Westmoreland Historic District

The Westmoreland Historic District encompasses Houston's first planned elite residential neighborhood. The planning of the subdivision and the design and scale of its houses reflect trends in the development of residential real estate and domestic architecture in early 20th-century Houston. Houston grew from the fourth-largest city in Texas in the late 1890s to the biggest in the state by 1930. Extensive railroad and shipping connections; commodity trading and processing businesses; and urban real estate development contributed to its successive cycles of urban growth during these decades. Especially important was the development of an entirely new industry based on oil exploration, processing, and marketing. These were also the decades when several of Houston's most important institutions of high culture were founded, often by public-spirited women drawn from the city's elite. Developed in the initial phase of this period, the Westmoreland Historic District was seminal in the formulation of a model for middle and upper-income residential development secure from the adverse consequences of rapid urban expansion. The mixture of Late Victorian Queen Anne cottages, pretentious Colonial Revival houses, Craftsman-influenced bungalows, and unpretentious Four Square type houses reflects architecturally the historic district's transitional stage from late 19th-century patterns of suburban domestic habitation to those characteristic of the 20th century. The architectural diversity of its housing stock enhances the district's association with community development patterns of suburban growth in Texas during the early 20th century. Evaluated within the context of Suburban Development in Texas, 1881-1945, the district is nominated to the National Register under Criterion C at the local level of significance.

The Westmoreland Addition to the City of Houston was platted in August 1902 as a 44-acre subdivision of the Obedience Smith Survey. (See original plat map) The 12-block subdivision was located in open countryside at the southwest corner of Houston. As the first example of planned community development in Houston, Westmoreland was an especially prestigious neighborhood from 1902 until 1910. After 1910 its status began to be challenged by newer neighborhoods that were more comprehensively planned and improved and more exclusive socially. Nonetheless, it has remained a genteel neighborhood. Because Westmoreland's restrictive covenants included "flats" among permissible residential uses, apartment buildings began to be built in the district in the 1920s. In the 1950s and 1960s, large, intrusive garden apartment complexes were built. Demolition of houses for apartment construction resulted in a loss of integrity for parts of the 3500-3700 block of Garrott Street, for the 200 block of Marshall Street, and for both blocks of West Alabama Avenue. In 1957, construction began on a spur of US 59, the Southwest Freeway, on the east edge of Westmoreland Addition. Demolition of houses for freeway construction resulted in the complete loss of the two blocks on the east side of Burlington Avenue and the gateway that marked the principal entrance to Westmoreland. Since the mid-1970s, intensive efforts by Westmoreland residents to reverse the neighborhood's decline have led to the rehabilitation of its original housing stock and the construction of new housing compatible in scale and detail with the district's historical character.

Between 1881 and 1945 three distinct phases in the evolution of a suburban, middle-class alternative to 19th-century patterns of urban middle-class neighborhood organization are visible in Houston and Texas. These are the "heights" suburban towns of the 1890s (exemplified by the Houston Heights Multiple Resource area NR, 1983, in Houston, Oak Cliff in Dallas, Alamo Heights in San Antonio, the Heights in Laredo, and Port Aransas Cliffs in Corpus Christi); the restricted "private place" enclaves of the early 1900s through the 1920s (which include the series of San Antonio subdivisions collectively known as Laurel Heights and developed between the 1890s and the 1910s, Munger Place in Dallas of 1905, Ryan Place in Fort Worth of 1911, Caduceus Place in Galveston of c. 1925, and Mills Place in Corsicana of c. 1925); and the "country club estates" garden suburbs of the 1910s and 1920s (among them Highland Park in Dallas, River Crest in Fort Worth, River Oaks in Houston, Country Club Estates in Wichita Falls, and Olmos Park in San Antonio). The Westmoreland Historic District represents the first example of the second stage in this evolution to appear in Houston and it was one of the earliest examples to appear in Texas.

