Streets of Houston: Montrose Boulevard
Beginnings as an Elite Neighborhood Street
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Pont Neuf: The First Modern Street in Paris
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Deadwood: “The City Is as it Walks”
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Streets of Houston: Grant Street
Image 1. A clip from the 1895 Whitty & Stott Map of Houston. The tracks of the former Galveston, Houston & San Antonio Railway are depicted. Only a few subdivisions had been platted. Neither Montrose Boulevard nor Lower Westheimer yet existed. The western city limits correspond to somewhere close to Taft Street. Image source: Library of Congress.
The Montrose area was sparsely developed in 1895. Only four subdivisions were platted, and these were not yet incorporated into Houston. By 1907, some housing existed east of the former Galveston, Houston & San Antonio Railway tracks, now marked by Grant Street. There was still no Montrose Boulevard and still no lower Westheimer Street.1
This is a brief history of Montrose Boulevard. What we know as a major thoroughfare started as a signature street for a high-end subdivision. EC Lamb, RE Field, and KC Barklay chartered the Montrose Land Company with $25,000 of capital stock in 1910. The company planned a subdivision of the same name. Thomas Ball, one of the company directors, claimed in an interview that the name Montrose Addition was inspired by the romantic fiction of Sir Walter Scott, and that its two featured ninety-foot north-south boulevards would be named Aberdeen and Dundee. By December, the Bryan Home Building Company advertised a house on Montrose at Milam with four bedrooms on a 50x100-foot lot.2
The Houston Land Corporation subsumed the Montrose Land Company, and maintained its headquarters on the second floor of the Scanlan Building on Main Street. This larger company held $500,000 and its president, John Wiley Link, was new to Houston. He called it “Montrose Place,” apparently an alternative name. and the company projected that lots would be ready for sale on April 1, 1911. Link purchased land on Block 41 of the Montrose Addition for his own homestead at a price of $32,000. Link commissioned the Fort Worth architects, Sanguinet, Staats & Barnes to design and construct a mansion on this tract. The three-story, brick-faced mansion with octastyle portico faces Montrose Boulevard, but with a large setback. It was the first dwelling completed in the Montrose Addition. Also known as the Link-Lee House, it is currently the administration building for St. Thomas University.3
The Montrose Addition and subdivisions to its north, east, and south developed gridiron street networks by 1913. Two years later, the Houston Land Corporation amended its subdivision plan for the Montrose Addition, the Montrose Annex, and Audubon Place. This map documented a detailed street plan, which included some neighboring subdivisions.4
This map called for a 90-foot right-of-way on Montrose Blvd, with an esplanade on each block with breaks at the intersections. The esplanades were planned for 14-feet in width, with 18-foot sidewalks on each side of the carriageway. There were identical dimensions for Yoakum. Other north-south streets in the Montrose Addition were planned for 60 feet with 15-foot margins. These were the dimensions for all but one of the east-west streets in the Montrose Addition. The exception is Lovett Boulevard, which was planned as the grand boulevard, with 110-feet in width, a 30-foot-wide esplanade, and 20-foot margins.5
The blocks in the Montrose Addition were subdivided in various ways. Many were square blocks, which copied the form of the Borden Survey, but other square blocks were split into 14 lots, with four key lots. The blocks between Yoakum and Montrose, and between Montrose and Roseland were broader than the square ones, subdivided into 16 lots with six key lots. A narrow easement split the north-south axis of the blocks between Montrose and Roseland, and another alley was defined splitting the west-east axis through all the blocks in Audubon Place.6
