Boulevard Oaks Historic District
Roughly bounded by North Blvd., South Blvd., Hazard and Mandell Sts., Houston, TXThe Boulevard Oaks Historic District is one of Houston's finest residential neighborhoods to emerge from the city's residential building boom of the 1920s. It represents a unique period in the city's urban planning history when developers and citizens cared and thoughtfully planned neighborhoods with an eye toward the civic whole. The proposed district, although comprised of seven separate subdivisions, is consistent in terms of the scale of homes, setbacks and architectural style. Along North and South Boulevard, landscaped esplanades planted with oak trees soon after the homes were built, are an integral part of the neighborhood's plan. The developers and architects who designed Boulevard Oaks worked in similar neighborhood developments in Houston, and were among the finest in the city. These developers followed planning trends found across the nation and those popularized in Houston by the Forum of Civics. Boulevard Oaks is the best surviving example of these Houston neighborhoods and it best tells the story of upper-middle class residential planning in Houston in the 1920s.
Boulevard Oaks is nominated to the National Register of Historic Places under Criterion A, in the Area of Community Planning and Development, at the local level of significance because it epitomizes upper middle income residential developments in the south end of Houston in the 1920s. The houses, most built between the middle 1920s and late 1930s, exemplify the refined suburban domestic architectural traditions prevalent in the United States during the interwar years. The neighborhood was developed as Houston's residential and institutional core moved South and West of the downtown area. Rice University, the Texas Medical Center, Hermann Park and the Museum of Fine Arts are contemporary with the neighborhood and are located less than a mile away. The planning of North and South Boulevards as boulevards divided by central, landscaped lots guaranteed a uniformity and consistency that makes Boulevard Oaks a memorable district in Houston.
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 2002.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.