The Westmoreland Historic District derives significance from its place in the history of residential real estate development in Houston during the period 1881-1945. It introduced the "private place" type of elite residential neighborhood to Houston. This neighborhood type was especially associated with the private streets of St. Louis. Its influence on Houston can be seen in such subsequent elite neighborhoods as the Courtlandt Place Historic District (NR, 1980), developed along Westmoreland's northern border in 1906-1909; Montrose, developed along Westmoreland's western border in 1911; Rossmoyne (1914); Shadyside (1916); West Eleventh Place (1920); Waverly Court (1922); Chelsea Place (1922); Shadowlawn (1922); and the Broadacres Historic District (1923; NR, 1980), all located within one mile of Westmoreland. St. Louis, which was at its height at the turn of the 20th century, capitalized on its rail and trading connections to export capital investment, professional expertise, and a sense of style that were eagerly consumed in Texas. Westmoreland exemplifies the St. Louis connection. Its developer, its designer, and one of its first locally prominent residents had strong associations with St. Louis.

W. W. Baldwin (1845-1936), a lawyer and railway official, organized the South End Land Company, which developed Westmoreland, in June 1902. Although he lived in Burlington, Iowa, Baldwin was president of the St. Louis, Keokuk & Northwestern Railway and the Chicago, Burlington & Kansas City Railway at the time he began investing in Houston suburban real estate. In addition to developing Westmoreland, Baldwin acquired the Rice Ranch in southwest Harris County in 1908, which he developed as an agricultural tract called Westmoreland Farms. In 1909 he had the new town of Bellaire, designed by the Kansas City landscape architect Sid J. Hare, platted at Westmoreland Farms. Through his choice of professional consultants Baldwin introduced a new level of sophistication to the development of suburban real estate in Houston.

To plan the Westmoreland Addition, Baldwin retained the St. Louis engineer, Julius Pitzman (1837-01923). Pitzman planned 15 of the 17 private place subdivisions developed in the West End of St. Louis between 1868 and 1905. These included the grandest--Vandeventer Place (1870), the Forest Park Addition, comprised of Westmoreland Place and Portland Place (1887), and Bell Place (1892-1904)--as well as more modest private streets such as Flora Boulevard (1890). The Westmoreland Historic District is the only known work of community planning by Pitzman in Texas.
Between 1903 and 1905, Mary Virginia Gentry Waldo (d. 1922) had her family's massive towered-villa-type Victorian house, built on Rusk Avenue in Houston's Third Ward in 1886, dismantled. It was then reconstructed, with considerable modification, in Westmoreland by her son, the civil engineer Wilmer Waldo. Mrs. Waldo was the widow of the Houston railway official J. Waldo and she belonged to an old and established Houston family. From 1891 until her husband's death in 1896, Mrs. Waldo and their six children had lived in St. Louis, where Waldo was vice-president of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railway and president of its affiliate, the LaPorte, Galveston & Houston Railway. The Westmoreland Historic District thus embodies in its planning and initial settlement the layers of personal, professional, and business connections that made St. Louis such an important factor in the economy and imagination of Houston's early 20th-century elite.

Westmoreland reproduced the identifying features of the St. Louis private place. Its name evoked the prestige of one of the streets in St. Louis's Forest Park Addition at a time when other new Houston subdivisions were generally identified by the developer's surname (such as the Bute Addition, platted in 1906 on Westmoreland's southern boundary). Its central thoroughfare, Westmoreland Avenue, was platted at 100 feet in width, although it featured extremely deep sidewalk reserves instead of a central median. Where the diagonally rotated South Side Buffalo Bayou street grid, aligned on the axis of Main Street, intersected the cardinally aligned Fourth Ward street grid at the east end of Westmoreland Avenue, the South End Land Company installed cast stone piers and street gates, transmitting to Houston the most recognizable emblems of the St. Louis private place and architecturally declaring
Westmoreland's "private" status. The street layout of Westmoreland reinforced the insularity of the subdivision and contrasted with the open-ended grid of the South End, which lay emphatically "outside" the gates of Westmoreland.

