Memories Of Tierwester St.

[WillowBend56]

We lived on that street from 1954 to 1956.  It must have been on the block near Idaho which appears to mark the city limit then.  Behind us it was a vacant lot for some distance.  A 1957 map of Houston shows streets in the vacant lot area I remember.  Houses were a small three bedroom/one bath arrangement.  Not sure of the vintage whether pre-war or post-war.

[JLWM8609]

We lived on that street from 1954 to 1956.  It must have been on the block near Idaho which appears to mark the city limit then.  Behind us it was a vacant lot for some distance.  A 1957 map of Houston shows streets in the vacant lot area I remember.  Houses were a small three bedroom/one bath arrangement.  Not sure of the vintage whether pre-war or post-war.

 

Most of those homes are post-war. Looking at Google Earth's 1943 imagery, there was a little development south of OST on Peerless, Allegheny, Del Rio, Burkett, and Lozier. Tierwester didn't extend south of OST until the 1943-1953 timeframe.

[Original Timmy Chan's]

Don't take this the wrong way, but was your neighborhood (LaSallette Place) a white or black neighborhood back then?

 

My curiosity stems from the fact that I live about 6 or 7 blocks south of there in South Union.  South Union proper (the platted subdivision, not the Super Neighborhood) was always black from the time it was built (late 40's, early 50's?).  I know that because my grandparents-in-law were the original owners of our house, and many of our neighbors are the original owners of their homes, all of them black.

 

A former co-worker grew up in Foster Place, just on the other side of Scott Street from our neighborhood.  It was all-white back in the 50's.  I asked her where the dividing line was between white and black....and she had no idea there were any black neighborhoods nearby.  Well, there was definitely one just blocks away (ours...and Sunnyside too), but as far as I can tell, there was a kind of "Berlin Wall" between whites and blacks.  I am curious where that "wall" was, and what was it like there on the border.

 

Idaho and Tierwester is also right next to Lilly Grove Baptist Church, which moved to that location in the 1960's.  I'd guess that if LaSallette Place was originally a white neighborhood, it was "blockbusted" by the mid-60's.

[WillowBend56]

Our immediate neighborhood around Tierwester was middle-class white from 1954 to 1956 when we rented a house there. I was just 3 then, so I was not aware of any black neighborhoods or racial boundaries nearby.