Freedmen's Town Historic District
a.k.a. Fourth Ward
Roughly Bounded by Genesse, West Dallas, Arthur and W. Gray Sts., Houston, TXThe Freedmen's Town Historic District is a forty-block residential area that represents all that remains of the oldest and one of the most important black communities in Houston. Founded just after Emancipation on the southern banks of Buffalo Bayou, the original Freedmen's Town settlement eventually grew to become the economic, spiritual, and cultural focus of Houston's black community. By the second decade of the twentieth century, it encompassed an area that stretched from Buffalo Bayou south to Sutton Street, and west from Milam and Travis Streets to Taft Street. Within its boundaries lay a thriving black business district and residential neighborhood, Antioch Missionary Baptist Church, the original Colored High School and the black Carnegie Library. Since 1940, however, through urban renewal, Federal highway projects, and the continual expansion of the central business district, this community has been reduced to the forty-block area that lies just west of Interstate 45. This neighborhood is composed for the most part of wood-frame residential units that range in date from about 1870 to 1935. Because of its unusual architectural characteristics and because it represents an urban neighborhood that has always been primarily associated with Houston's black community, this district maintains a significance that is unique in the state of Texas.
Local significance of the district:Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1985.
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.