Just as critical in ensuring the identity and integrity of Westmoreland as its place name and physical definition were its restrictive covenants. Westmoreland was the first residential subdivision in Houston to possess a set of restrictive covenants. These imposed a front setback line, beyond which construction could not occur. They mandated that property be used for residential purposes only, but permitted outhouses, stables, physicians' offices in their residences, and flats. The subdivision plat map, which was approved on 10 September 1902, carried the notation that streets were to remain private unless a majority of facing property owners approved their dedication as public thoroughfares and that no street railways could be built in Westmoreland for a period of 20 years. By the standards of post-World War I Houston subdivisions, Westmoreland's restrictions were extremely rudimentary. The covenants contained no racial exclusionary clause, no clause prohibiting livestock, nor did they address minimum house sizes, construction costs, facing materials, or controls on the placement of plantings or utility lines, all of which would become standard by 1920.
The plat map also indicates that the South End Land Company lacked control of a critical property, the homestead of Mr. and Mrs. August Sittig, at the southwest corner of Westmoreland Avenue and Flora Avenue (now largely occupied by the Marshall Square Apartments, which are not in the district). Mr. and Mrs. Sittig had sold the company about 20 percent of the tract on which Westmoreland was developed, but retained ownership of their homestead. Thus, this quarter-block site at the center of the subdivision was not bound by the restrictions, even after the Sittigs sold the property for development in 1906. Mr. and Mrs. Sittig had acquired this property in 1901 from Alfred J. Whitaker, the English-born landscape gardener and horticulturalist responsible for the development of Glenwood Cemetery (1871), Houston's Victorian garden cemetery. Whitaker had owned the property since 1861. He lived on the site and operated a nursery there until he left Houston around the turn of the century.

In marketing the Westmoreland Addition, the South End Land Company exploited elite anxiety about the stability of residential real estate. Announcement of the subdivision's development in the 22 July 1902 issue of the Houston Chronicle included a long interview with Julius Pitzman. Pitzman asserted that Houston's growth as a regional business center would require expansion of the downtown business district into "the parts of Main Street occupied by good houses." Pitzman was quoted as saying: "It seems to me a wise forethought to lay off and improve a choice tract of land like Westmoreland, in accordance with modern ideas and worthy of the future needs of the prosperous citizens of your rapidly growing city." Alfred J. Condit (b. 1852), the Houston real estate broker who was the South End Land Company's agent for Westmoreland, pursued this theme in the initial advertising for Westmoreland. A notice in the Houston Daily Post of 18 May 1903 declared it to be "an enclosed, protected, beautiful park without any objectionable feature." Five years later, a local promotional publication, The Key to the City of Houston (1908), characterized Westmoreland as "a boon to home-seekers desiring to be rid of the noise, dust, and heat of the city. Westmoreland boasts that she has no unsightly corner groceries and noisy streetcars within her gates. However, it is very convenient to have them just outside the gates." The Key to the City of Houston illustrated individual houses built in the subdivision since 1903. It also contained a social directory of Houston ladies, in which 17 households in Westmoreland were listed. Publicity reinforced the desired association of Westmoreland with elite status. A full-page photograph of the entrance to Westmoreland was published in the sumptuous folio series The Artwork of Houston (1904). The short-lived magazine The Houstonians carried an illustrated feature article on the Staiti House in Westmoreland in its 5 August 1905 number.

Westmoreland was substantially built between 1903 and 1913. The first lots were sold in April 1903. During 1903 and 1904, 90 of the 224 lots were sold. Among the purchasers were such speculative house builders as A. LeBrun Metcalf (who built the first house in Westmoreland at 3602 Garrott, now demolished) and Russell Brown. Of the 61 contributing buildings in the district, over half were built between 1904 and 1909. Twenty were built between 1910 and 1919, seven between 1920 and 1929, and two between 1930 and 1932. Thus by 1910, when the next group of private place neighborhoods began to be put on the market, a substantial percentage of the lots in Westmoreland had been sold and improved.

