Queen Anne Denounced in Downtown Houston, 2011 Leeland Avenue, Houston, Texas

On the southeast fringe of Downtown Houston, Texas, we see yet another example of the impropriety that existed in the mid twentieth century.  Formerly a middle class residential neighborhood of very respectable late nineteenth and early twentieth century detached houses, the area was industrialized, in part, by the period between World War I and World War II.  Some residences survived due to the African American population that remained in the area–no longer seen as a fashionable middle class place for whites.

While we always hope for preservation, rarely is there a residential street, especially inner city Houston, in some old neighborhood where the misery mavens have not been hard at work to destroy some-one’s forgotten work of beauty.  Here we see the former detached Queen Anne Revival dwelling, no doubt the origins of middle class respectability, wrapped in mid twentieth century secretion.  Attached to a horror of a commercial complex, the building was recently for sale, but, of course there is little hope of resurrection and certainly not restoration.

Behind the mid-century yellow brick, that so often obscures some poor cottage we may or may not know of, was once a dwelling as seen in the photo above.  Most likely among other houses of this form and style, the discarded residence in Leeland Avenue was originally your typical charming southern version of a Queen Anne Revival house within a middle class lexicon.  We can see this through the pyramidal roof, as well as the the fact that the front gable portion of the house is at a slightly lower pitch than the pyramidal section of the roof.  This roof pitch formation often denotes that the house was built in the 1890s, but in Houston, it is possible that such styles were slightly behind by perhaps five to ten years–or maybe not.  Yet this house is dated at around the turn of the twentieth century.  Formerly, the house would have featured an extensive one-story porch starting just inside the front-gabled section at the roofline of the house, wrapping around the entire first floor of with perhaps a partial side portion.  The glazed single-door entrance and one-over-one windows would  have been among the fenestration shaded by the porch. 

We are always unhappy at such a sad sight as this house type, form, and style is a particularly charming southern dwelling that is often quite spacious in small houses even by today’s standards.

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