Historic Houston

Above: Houston Fire Department.
Firefighters at Station No. 5 enjoyed all the
comforts of home. An interesting feature of
their quarters was the mosquito netting on
the beds, a necessity in Houston before the
advent of window screens.
COURTESY THE HERITAGE SOCIETY, HOUSTON.
Below Right: Advertisement, Eugene Heiner,
Houston City Directory, 1884. After being
apprenticed to an architect in Chicago,
Heiner established his practice in Houston
in 1878. He achieved special prominence as
the architect of county courthouses
and jails, but he also designed many major
commercial buildings and large private
homes in Houston.
COURTESY HOUSTON METROPOLITAN RESEARCH CENTER,
HOUSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY.
HISTORIC HOUSTON
52
gatherings. The expenses of manning a station
were often staggering for a group of private
citizens to assume. Yet these volunteers continued
because of the social status they
enjoyed and because they knew they were
providing a vital service to the community.
By the mid-1890s, as the city population
approached thirty-five thousand, Houstonians
began to clamor for a full-time paid fire
department. Backed by many local businessmen,
City Council voted to make the change;
and at one minute past midnight on June 1,
1895, the Houston Fire Department became
operational.
As the city grew in size and importance, its
outward appearance changed. In Houston’s
early years most of its buildings were plain
two and three-story frame or brick commercial
and public buildings and modest wooden
houses. Houston businessmen, for the most
part, had invested their money in improving
commerce rather than in erecting ostentatious
buildings.
By the last quarter of the nineteenth century,
however, new ideas, new technology, and
new money combined to produce a demand
for new buildings. Romantic Idealism, a
movement that embodied a glorification of
nature, imagination, and emotion, had swept
the country. Architectural trends responded to
these new ideas, and by the 1870s professional
architects were practicing in Houston.
Men like Eugene Heiner, George Dickey, Olle
Lorehn, and J. Arthur Tempest left their
imprint on the face of the city.
A grand Victorian Gothic courthouse
replaced the modest structure on Courthouse
Square, while a block away an elaborate
Moorish building housed the post office and
federal courts. The old Capitol Hotel (originally
the capitol building of the Republic of
Texas) was razed for a modern five-story
Renaissance Revival structure, and the Cotton
Exchange erected an impressive facility near
the bayou. Downtown Houston assumed a
more urban appearance as these larger buildings
were constructed.
In affluent neighborhoods, new homes following
the same elegant and imaginative
styling were designed to display the owners’
wealth and standing in the community. As a
variety of building materials and ornamental
elements became locally available, houses
became more individualistic, ranging in style
from the square-towered Italianate villa to the
turreted Queen Anne mansion.
Houses in middle- and working-class
neighborhoods were designed for economy,
shelter, and comfort and tended toward stylistic
uniformity. Hundreds of small, simply decorated
Victorian cottages were constructed in
the Sixth Ward neighborhood, and rows of
shotgun houses sprang up in the Fourth Ward
Freedmen’s Town.