As the first residential subdivision in Houston to employ restrictive covenants, Westmoreland contributed significantly to the history of community development in Houston. At the turn of the 20th century, restrictive covenants were a widely used legal instrument for attempting to guarantee real estate stability by prescribing desired land use and building practices in specific real estate developments and prescribing uses and practices incompatible with those desired. After the legality of municipal zoning codes was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1924, restrictive covenants became less important since most of the purposes they served were addressed by zoning codes. Houston, however, never adopted a zoning code. Thus, restrictive covenants remained the fundamental legal instrument of land use control in Houston and were developed through the 20th century with a considerable degree of complexity in community planning and management, applicable not only to single-family residential subdivisions, but to multi-family residential, retail, office, and industrial developments as well. The lawyer and developer Bernard H. Siegan presented Houston as the case study of an example of non-zoned urban development in his influential book Land Use Without Zoning (1972), in which the role and effectiveness of restrictive covenants were extensively analyzed. Westmoreland thus contributed to local community development practices a legal instrument that became singularly identified with 20th-century Houston.

The validity of Westmoreland's restrictions (which, since they carry no expiration date, run in perpetuity) survived a legal challenge in the case Abernathy vs. Adoe, 49 S.W.2d 476. This was significant legally for the Appeals Court's holdings that restrictive covenants are not invalidated by changed conditions on the periphery of a restricted community and that perpetual restrictions do not violate the rule against perpetuities. This judgment was subsequently cited by the Supreme Court of Texas in Cowling vs. Colligan, 312 S.W.2d 943 (Tx. 1958) as the law in Texas.

Although Westmoreland introduced the St. Louis private street to Houston, it was not as socially exclusive as the St. Louis prototypes and their most prestigious Houston counterparts tended to be. Westmoreland was a speculative real estate venture. The South End Land Company deployed the symbols of the private place for competitive market advantage in appealing to an elite clientele. Westmoreland thus contributed a strategy and a set of tangible and intangible devices to suburban real estate practices in 20th-century Houston that still serve as essential marketing tools. This was apparent in such subsequent market-oriented Houston subdivisions as Montrose and Woodland Heights (1907). Montrose was developed to appeal to the same elite market strata as Westmoreland. Woodland Heights, on the unfashionable north side of Buffalo Bayou, was marketed to middle-to-lower middle strata, but with the prestigious symbols of the private place: a ceremonial entrance gateway, an evocative, anti-urban name, and deed restrictions.

Westmoreland also lacked the full range of modern infrastructure improvements characteristic of succeeding elite 20th-century Houston residential developments. The South End Land Company shelled but did not pave, the streets of Westmoreland. It installed concrete sidewalks and some curbing but not storm sewers or gutters. Electrical and telephone services were originally supplied from poles installed along the streets rather than along the rear property lines. Today, the 200 and 400 blocks of Emerson Avenue preserve open, gutterless drainage ditches as reminders of what constituted acceptable levels of infrastructure improvements in elite residential developments in Houston in 1902. The South End Land Company's failure to anticipate this rise in development standards among affluent home buyers contributed to the perception by 1910 that Westmoreland was not as comprehensively planned and improved as its newer Houston competitors. In comparison to Courtlandt Place, Montrose, and other aspiring Houston subdivisions put on the market after 1910, Westmoreland was old-fashioned. Even the disparity in its street numbering came to reflect this. Westmoreland Avenue and parallel streets were numbered west-to-east, with even numbers on the south and odd numbers on the north, so that its streets were continuous with those in the South End. About 1924 Hawthorne Avenue was re-engineered as a through street. The City of Houston reversed its numbering system to bring it into conformance with Montrose to the west. Westmoreland, Emerson, and Marshall retain the older system and thus are out of synchronization with the surrounding street. The mixture of grand and modest houses that prevailed, even on Westmoreland Avenue, was typical of 19th-century Houston, not the more consistent economic stratification by house size and type of succeeding Houston subdivisions.
The Westmoreland Historic District also derives significance from its place in the architectural history of Houston for the period 1902-1943. In contrast to Westmoreland's advanced community planning attributes, its architecture reflects the district's transitional status between late 19th and early 20th-century patterns of domestic habitation. Westmoreland is the only elite Houston neighborhood south of Buffalo Bayou to preserve a concentration of Victorian house types, although all postdate 1900. The South End contains individual examples, but they are too scattered to preserve a cohesive sense of neighborhood. The Houston Heights Multiple Resource area also contains a range of house types from this period, but these tend to be more modest houses, inasmuch as the Heights was a working-class neighborhood. Subsequent early 20th-century Houston neighborhoods--Courtlandt Place, Woodland Heights, Bute Addition, Avondale Addition, Montrose, and Eastwood -- do not contain residual late Victorian types.

