This collection is an architectural survey conducted by thirteen architectural students from the University of Houston who completed the Fall 2002 Fifth Year Studio course. The Upper Kirby District, a tax increment finance district, sponsored the project. The students were taking a course that focused on historic preservation and adaptive reuse and studied eighty-one buildings along a portion of Richmond Avenue, beginning at Kirby Avenue and running west past Wesleyan and Las Palmas Streets. The buildings were constructed between the mid-fifties and the mid-seventies, before the oil boom that fueled Houston’s explosive growth in the seventies.
The collection is four folders with a black and white copy in another set of four folders, all in the same document box. The first four folders contain maps, eighty-one survey forms with color photographs, and copies of articles reviewing the project results and discussing the major developers. The survey forms are text and color photographs of eighty-one buildings along Richmond Avenue and Wesleyan in southwest Houston. The buildings are described according to site number, address, name of occupant, building and site classification, architectural features, building materials, year built and owner. Notebook dividers index the forms with tabs listing the Richmond or Wesleyan street address number. After the survey forms are copies of articles related to the developers who built the majority of buildings. Following the originals in four folders are black and white photocopies of the originals with copies of magazine articles about a few of the structures.
The collection is arranged into three series; maps, survery forms and builder descriptions. The maps are illustrated maps of the Richmond corridor and Harris County Appraisal District maps. The survey forms are arranged in ascending numerical order according to street addresses. The builder information contains a project log from Gerald D. Hines and articles about developers Gerald Hines and Kenneth Schnitzer.
None.
Permission to publish or reproduce materials from the papers of the Richmond Corridor Building Survey in Houston must be obtained from the Gerald D. Hines School of Architecture of the University of Houston, University Park, Houston, Texas.
Anna Mod, a preservation consultant, assisted in the direction of this student research effort and donated the collection to the Houston Metropolitan Research Center in 2006. Barry Moore, who donated his architectural drawings to HMRC, was an adjunct professor of architecture at the University of Houston and advised students in conducting this project.
Processed by: Ron Drees, February, 2007.