National Register Listing
Most Texas immigrants settled in the eastern part of the present-day state between the Colorado and Sabine rivers, including the Gulf Coast region. From those earliest days of Anglo colonization, settlement in the area of present-day Houston has centered on Buffalo Bayou. Most east Texas rivers are slow-moving, and they tend to deposit large amounts of silt where they meet the Gulf, often creating sand bars across their mouths that render them unusable for inland transport. In contrast, Buffalo Bayou was wide and deep and therefore navigable from Galveston Bay to within 40 miles of San Felipe, the effective capital of Anglo colonies in Texas.
Recognizing the bayou's commercial possibilities, John Richardson Harris, one of Austin's original colonists, established the town of Harrisburg at what was believed to be the head of navigation for Buffalo Bayou, just southeast of present-day Houston. Harris also established a trading post at Bell's Landing on the Brazos River, the main artery of the new colony. With access to Galveston Bay via Buffalo Bayou, Harrisburg became the port for a lucrative trade between New Orleans and Texas and the principal supply center for the area's settlers.
Following the Texas Revolution in 1836, several land speculators began scrambling to establish new towns along Buffalo Bayou and Galveston Bay to replace Harrisburg, which had been burned to the ground by Mexican troops. Augustus Chapman Allen and his brother, John Kirby Allen, soon discovered that Buffalo Bayou was actually navigable even farther upstream than Harrisburg. Within four months of the Battle of San Jacinto, the Allen brothers had chosen a site on the south bank of Buffalo Bayou, purchased the land, plotted a town, and begun advertising lots for sale. They named their new city Houston after the hero of San Jacinto, General Sam Houston, and promised that it would become "the great interior commercial emporium of Texas." Although there was not yet a single house built in the town, the Allen brothers persuaded the new congress to name Houston the first capital of the Republic of Texas. Although the capital was moved to Austin in 1839, by then Houston had created a name for itself and secured its place in the industries that would define it, agriculture and commerce.
From its beginning, Houston depended on Buffalo Bayou and its link to Galveston Bay. As soon as the town was established, barges and other light draft craft navigated the bayou between Houston and Galveston, and a regular steamboat service was established along the route in 1837. The significance of Buffalo Bayou as a trade route only increased as the city developed. Shipments of cotton, the area's primary 19th-century export, out of Houston grew from 4,260 bales in 1842 to 11,359 bales by 1854.6 However, the bayou was difficult to navigate, and after the Civil War local businessmen began efforts to dredge a better channel. In 1876, they opened a twelve-foot-deep waterway to Clinton, just below Houston. The U.S. government took over in 1881 and opened the deeper, wider Houston Ship Channel in 1914, making Houston one of the largest deepwater ports in the country. The channel opened just in time to earn an important role in the newly developing petroleum industry, which would become Houston's economic base for the 20th century. Refineries soon lined the Houston Ship Channel, where they could benefit from the established transportation network but remain sheltered from Gulf storms."
The first bridge constructed over Buffalo Bayou was built in 1862 for a railroad line, the Galveston, Houston, and Henderson Railroad. The expansion of railroads across the country in the mid-19th century generated significant advancement in bridge design and construction. Most 19th-century bridges were constructed of fabricated trusses made first of timber and later of iron and steel. As this type of construction did not easily allow much vertical clearance, bridges built over navigable waters often required a moveable structure. This was usually accomplished, as in the 1862 center-span swing railroad bridge mentioned above, by pivoting the main truss span on a central pier. The earliest swing bridges were operated manually with cables or ropes or simply nudged open by the vessel moving through.
During the latter part of the 19th century, great strides were made in the development of reinforced concrete, and they were promptly applied to bridge construction. The earliest reinforced concrete bridges in Texas, such as the 1908 Euclid Avenue Bridge in Dallas, were closed-spandrel arches that mimicked stone masonry construction. Soon after, bridge engineers developed designs in which extraneous portions of the spandrel walls were left out, creating open spandrel arches composed of individual members. In 1914, two reinforced concrete, open-spandrel arch bridges were completed over Buffalo Bayou, at Main and San Jacinto streets. The central span of the 1275-foot Main Street Bridge crosses the bayou with a single concrete arch reinforced with the "Kahn System," which featured square reinforcing bars with spurs on each side embedded in the concrete. Reinforced concrete enabled much greater vertical lift, and these bridges provided enough clearance for navigating Buffalo Bayou without a movable span."
