The day Mount Carmel Missionary Baptist Church crumbled into shards of bricks and a pile of rubble, tears filled the eyes of the people who had tried to save the historic structure.
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(Photo: AP Images / Michael Stravato)Bethel Baptist Church, a majestic century-old structure reduced to a scorched hull by a fire four years ago, is now surrounded by modern townhomes in the historic Freedmen's town area near downtown Houston, seen May 4, 2008.
But their grief was not just for this 68-year-old building in the heart of Houston's Fourth Ward.
On this recent Friday, the solemn and stricken group was also crying for all the other now-vanished fragments of Freedmen's Town, the nation's only remaining post-Civil War historic district built by freed slaves.
They mourned for Bethel Baptist Church, a majestic century-old structure reduced to a scorched hull by a fire four years ago, and for the shotgun-style houses on Victor Street, where Houston's first African-American teachers, lawyers, and brickmasons once lived and which now seem abdicated to neglect.
They lamented the loss of dozens of historic homes and churches that have been demolished to make room for markers of a new Houston — a modern metropolis of glass-walled skyscrapers, newly built urban lofts and chic cafes and restaurants.
"One person's historical structure is another person's blight," Houston Mayor Bill White said.
The pattern has been repeated countless times in other cities, where gentrification and urban redevelopment have displaced residents and swallowed cultural landmarks in long-established African-American neighborhoods.
But in Houston, a city hungering for recognition as a place of glitz, power and progress, the tug-of-war between preservation of the old and celebration of the new is especially stark.
"We're just trying to preserve what's left of Freedmen's Town. The Fourth Ward symbolizes our community," said Debra Blacklock-Sloan, the historian of the Rutherford B.H. Yates Museum, which works to preserve the district's history.
"There's going to be development, but it needs to be harmonious between new development and old," she said.
Freedmen's Town traces its beginnings back to 1866, when emancipated slaves first settled in tents and shanties on the banks of Buffalo Bayou, swampy land no one else wanted. Soon, the new settlers — many of whom were skilled stone masons and carpenters — had built homes, businesses and brick churches and paved the streets with bricks they forged themselves.
For decades, Freedmen's Town was the epicenter of Houston's African-American community, a thriving enclave of professionals, educators and businessmen. But the Depression caused homeowners to lose their properties.
Many left Freedmen's Town for other Houston neighborhoods. Others stayed and watched as their community slid into disrepair. Over the years, antique scavengers poached architectural artifacts from occupied homes, yanking gingerbread trim, front porch columns, and carved railings off houses while residents were inside.
In 1984, Freedmen's Town was designated a historic district in the National Register of Historic Places. At the time, 530 historic structures stood in the 40-block area. Today, 30 structures remain. Eight of its 19 churches are standing.
In the 1990s, after developers and city planners discovered the neighborhood just outside downtown, blocks of modern low-income housing, mid-income townhouses and upscale lofts began to push the old structures and residents.
The new residents are drawn in by the lure of an urban chic lifestyle, and financial incentives attracting a new mostly white population, replacing the African-American families who could trace their roots to the original settlers. Continue >>
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