Westmoreland's 18 contributing Late Victorian Queen Anne houses range from cottages- -such as those at 410 Emerson (1905), 219 Hawthorne (1905), and 411 Emerson (1907)--to such substantial 2-story houses with corner turrets and 2-story wrap-around porches as 304 Hawthorne (1904-05) and 401 Westmoreland (1905) . Westsmoreland's best-known house, the Waldo House, represents in its architectural metamorphosis the district's transitional nature.

The district's 18 Four-Square type houses, 9 Craftsman bungalows, and 7 Colonial Revival houses are types characteristic of Houston subdivisions between 1902 and 1914 and thus represent the range of types current during the primary period of the district's significance.

Examples of the 20th-century revival style country house type are rare in Westmoreland because such houses did not begin to be built in Houston until after 1914. A remarkable early example is the Dutch Colonial-style Cravens House at 3401 Garrott (1907). Representative of the type, and indicative of Westmoreland's still genteel status in the 1920s, is the Mediterranean-style Heyne House at 220 Westmoreland (1925). The five apartment buildings listed as contributing properties, built between 1917 and 1932, represent the beginning of a new phase in the district's evolution. Architecturally, they too are examples of 20th-century revival styles, chosen no doubt so that these buildings could be inserted as discreetly as possible into the fabric of the single-family residential neighborhood.

Architects who can be identified for specific contributing properties in the district include the English-born and trained H. C. Cooke (1852-1920) who designed 116 Hawthorne and 215 Westmoreland; the Swedish-born-and-trained Olle J. Lorehn (1863-1939) who designed 407 Marshall and Lewis Sterling Green who designed 232 Emerson; all Houston architects whose primary period of activity was between 1894 and 1917. Available evidence indicates that builders played a larger role in determining the appearance of the district than architects.

Especially prolific were Russell Brown and A. Le Brun Metcalf. Both lived in the district. Russell Brown (c. 1877-1963) was one of Houston's major home builders from the 1910s until the 1940s. The Russell Brown Company, which he organized in 1907, provided both design and construction services and built houses speculatively and on commission. By the late 1920s, Brown had expanded his operations from Houston to Dallas, San Antonio, and Los Angeles. The firm's best-known architectural commissions include the Herbert L. Kokernot House, San Antonio (1928), the O. R. Seagraves Ranch House near Hunt (1929), the Talbott F. Rothwell House, Beaumont (1929), and the W. F. Morgan House, Olmos Park (1931). The 12 contributing buildings by Brown in Westmoreland make the district the major repository of his early work. Metcalf's career was not as long-lived as Brown's, but he built extensively in Westmoreland. Four houses by Metcalf survive, including the Colonial Revival house at 428 Westmoreland in which Metcalf and his family briefly lived (Metcalf often dwelt in one of his Westmoreland houses before selling it). The Southern Loan & Investment Company built five contributing houses in the district between 1906 and 1911. This was one of a number of companies involved in lumber sales, house construction, and suburban development controlled by Jesse H. Jones (1874-1956), who became Houston's foremost businessman and public figure during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. Three contributing properties correspond to designs from George F. Barber's popular pattern books. They bespeak the role of such publications in the dissemination of approved images for domestic habitation in Houston at the turn of the century. The three Barber designs and the houses of Brown and Metcalf also indicate that what now appear to be anachronistic Victorian designs were produced by these builders simultaneously with "advanced" bungalow, Four-Square, and Colonial Revival designs, suggesting that such distinctions were not as compelling in the 1904-1906 period when these houses were built.

