Jim DeMoss Ranch On South Main St.

[Highrise Tower]

I was browsing the newspaper The Texan dated July 27, 1983 and came across an article about the birth of the City of Bellaire.

Bellaire's founder was W.W. Baldwin, Vice President of the Burlington Railroad.

Who in 1902 came to "Houston by the Sea" to look around all the railroads of the south and southwest led to Houston and Baldwin soon realized he had found what he came for.

His first venture was the Westmoreland addition, a residential section four blocks long and two blocks wide bounded by West Alabama, Louisiana, Hawthorne, and Garrott Streets in the Montrose Area.

The development was so successful that he began to look around for more land and in 1909 bought the 9,700 acre Jim DeMoss Ranch which was located off the end of Old South Main.

To help him sell the property he hired two good real estate brokers. A.J. Condit and A.A. Buxton. They advertised the land in tracts of from one to five acres and ten acres. At prices ranging from $275 to $600 per acre.

The new community needed a name and since the land was fanned by the bel-air (fine air) off the Gulf of Mexico, the name of his hometown, Bellaire, Ohio was quiet appropriate.  The original limits of the community were Palmetto, Jassamine, First, and Sixth Streets.