was where I believe Alisanna Niles ran a boardinghouse. Block 22 is a well-known part of antebellum Houston since it faced one of two public squares in town, where the Harris County Courthouse and Jail were located. Niles traded in real estate in her own name, just as Margaret Nichols (her married neighbor) did. On this same block face a few years before, Catherine Milon had also run a boardinghouse. The Fannin House also operated on Block 22, although a firm timeline and an exact location are not yet available for this hotel. Millie Gray had kept a boardinghouse a few hundred feet away in 1838.4

Despite the death of John Warner Niles in November 1845, the Niles Coffee House was still a named business location in March 1846.5

A fifth Wilson sister was a long-time resident of Houston. Susan Wilson moved to Houston and later married John Sterrett, a notorious steamboat captain. Her mother, Mary Warner Wilson, resided in the Sterrett household in 1860. Sarah Ann Wilson lived in Houston at least long enough to get married, but did not persist long in the city.6

In 1860, Esther and Thomas League were already removed from Houston for many years and they were residing in Galveston. Alisanna Niles and Elizabeth Stevens, however, were still residing on Congress Avenue. According to the census that year, Niles was not hosting any boarders. The nuclear family of George Morgan and Anna Ogden Niles Morgan were living there instead, which implies an intergenerational household. By contrast, the Stevens household was probably a small, closed nuclear family of just George, Elizabeth, and Rosella, a fifteen-year-old girl (see Image 2).

A partial description of the Morgan homestead follows:7

“[T]he half of lots Nos. 3 & 4 in Block 22 in Houston now occupied by him as a Homestead is adjoined by wooden buildings and the House is of wood and is situated in the business part of town and is [in] danger from fire as the adjoining house is used for offices by tenants and rooms for boarders at a hotel [Fannin House]. . . .”

Image 2. The ownership of Block 22 in 1860. The Morgan homestead on Block 22 was the joint property of George Morgan and Alisanna Niles Morgan and lay west of the William Marsh Rice homestead. William Marsh Rice owned the rest of lots on Block 22 in 1860. The Rice homestead, aka “NRC,” is shaded in green and the house is shaded in orange. Rice and his wife Margaret resided in the house starting around 1850. Margaret died there in 1863, but William never lived there again after his wife’s death. Diagram by author.