Historic district in Riverside Terrace shouldn’t be rushed into official recognition

Riverside Terrace soon may get its first officially recognized historic district, over the objections of many neighborhood residents. Under a proposal approved Thursday by the Houston Archaeological and Historical Commission, 18 homes in the neighborhood will be given the designation, if City Council agrees. And more such districts may be coming to the area, according to proponents of the idea. The prospect is creating tension among the members of this centrally located, ethnically diverse and historically rich neighborhood, as well as exacerbating concerns about the gentrification it is already experiencing. “Historic Third Ward is a very wonderful set of neighborhoods and it's time that a toehold was established in Third Ward, so we started with a piece of Riverside Terrace that makes sense,” said Asif Mahmood, a homeowner who owns several properties in the proposed district and on Friday formally applied for the designation. But many homeowners who spoke at the HAHC meeting Thursday aren’t convinced the “First Riverside Terrace” district, as it would be called, makes sense either. Mahmood, for his part, argues that this is about protecting the history of the neighborhood as well as the city. “I believe that this history is a gift that we have inherited, and I believe it is incumbent on us to be good historians to honor it by preserving it,” he said at the hearing, which he attended remotely. Most Houstonians would agree with that, as a general matter. Most would also agree that historic preservation has not traditionally been Houston’s forte, and still isn’t. But this hearing served as a reminder that maintaining physical structures isn’t the same thing as preserving history—or the best way to achieve that goal, necessarily. Homeowners opposed to the designation, in this case, worry that such a move would restrict their ability to make changes to their own homes, and raise the costs of routine repair and maintenance as well as property tax burdens in the neighborhood. (If you need to replace a window on a historic home, for example, you might not be able to simply go to Home Depot and choose from the options available there.) They also argue that the process hasn’t featured enough public input or debate. Phyllis Moss, who opposes the proposed designation, was one of several Riverside Terrace homeowners raising the latter point. Several years ago, she told the commission, she worked to bring parking restrictions to her block of Wichita Street. The city’s process in that case required her to talk to all of her neighbors and secure their support before the city did anything. "When it comes to my home, I would think that value was even higher than restricting my parking," Moss said. “There should be a meeting before a district is even proposed, to see if people have any interest in it whatsoever,” she said, after the hearing. “By the time the letter comes, you’re already in the proposed district.” She has a point. Houston’s preservation ordinance was initially adopted in 1995, but it didn’t really become enforceable until it was strengthened in 2010. As it stands, an application for a historic designation can be initiated by 10 percent of the tract owners in a given district (meaning people who collectively own at least ten percent of the properties, not ten percent of the people who own any property). At that point, the city is required to hold a public meeting, after which all the property owners in the district are sent a letter, asking to vote on the question within 15 days. If two-thirds of them agree, the district can be established. A supermajority is a high bar, generally speaking. But it’s a bar that can be easily lowered, as the city of Houston’s FAQ on the process explains bluntly: “If less than 67% support is received, the planning director may modify the proposed boundaries to create a district in which 67% of the owners are in favor.” Here’s how that played out in this case: Mahmood applied for the designation along with two other homeowners, who each own one property. The district they proposed would have included 51 tracts, but failed to win the support of a supermajority. And so the city simply redrew the boundaries of the district to include just 18 tracts, in which a supermajority could be, and was, achieved. This is “gerrymandering,” argued Linchi Lopez, another property owner who opposes the plan, at the hearing. Certainly, that analogy comes to mind. Lopez told me she’s skeptical of doing anything that would tie the hands of future Houstonians-who may, she observed, live in a city that’s very different than the Houston of today, or simply have different preferences regarding housing. But beyond that, she agreed with Moss that the deck had seemingly been stacked in favor of the homeowners who want the designation—leaving everyone else with little time and opportunity to reply. “I spent endless hours to get to where I’m at,” Lopez said. “I don’t want somebody else to have to go through this. I want the ordinance to be written correctly and fairly for everyone involved.” An unavoidable conclusion here is that for the proposed designation to go forward at this point would leave neighbors at odds with one another, as the result of a process that gave short shrift to their views-a point that several members of the commission acknowledged, before voting to proceed anyway. But that should give City Council pause, especially since we’re talking about Riverside Terrace. There’s no question that this neighborhood is historically significant, as well as well-situated and beautiful. And there are many lovely homes in the proposed district-including the Lewis-White home, a two-story brick house in a Mediterranean-influenced style, which was in 2018 designated as a historical landmark by the city. But the historical significance of this particular neighborhood has little to do with its architecture, ultimately. Rather, the historical significance of Riverside Terrace—and Third Ward more generally—has to do with the people who have made their homes there over the generations, and in many cases across multiple generations. The neighborhood now known as Riverside Terrace was first settled, according to historians, by Black families, many of them formerly enslaved. After the land was bought by developers in the 1920s, it became known as “the Jewish River Oaks,” as deed restrictions in River Oaks, founded in 1927, itself excluded families of that faith. In 1952 Jack Caesar, a Black cattleman, bought a home in Riverside Terrace, despite similar discrimination: his secretary, who was white, made the purchase, then transferred the deed. The following year, a bomb was detonated on the Caesar family’s porch; they stayed. More affluent Black families moved to Riverside Terrace over the subsequent years, resulting in a degree of white flight from “the Black River Oaks,” but also a sense of community among the families who remained—a sense of community which is currently being tested. River Oaks, incidentally, does not include any officially designated historic districts. Mahmood, reached on Friday, was sanguine about the controversy. “You know, these are complexities of modern life,” he told me. Riverside Terrace is already experiencing gentrification, he observed, and will continue to do so regardless of any historical designation. “The neighborhood is extraordinary and is slowly getting discovered,” he said, adding: “It's not like you can hide the location.” Mahmood said he didn’t have a comment on the process concerns that had been raised at the HAHC meeting the previous day: “The process is what it is. If the powers that be feel that the process needs improvement, fine--they should improve it.” They should. This case illustrates why. Moss’s point about her fight for street parking restrictions is a salient one. As she said, she had to put in a fair amount of effort in pursuit of that goal, and talk to all of her neighbors individually. As a result, she was able to achieve the change she sought in her neighborhood; she also did so without leaving anyone feeling unheard or causing conflicts between neighbors that may fester for some time. That’s the kind of process that shows respect for the integrity of a neighborhood, as well as one’s neighbors—and the kind of process Houstonians should insist on, in order to genuinely preserve and honor our history. erica.grieder@chron.com

Historic district in Riverside Terrace shouldn’t be rushed into official recognition

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