Sam Houston Park: Houston's Oldest Park and Its Rescued Houses

In eighteen ninety-nine the City of Houston purchased twenty acres just west of downtown and designated it the city's first public park, landscaping it in a Victorian style with footpaths and a small bridge over a stream. The park was renamed Sam Houston Park in nineteen oh three. Over the following decades, as historic Houston buildings were threatened with demolition, preservationists began moving them into the park.

Today the Heritage Society operates ten historic structures here, spanning eighteen twenty-three through nineteen oh five, including the Kellum-Noble House, the oldest surviving brick home in Houston. The collection amounts to a living map of how Houston's people actually lived across a century, arranged on twenty acres a few blocks from the skyscrapers of downtown.