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Happy New Year, and Thanks for Your Support!This is our last "roughly" quarterly newsletter of the year, and though we know we've waited until the last possible minute, we'd like to take this time to do our least favorite job... ask you for money... With the last few minutes of 2007 burning a hole in your pocket, won't you please just take a minute to go to our website and become a member of HAM or send us a donation with PayPal? Your money will help support the work we do at HAM. This year alone, we have:
It's been a busy year, and we'd like to be able to do as much, and more, next year. We need your support! You've been so great to us in the past! Please help us again this year as we publish our books, produce our videos, and manufacture our games so we can keep Houston's history alive! Thanks so much, Laurie Feinswog Community Issues Olivewood Cemetery Meetups Each meetup is a chance to meet new and different people - those doing great work in historic preservation and history documentation in Houston, and many more who just love to hear about it. We are thrilled to be able to offer all these people an opportunity to share their work and their questions in an informal setting. It's really just a fun way to spend a Saturday afternoon, so you all should come out some time to join us... So far we've been meeting on the second Saturday of the month at 2pm. Click here if you'd like to be included on the mailing list. Houston Preservation - Letter to the Editor
Read the letter below: To the Editor: I tried to find the true point of Roy Reynolds anti-preservation Outlook article from Sunday, December 23, 2007. That if someone wasn’t “appointed” to be an involved and concerned citizen then they need to shut up and stay home? That if an historic building has found second life as a bookstore then that makes it less historic? Maybe that he doesn’t think too highly of our elected officials? In the end, Mr. Reynolds’ message is precisely the same one you hear from all the so-called, and presumably self-appointed, property rights advocates: Me, Me, Me. The arrogant entirety of what these folks have to offer is “if something doesn’t interest or benefit me directly, then it is obviously not worth doing.” Or in this case, not worth saving. As is so often the case in society, those people are missing the 800-pound gorilla in the room, the fact that we are a community. There are the specifics of the debate about the fate of the River Oaks Center and the Alabama Theater turned Bookstop, and then there is a much larger picture. Let’s start small. Many things can make a structure significant, and housing a Black-Eyed Pea, even a decades old one, likely isn’t one of them. But being one of the first suburban shopping centers in the world, and the very first in shopping center-mad Houston is. The late 1930s Art Deco architecture of River Oaks Center and the Alabama is also significant, and becoming harder to find in our city with each passing month. And over the past 70 years, generations of people have lived significant moments of their lives there. They have special memories of riding their bicycles to one of those centers after school or spending untold Saturdays eating popcorn and watching double features at those theaters. Just because some people don’t like art films, doesn’t mean we should raze the main place in the Houston area where they are screened. The people who patronize the ballet might not be huge football fans, but having both is a part of what makes Houston a great city. I make it out to Kingwood maybe every five years, but I certainly don’t begrudge them their share of tax dollars. The point is that we’re all in this together. And that leads to the big picture. Property owners do not have unlimited rights to do whatever they wish with their property. They haven’t had such powers anywhere in the civilized world for the last several centuries. Nor should they. It’s that simple. Funny thing about history, if you take the time to look, almost every issue we face today is already there. If you check out colonial court records from 300 years ago, you’ll find that every time a farmer wanted to build a mill, the equivalent of an environmental impact study was done by a committee of fellow land owners to determine if altering the watercourse would affect the man’s neighbors. Read some city ordinances from 1865, and you’ll see that property owners were required keep their sows and hogs in pens. For that matter, some of the clauses in the Magna Carta restrict a property owner’s ability to charge exorbitant rents and fees. Reading past issues of the Chronicle, you’ll find a litany of stories about property owners who have been forced to cut high grass or tear down abandoned structures, forced to plant new trees or prohibited from violating a myriad of architectural requirements. In short, property owners have always had a responsibility to the community. Nobody seems to raise an outcry or write editorials complaining about being forced to put their trash bins away or being denied the “right” to have a junk car in their front yard. So why is historic preservation different? Because a segment of the population doesn’t care about old buildings? The elected officials that Mr. Reynolds and his myopic ilk wish to denigrate are doing their sworn duty every time they remove billboards from our neighborhood streets, every time they set aside land for a new park and, yes, every time they strengthen our historic preservation laws. They are improving the quality of life in this city, whether every citizen chooses to partake of each specific improvement or not. Thankfully Houstonians still have some examples of tangible architecture and history to inspire them. Clearly some people see the value in incorporating an historic train station into a unique ballpark design or renovating a century old Heights mansion to a genuine sparkle and feel that could not be attained with Hardiplank. It’s hard to grasp the world of instant gratification where “property rights” advocates would have us view anything old through pictures alone, and all because they think they might be able to squeeze another buck into their pockets. There are a couple of ironies in this preservation story. One is that by simply studying some history, these “property rights” harpies could learn that they haven’t had free rein for about 800 years. Secondly is the tale of a Polish immigrant and his family that came to Texas in the late 1800s, first to Richmond and then to Houston. In 1901, the family opened a grocery store downtown. By the mid 20th century, the majority of Houstonians did their shopping at a neighborhood grocery that boasted the family’s name. It is a name that is part of the life fabric for tens of thousands of us here in my native Houston. The name is Weingarten, the same family who should be so proud to have been an integral part of our hometown’s history. Yet it is Weingarten Realty that is determined to bulldoze more of our landmarks. No one in Houston or any other city is required to like history. But to absurdly claim omnipotent “property rights” in order to destroy it is short-sighted and selfish. I hope that someday everyone can learn that value is found in places other than their bank account. -Mike Vance Projects HAM Slices N2N Oral Histories This will give us about 750 hours of oral history that will then be donated to both the Houston Metropolitan Research Center at the Houston Public Library and the Woodson Research Center at Rice University's Fondren Library. We have already donated our first 50 hours to them early in 2007, and we're looking forward to making another drop in the next few months. We would love an opportunity to talk to the community and civic organizations you may be involved with to share the work we're doing and to look for people to interview as well as volunteer interviewers. Please contact us here if you would like us to come speak to your group. What's Your HQ? Historic Schools of Harris County Fundraising Road Rally - November 3, 2007 We had about 10 carloads of people sign up. There goal was to solve a set of 15 clues, each of which would lead the teams to historic landmarks all around the inner loop. Pictures of a team member at the landmark was required for proof, and we got some nice pictures too! We gave away some nice prizes (with help from our sponsors, Yancey|Hausman Commercial Real Estate Services, and Vista Cars and Trucks) and met some great new people. We're planning on scheduling 2 of these a year and hope we can get many more of you out there on the roads finding some hidden Houston historic gems! 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Donations Needed
Thank you so much for your support and your interest in Houston Arts and Media… |
Next Meetup: Community Issues Projects Fundraising Call to Action
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