During the City-Beautiful movement in the first part of the 20th century, local governments across the United States began conscious efforts to improve the aesthetic features of their cities. This movement coincided with rapid growth in Texas, and several cities in the state began their own beautification programs. In 1912, the City of Houston passed a $250,000 bond issue to acquire land and improve its park system. The Houston Park Commission then hired a landscape architect and city planner Arthur C. Comey to develop a master plan for the city. Comey's plan, like many being produced at the time, featured a system of parkways and boulevards to link the central city with growing suburbs. Parkways were planned along Buffalo and White Oak bayous, and Comey recommended that the necessary bridges be built of concrete, in the simplest form of construction.
Several concrete bridges were constructed in the 1920s under Comey's plan, and many employed a type of construction that was increasing in popularity, the reinforced concrete girder. Early concrete girder bridges were constructed with steel wide-flange beams encased in concrete, but engineers soon learned that only parts of the beam were absorbing stress and that a series of smaller metal rods could achieve the same effect. Concrete girder bridge construction was used increasingly in the expansion of the Texas state highway system after the organization of the State Highway Department in 1917, reaching the height of its popularity in the 1930s. The 1924 Sabine Street Bridge over Buffalo Bayou included six spans of continuous reinforced concrete girders supported on concrete bents. Curved concrete fascia walls were used to give the appearance of an arch.
Houston's parkway boulevard and street extension plan continued into the early 1930s. City bridge engineer J. G. McKenzie continued to design bridges with a similar aesthetic, using a simple concrete girder structure and an urn-style balustrade. McKenzie streamlined the bridges' form and ornamentation, reflecting more general trends in bridge design. The Almeda Road and Telephone Road bridges over Bray's Bayou and the Yale Street Bridge over White Oak Bayou were all built in 1931, and together they illustrate McKenzie's simplified version of City-Beautiful design.
McKenzie chose this type of construction for this bridge because it spanned the Houston Ship Channel. This choice allowed for 143 feet of horizontal clearance and 62 feet of vertical clearance. Surviving riveted steel plate girder structures that date to the early twentieth century and retain integrity, such as the Hill Street Bridge, are considered historically significant within this bridge type.
The bridge is also a typical example of late City-Beautiful design in Houston, as part of the Comey master plan. It was designed by city bridge engineer J.G. McKenzie and constructed by contractor Russ Mitchell, Inc. 18 The unique design motifs on the superstructure and the substructure, such as the battered pilasters on the piers and the Deco motifs on the railing support and concrete wing walls testify to the importance of aesthetics in bridge design in Houston during this time period and is also significant for these special details. Local significance of the structure:
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 2007.
Hill Street Bridge over Buffalo Bayou
a.k.a. Jensen Drive Bridge over Buffalo Bayou; B347-13-149
S. Jensen Dr. at Buffalo Bayou, Houston, TXThe 1938 Hill Street Bridge in Houston, Texas is one of a few steel multi-girder span bridges in Texas and, like the McKee Street Bridge, was designed by city bridge engineer J. G. McKenzie. Its location on what is now known as South Jensen Drive was a pivotal crossing that joined Houston's warehouse district north of Buffalo Bayou with the city's commercial center to the south. This bridge is significant as a good example of a steel multi-girder span bridge and the bridge retains the integrity of design, materials, workmanship, location, setting, feeling, and association. The Hill Street Bridge over Buffalo Bayou is nominated for listing in the National Register at the state level of significance.