The architecture of Westmoreland conveys a sense of the district's period of significance through patterns of spatial organization and physical features embodied in the design, setting, and materials of contributing properties. Westmoreland houses are set back uniformly from the sidewalk, in conformance with restrictions, and face the street. Houses tend to be raised above grade on piers. In combination with floor-to-ceiling heights that range from 10 feet to 14 feet, the resulting verticality enables Westmoreland houses to shape a collective space that gives the district its strong sense of place.

Front porches are the unifying feature of the district. Designed to mediate between outside and inside, public and private, these raised platforms are detailed as extensions of each house's architecture, with gingerbread decoration and cylindrical corner bays or classical colonnettes on Late Victorian houses, grandiose classical columns on Colonial Revival houses, and squat tapered piers and exposed rafters on Craftsman bungalows and Four Square type houses. The front porch distinguishes Westmoreland from post-World War I Houston subdivisions, where the front porch was suppressed as too old-fashioned. A related feature is the glass transom and sidelights that frame the front doors. These occur in almost all contributing houses built before 1914.

Corresponding to the front porch as a space of implied ritual conviviality among social peers were the back porch, the back yard, and the back buildings. They contribute to the significance of the district by preserving, more explicitly than the front of the house, a sense of the functional, class, race, and gender divisions that characterize middle-to-upper income Southern households at the turn of the century. These were the areas of the house where tradesmen called and delivered goods, where such domestic tasks as the washing and drying of laundry were performed, and where servants congregated. As a Southern city, Houston was segregated racially during the period of the district's prime significance. The households of Westmoreland were exclusively Caucasian and were among those in the city most likely to employ domestic servants, who were predominantly African American. The Houston City Directory for 1928-1929 lists residents for "rear" dwellings for 80 percent of the households on Westmoreland Avenue, 89 percent on Garrott, 76 percent on Burlington, 60 percent on Marshall, 48 percent on Emerson, and 29 percent on Hawthorne. Many of the contributing properties retain outbuildings at the rear of lots that once served as laundry sheds, storage sheds, and servants' apartments. The two grandest houses in the district, 201 Westmoreland and 215 Westmoreland retain their architecturally coordinated 2-story stable and carriage houses. Smaller outbuildings that originally served as stables and carriage houses survive, with modifications, at 401 Westmoreland, 401 Emerson, and 3410 Garrott. By 1910, the family automobile was likely to have supplanted horses and a carriage in Houston and it required a specialized rear outbuilding for its use. The substantial 2-story outbuilding at 3410 Burlington, which is architecturally coordinated with the house, was built in 1913 as a garage. The Westmoreland Historic District retains the backspaces and a number of "outhouses" that complement the more visible and ceremonious street-facing spaces of the house.

Materials that convey a sense of the period of the historic significance of the district include wood clapboard siding, which was omnipresent in Houston until after World War I, when brick veneer replaced it as the most desirable exterior facing material for middle-class houses. Almost every contributing house in Westmoreland is faced with wood clapboarding. Exceptions are 201 Westmoreland, which is of brick-bearing-wall construction, all the houses built after World War I, and all the apartment buildings. Russell Brown's houses at 3618 Burlington and the house at 411 Marshall (1911) are early examples of brick veneer construction, as were the no-longer extant Fordtran-Blakeley House at 3502 Burlington (c. 1906) and the no-longer extant Masterson House at 3702 Burlington (1907). On Late Victorian houses and some Craftsman bungalows, shingle siding, and cast stone appear as decorative facings. Stone-faced cast concrete was especially popular in the 1905 period; the Westmoreland gate piers were faced with "rusticated" cast stone.