The South End streetcar line entered the Montrose Addition from the Hyde Park Addition to the north. Then known as Milby Street, a chicane took the streetcar onto Ariel Street, the division between the Montrose Addition, and Avondale and Courtlandt Place. The streetcar tracks proceeded west on Hawthorne and south on Roseland until the terminus at West Main. The Houston Land Company was located on a small lot fronting West Alabama at the alley between Montrose and Roseland. West of Graustark or Yupon was the Montrose Annex, another development of the Houston Land Company. It was bounded by Westheimer and West Alabama. To the south were the Rossmayne Addition and the Roseland and Fitze Addition. Implied by low edge of the map was and a street aligned with Montrose, south of Richmond.7
This 1921 map demonstrates that sometime after 1913, Montrose was extended to the south past Richmond. Montrose in 1921 terminated at a circular intersection at Main Street, which served as a gateway to the new Hermann Park plan. A new thoroughfare named Lincoln Boulevard ran north from Westheimer, but had no direct access to Montrose Boulevard. No changes to the length of Montrose are documented by this 1930 map, but its context within the developing street network changed radically. In the 1920s, the city made a coherent gridded network between Westheimer and Main Street, rationalizing the previously disjointed subdivision plans.8
The 1950 Rand McNally Map shows Lincoln Boulevard completed from Westheimer to Allen Parkway. The City of Houston further removed Montrose Boulevard from its beginnings as a neighborhood street by concatenating it with Lincoln Boulevard. Yet there was no means to create a completely straight path in that direction. A more direct path would have been the former right-of-way for the Galveston, Houston & San Antonio Railroad (GHSA), which defines the curve in present-day Grant Street, but that had been acquired by subdivision developers and housing occupied much of the old right-of-way. Instead, the city added a chicane to Montrose, just north of Westheimer, which linked it to Lincoln Boulevard. Also note that a vestige of the GHSA ran a short way south of Allen Parkway, probably serving the former Sears Warehouse.9
In conclusion, Montrose Boulevard was planned as a featured street for an elite streetcar subdivision in 1910. In 1912, Link finished his mansion, the first home completed in the Montrose Addition. The amended plat filed with Harris County in 1915 called for a 90-foot boulevard with 14-foot esplanades, with the carriageway flanked by 18-foot margins outside the curbs. Between 1913 and 1921, Montrose Boulevard was extended south to Main Street. Lincoln Boulevard ran continuously from Westheimer to Allen Parkway by mid-century. When Sinclair published its Houston street map in 1965, the southern segment was linked with Lincoln Boulevard, and with the renaming of the later, Montrose was a unified artery running from Allen Parkway to Main Street.
Whitty & Stott, “City of Houston and Environs,” Library of Congress, 1895; “1907 Sanborn Map of Houston,” Perry-Castañeda Map Collection (Dolph Briscoe Library, University of Texas), Facet 1; bnjd, “Streets of Houston: Grant Street” What Are Streets For, June 14, 2024.
Houston Chronicle, June 4, 1910, Page 7, Column 2; July 17, Page 10, Columns 1‒2; December 18, 1910, Page 48, Column 6; Barbara McIntosh, “Montrose: A ‘land of milk and honey’ is turning sour for some,” Houston Post, September 10, 1978, Houston History Research Center, Vertical files: H Subdivisions, Montrose, before 1980.
Houston Chronicle, December 23, 1910, Page 14, Column 6; December 17, 1911, Page 38, Column 7; “Link-Lee House,” Wikipedia; “National Register of Historic Places Registration Form: Link-Lee House,” United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service, https://atlas.thc.texas.gov/NR/pdfs/00000751/00000751.pdf.
J.M. Kelsen, “Houston Street Guide,” Houston History Research Center, Digital Archives; Houston Land Corporation, “Amended Map of Montrose Addition to the City of Houston,” February 11, 1915, Houston History Research Center, TXR, MC A13.
“Amended Map of Montrose Addition.”
“Amended Map of Montrose Addition.”
“Amended Map of Montrose Addition.”
City of Houston Engineering Department, “Houston Engineering Map 1921,” Houston History Research Center, Digital Archives; American Automotive Association, “Houston Adjacent Subdivisions Map 1930,” Houston History Research Center, Digital Archives.
Rand McNally & Company, “Houston Street Map 1950,” Houston History Research Center, Digital Archives; Rand McNally & Company, “Sinclair Houston Street Map 1965,” Houston History Research Center, Digital Archives.