Early Development along Buffalo Bayou
Although the Spanish explored the Gulf of Mexico as early as 1519, mapping the Texas coastline in the process, they made little effort to move inland and colonize the Gulf Coast region. At a remote edge of Spanish territory, the area surrounding present-day Houston was left mostly to its Native-American inhabitants, primarily Karankawas, until the 19th century. The Panic of 1819 in the United States and the economic depression that followed encouraged a wave of Americans to emigrate to Spanish (and later Mexican) Texas, where they could escape their debt and acquire free land.Most Texas immigrants settled in the eastern part of the present-day state between the Colorado and Sabine rivers, including the Gulf Coast region. From those earliest days of Anglo colonization, settlement in the area of present-day Houston has centered on Buffalo Bayou. Most east Texas rivers are slow-moving, and they tend to deposit large amounts of silt where they meet the Gulf, often creating sand bars across their mouths that render them unusable for inland transport. In contrast, Buffalo Bayou was wide and deep and therefore navigable from Galveston Bay to within 40 miles of San Felipe, the effective capital of Anglo colonies in Texas.
Recognizing the bayou's commercial possibilities, John Richardson Harris, one of Austin's original colonists, established the town of Harrisburg at what was believed to be the head of navigation for Buffalo Bayou, just southeast of present-day Houston. Harris also established a trading post at Bell's Landing on the Brazos River, the main artery of the new colony. With access to Galveston Bay via Buffalo Bayou, Harrisburg became the port for a lucrative trade between New Orleans and Texas and the principal supply center for the area's settlers.
Following the Texas Revolution in 1836, several land speculators began scrambling to establish new towns along Buffalo Bayou and Galveston Bay to replace Harrisburg, which had been burned to the ground by Mexican troops. Augustus Chapman Allen and his brother, John Kirby Allen, soon discovered that Buffalo Bayou was actually navigable even farther upstream than Harrisburg. Within four months of the Battle of San Jacinto, the Allen brothers had chosen a site on the south bank of Buffalo Bayou, purchased the land, plotted a town, and begun advertising lots for sale. They named their new city Houston after the hero of San Jacinto, General Sam Houston, and promised that it would become "the great interior commercial emporium of Texas." Although there was not yet a single house built in the town, the Allen brothers persuaded the new congress to name Houston the first capital of the Republic of Texas. Although the capital was moved to Austin in 1839, by then Houston had created a name for itself and secured its place in the industries that would define it, agriculture and commerce.
From its beginning, Houston depended on Buffalo Bayou and its link to Galveston Bay. As soon as the town was established, barges and other light draft craft navigated the bayou between Houston and Galveston, and a regular steamboat service was established along the route in 1837. The significance of Buffalo Bayou as a trade route only increased as the city developed. Shipments of cotton, the area's primary 19th-century export, out of Houston grew from 4,260 bales in 1842 to 11,359 bales by 1854.6 However, the bayou was difficult to navigate, and after the Civil War local businessmen began efforts to dredge a better channel. In 1876, they opened a twelve-foot-deep waterway to Clinton, just below Houston. The U.S. government took over in 1881 and opened the deeper, wider Houston Ship Channel in 1914, making Houston one of the largest deepwater ports in the country. The channel opened just in time to earn an important role in the newly developing petroleum industry, which would become Houston's economic base for the 20th century. Refineries soon lined the Houston Ship Channel, where they could benefit from the established transportation network but remain sheltered from Gulf storms."
Bridges Over Buffalo Bayou
Throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the city expanded rapidly on both sides of the bayou, and, especially after the introduction of the automobile, bridges became a necessity. However, navigation of the bayou was an integral part of the area's transportation network and could not be impeded. To effectively meet the needs of both water and land-based transport, bridges over Buffalo Bayou followed the more general evolution of bridge technology throughout the region and the country.The first bridge constructed over Buffalo Bayou was built in 1862 for a railroad line, the Galveston, Houston, and Henderson Railroad. The expansion of railroads across the country in the mid-19th century generated significant advancement in bridge design and construction. Most 19th-century bridges were constructed of fabricated trusses made first of timber and later of iron and steel. As this type of construction did not easily allow much vertical clearance, bridges built over navigable waters often required a moveable structure. This was usually accomplished, as in the 1862 center-span swing railroad bridge mentioned above, by pivoting the main truss span on a central pier. The earliest swing bridges were operated manually with cables or ropes or simply nudged open by the vessel moving through.