Plantings along the streets that convey a sense of the history of the district include live oak trees (especially on Marshall), magnolia trees (especially on Emerson), and ornamental date palm trees (especially on Westmoreland). Palm trees used as street trees are associated with the first two decades of the 20th century in Houston (when they were the original street trees of the boulevards in Montrose) and of Texas (when they were the street trees of Broadway in Galveston and of both new town and agricultural real estate developments in the Lower Rio Grande Valley). Two designed gardens were installed in the district, the Masterson garden at 3702 Burlington and the Staiti garden at 421 Westmoreland (1916). Neither exists, although they are documented by Sadie Gwin Blackburn in her essay on the evolution of Houston's domestic landscape in Houston's Forgotten Heritage (1991). Surviving on the Masterson property, across from 427 Marshall, is a majestic live oak, the most imposing in the district.

The residents of the Westmoreland Historic District during its period of primary significance included individuals who participated in patterns of events that contributed to the history of Houston in the fields of commerce; community planning and development, engineering, and architecture; education and the performing arts; and politics and government.

Among those who settled in Westmoreland Addition during its first decade were a number of men who contributed to Houston's emergence as a petroleum center. Prior to 1910, Westmoreland seems to have had a larger concentration of oilmen than any other Houston subdivision. Walter W. Fondren (1877-1939), an oil driller and co-founder of the Humble Oil & Refining Company, lived at 401 Westmoreland. John H. Hamman (no dates located), an independent oil man, lived at 401 Emerson. The oil driller John Curtis McKallip (1869-1921) lived at 3522 Garrott (demolished). One of Houston's pioneer oilmen, Henry T. Staiti (1874- 1933), lived at 421 Westmoreland, which exists but has been moved to Sam Houston Park and transformed into a historic house museum. William R. Nash (1860-1930), who built 215 Westmoreland, was a Brazoria County rancher who derived considerable wealth from his oil-producing properties, as did the Brazoria County planter Judge Harris Masterson (1856-1920) and the Fort Bend County rancher and planter Bassett Blakeley (b. 1874), whose large houses on Burlington Avenue have been demolished. One female resident of Westmoreland was associated with the oil business. Miss Florence M. Sterling (d. 1940), whose house at 405 Hawthorne has been demolished, was a long-time business associate of her brother R. S. Sterling, a co-founder of the Humble Oil & Refining Co. and Governor of Texas. Miss Sterling was secretary, then treasurer, of the Humble Oil & Refining Co. before she retired in 1925. Prominent locally in the women's suffrage movement, she published a magazine, The Woman's Viewpoint, after 1924.

James R. Cravens (c. 1862-1936) at 3410 Garrott, Burke Baker at 420 Westmoreland, and James A. Giraud (d. 1923) at 3516 Garrott were prominent figures in the Houston insurance business. Herbert A. Paine (1857-unknown) at 232 Emerson and Brian Brewster Gilmer (1876-unknown) at 200 Westmoreland were notable wholesalers.
Contributions to education and the performing arts are especially well represented in the Westmoreland Historic District. The Misses Lula and Virginia Waldo were graduates of Smith College (classes of 1903 and 1904) and their sister Mary had studied in Paris. From 1904 until 1915 they conducted a select private school in Houston. Miss Virginia subsequently taught at the Hockaday School in Dallas and Miss Mary at Kinkaid School in Houston. Paul Whitfield Horn (1870-1932) of 228 Emerson was Superintendent of City Schools in Houston from 1904 until 1921; in 1924 he became the founding president of Texas Tech University in Lubbock. Louis Wiltz Kemp (1881-1956) of 214 Westmoreland, an employee of the Texas company, was a widely recognized authority on the history of Texas, a proponent of the establishment of the San Jacinto Monument and Museum, chairman of the board of historians for the Texas Centennial, a trustee of the Texas State Library, and a president of the Texas State Historical Association. Joseph Moody Dawson (1888-unknown), whose primary residence at 501 Westmoreland has been demolished, but who also lived at 400 Emerson, was a Houston-born violinist. Miss Louise C. Daniels, who built 408 Marshall, was a Galveston-born pianist, who trained at the Boston Conservatory of Music. Mrs. John Wesley Graham, who lived at 215 Westmoreland from 1930 to 1933, brought the Italian maestro Uriel Nespoli to Houston in 1931 to serve as the first permanent conductor of the Houston Symphony Orchestra. Dawson, Miss Daniels, and Mrs. Graham were music teachers, as was Bessie Griffiths at 408 Hawthorne.

