The Forgotten/Vanishing Subdivision

[Marty Blaise]

As part of my search for abandoned highways and roads, I look on maps for all kinds of information. I also use historicaerials.com to see how things were in the Houston area in 1957 compared to today. Something I found that is really unusual is that a subdivision appears to have been platted and laid out with dirt roads circa 1957, but does not exit today, except for a handful of streets. If you know your maps, go the area just north of Pinemont Street, and follow Bingle up to Tidwell. Then, go to Historic Aerials and look at that area for Houston in 1957, you will see rectangle squares of roads laid out. Zooming in is inconclusive, but it certainly looks like the layout of a subdivision. If you can find a Houston street map from the late 50s or early 60s, sometimes they have these "streets" on the map. You can still see some of the lines when you view 1964, but as you progress through the aerials, you will see less and less streets as the "subdivision" vanishes. A couple of streets do exist today, and a few are simply stubs, but it seems to me that someone had plans of some sort way back when and apparently things did not go as planned. If anyone has any information on this area of streets, I'm all ears.

[sevfiv]

I can't get historicaerials to load in any browser but I think I may have found it. The existing streets south of Tidwell surrounding Bingle are part of the Rosslyn subdivision - block book maps show streets laid out for the area stretching as far south as W 43rd (some of which on the east side of it was actually resubbed as Forest Pines 1 and 2).

The larger area was part of the James Bay survey - this block book maps shows part of the area with the plant/tree street names:

http://books.tax.hct...7_41-4_0082.jpg

I quickly wrote out the streets in a generic grid to give an idea - you can orient the map to current day with existing streets like Tidwell (Evergreen), Pinemont (Rose), Grovehill (Cedar), Grovecrest (James/Jasmine - both are listed and I think James may be an error since it's not a plant/tree name), and 13th (Bingle).

[neuman]

If you look at the topo maps on historicaerials, the missing roads are on the 1915, 1922 & 1932 maps but are gone by 1946.

[Marty Blaise]

Thanks for the diagram. It is awesome! How many other subdivisions were laid out like this and even had roads cut, but then things changed. I know of one fancy subdivision called Grand Mission on Grand Mission Blvd. The streets were laid out and built, and a railroad crossing built, but then for some reason the railroad crossing was barricaded and it was several years before houses were built. I know of others were streets were built and then barricaded, without a single house being built.

Modern day Bingle crosses several remnants of these streets. And the service road to 290 is called Poppy Street.

Another unbuilt set of streets is down by where Pinemont crosses White Oak Bayou. Parts of streets exist but others were never built all the way through like Dayport and Balbo. I find it interesting that many old street maps jumped the gun sometimes and guessed that a road would be built.

East T.C. Jester between Rosslyn and 11th St. is a good example. As far back as the middle sixties maps were showing this section open! It was not built for years later!

I had a map that showed a road going over a (street) bridge across a creek somewhere near Greenspoint. When I got there it was a foot bridge!

The other thing that bugged me as a kid was those road maps that showed Loop 610 open with "service roads only" = when the freeway was under construction! Talk about confusing.