During the latter part of the 19th century, great strides were made in the development of reinforced concrete, and they were promptly applied to bridge construction. The earliest reinforced concrete bridges in Texas, such as the 1908 Euclid Avenue Bridge in Dallas, were closed-spandrel arches that mimicked stone masonry construction. Soon after, bridge engineers developed designs in which extraneous portions of the spandrel walls were left out, creating open spandrel arches composed of individual members. In 1914, two reinforced concrete, open-spandrel arch bridges were completed over Buffalo Bayou, at Main and San Jacinto streets. The central span of the 1275-foot Main Street Bridge crosses the bayou with a single concrete arch reinforced with the "Kahn System," which featured square reinforcing bars with spurs on each side embedded in the concrete. Reinforced concrete enabled much greater vertical lift, and these bridges provided enough clearance for navigating Buffalo Bayou without a movable span."
During the City-Beautiful movement in the first part of the 20th century, local governments across the United States began conscious efforts to improve the aesthetic features of their cities. This movement coincided with rapid growth in Texas, and several cities in the state began their own beautification programs. In 1912, the City of Houston passed a $250,000 bond issue to acquire land and improve its park system. The Houston Park Commission then hired a landscape architect and city planner Arthur C. Comey to develop a master plan for the city. Comey's plan, like many being produced at the time, featured a system of parkways and boulevards to link the central city with growing suburbs. Parkways were planned along Buffalo and White Oak bayous, and Comey recommended that the necessary bridges be built of concrete, in the simplest form of construction.
Several concrete bridges were constructed in the 1920s under Comey's plan, and many employed a type of construction that was increasing in popularity, the reinforced concrete girder. Early concrete girder bridges were constructed with steel wide-flange beams encased in concrete, but engineers soon learned that only parts of the beam were absorbing stress and that a series of smaller metal rods could achieve the same effect. Concrete girder bridge construction was used increasingly in the expansion of the Texas state highway system after the organization of the State Highway Department in 1917, reaching the height of its popularity in the 1930s. The 1924 Sabine Street Bridge over Buffalo Bayou included six spans of continuous reinforced concrete girders supported on concrete bents. Curved concrete fascia walls were used to give the appearance of an arch.
Houston's parkway boulevard and street extension plan continued into the early 1930s. City bridge engineer J. G. McKenzie continued to design bridges with a similar aesthetic, using a simple concrete girder structure and an urn-style balustrade. McKenzie streamlined the bridges' form and ornamentation, reflecting more general trends in bridge design. The Almeda Road and Telephone Road bridges over Bray's Bayou and the Yale Street Bridge over White Oak Bayou were all built in 1931, and together they illustrate McKenzie's simplified version of City-Beautiful design.
Hill Street Bridge over Buffalo Bayou
The 500-foot-long Hill Street Bridge arching over Buffalo Bayou was constructed in 1938, replacing an earlier 1920s steel drawbridge. Although the first plate-girder bridge in the United States was built in Baltimore, Maryland in 1846, this bridge type was not introduced to highways until the end of the nineteenth century.13 It is one of 70 multi-span variable depth plate girder steel span bridges in Texas, according to the Historic Bridge Inventory database, and is especially significant for the length of its main span.14 The I-beam plate girders on this bridge were fabricated by riveting flange angles to a web plate and adding cover plates to the top and bottom. I-shaped plate girders have been used since the 1930s, and until the 1950s were fabricated using this method.15 Plate girder construction was used during this time span at locations where maximum vertical clearance between the deck and water was required.McKenzie chose this type of construction for this bridge because it spanned the Houston Ship Channel. This choice allowed for 143 feet of horizontal clearance and 62 feet of vertical clearance. Surviving riveted steel plate girder structures that date to the early twentieth century and retain integrity, such as the Hill Street Bridge, are considered historically significant within this bridge type.
The bridge is also a typical example of late City-Beautiful design in Houston, as part of the Comey master plan. It was designed by city bridge engineer J.G. McKenzie and constructed by contractor Russ Mitchell, Inc. 18 The unique design motifs on the superstructure and the substructure, such as the battered pilasters on the piers and the Deco motifs on the railing support and concrete wing walls testify to the importance of aesthetics in bridge design in Houston during this time period and is also significant for these special details. Local significance of the structure:
Engineering
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 2007.
About National Register Listings
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.