Politics and government are represented by Lyndon B. Johnson (1908-1973), 36th president of the U.S., who lived with his aunt and uncle at 435 Hawthorne in 1930-31 while teaching debate at Sam Houston High School, and former Texas governor William P. Hobby, who lived briefly at 215 Westmoreland, and James V. Allred, who lived briefly at 400 Emerson. Rienzi M. Johnston (1849-1926), whose house at 439 Westmoreland has been demolished, was a Democratic National Committeeman from Texas and was appointed by Governor Oscar Colquitt to fill the unexpired term of U. S. Senator Joseph W. Bailey in 1913. From 1885 until 1919, Johnston was editor of the Houston Daily Post.

Residents of the Westmoreland Historic District had particularly strong associations with the oil industry during its first decade of activity in Houston and with education and the performing arts. This combination of entrepreneurship and cultivation represents the propensity of American urban elites during the Progressive Era to seek both wealth and cultural refinement. After World War I, Westmoreland seemed to have attracted genteel "Bohemians" who perhaps sought association with Houston's elite but could not afford to live in the newest fashionable neighborhoods. An indication of Westmoreland's continuing respectability into mid-century is that when the first edition of the Houston Social Directory was published in 1950, it contained 23 listings for households in the neighborhood.

The intrusion of Noncontributing structures and buildings has affected the integrity of the Westmoreland Addition. Boundary lines of the proposed historic district exclude many intrusive elements. They encompass 25 apartment and townhouse complexes built in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. These alter the historic character of the district. However, they clearly read as intrusions into the historic fabric of the district. They have not imposed a new spatial order on the district and thus do not cause contributing structures to read as exceptional or residual fragments.

The Westmoreland Historic District represents a temporal, spatial, socioeconomic, and architectural complex that is not duplicated by any other historic district, or potential historic district, in Houston. Its compact size, private place aspirations, and grand houses distinguish it from the larger, more diffuse Houston Heights Multiple Resource area. Its mixture of house types, styles, and sizes, especially its inclusion of Late Victorian types, distinguish it from the Courtlandt Place Historic District, and the surrounding Bute, Avondale, and Montrose additions. Its secure identity and integrity as a neighborhood distinguish it from the nearby former neighborhoods of the South End of Houston.

Preservation and restoration activity have been critical factors in stimulating a recognition of the historical significance of the Westmoreland Historic District. The long-term commitment of such families as the Bright-Askews, Scotts, Waldos, Staitis, and Hammans to Westmoreland prevented its complete dissolution in the 1950s and 1960s. Maryann and Clovis B. Heimsath initiated efforts to preserve the neighborhood when they acquired the Waldo House from Miss Lula Waldo in 1965. Dorie and Carroll Shaddock's restoration of the Metcalf- Crawford-Gydeson House at 428 Westmoreland in 1977 demonstrated that even houses that had attracted notoriety for their severely deteriorated condition were not beyond rescue and rehabilitation. Ron Crockett's exhaustive title research has resulted in the compilation of unusually complete documentation on property ownership and building histories in the historic district.
The publication in 1991 of Houston's Forgotten Heritage by Dorothy Knox Howe Houghton, Barrie Scardino, Sadie Gwin Blackburn, and Katherine S. Howe and of Houston, The Unknown City, 1836-1946 by Marguerite Johnston made available much new historical information on domestic life in 19th and early 20th-century Houston. The authors of Houston's Forgotten Heritage recognized the community planning advances introduced at Westmoreland and analyzed and illustrated several houses and gardens in the district.

By virtue of its community planning features, its contributions to the evolution of suburban real estate development practices in Houston, its breadth of house types reflecting the transition from late 19th to early 20th-century images of domestic style, and its association with persons active in the city's business and cultural life, the Westmoreland Historic District remains a spatially evocative preserve of turn of the century Houston.