History
Shenandoah, the first subdivision in the area, opened in the mid-1950s on former greenfield. Shenandoah had 16 blocks of ranch-style homes. The Shenandoah Civic Association opened in 1956; since the City of Houston has no zoning, the Shenandoah Civic Association's main goal is to enforce deed restrictions which regulate construction of housing and prevent businesses being operated from homes.
Robert Fisher and Lisa Taafe, authors of the 1997 article Public Life in Gulfton: Multiple Publics and Models of Organization, said that the sudden demographic shifts in the late 1970s and 1980s "profoundly affected" Shenandoah as bars, warehouses, and nightclubs appeared next to Shenandoah houses. Many area apartment owners let their units decay from a lack of maintenance. The factors threatened Shenandoah property values, therefore the Shenandoah Civic Association added a security patrol, lobbied for the Houston City Council to end liquor licenses of bars adjacent to Shenandoah, engaged in neighborhood beautification, and supported the establishment of a Houston Police Department storefront in Gulfton. Generally the Shenandoah Civic Association did not involve itself in matters related to the apartments surrounding the subdivision.
In April 1992 Bob Lanier, the Mayor of Houston, named Gulfton as one of ten Houston neighborhoods targeted by a city revitalization program. One aspect of Lanier's project consisted of building barricades around the Shenandoah subdivision to reduce traffic and crime; the Shenandoah Civic Association supported and pursued the street closures. The Gulfton Area Neighborhood Organization (GANO) opposed Shenandoah's barricading. All of the other advocacy groups, except for some GAAC members, opposed the closure. Members of the community groups said that the closure has racist motives, that the closures would not effectively control crime, that the city was not using funds wisely, and that the closures would harm local businesses.
Fisher and Taafe that the Shenandoah Civic Association was a conservative organization made of mostly middle class residents that aimed to maintain the neighborhood and its property values. Fisher and Taafe said that after Central American Refugee Center (CARECEN) merged into GANO, the combined organization was unlikely to cooperate with the Shenandoah Civic Club. In November 1995, when the Texas State Legislature established a juvenile crime prevention grant for Gulfton, GANO cooperated with the Shenandoah Civic Association to accomplish the goal.
Read more about this topic: Shenandoah, Houston
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“[Men say:] “Don’t you know that we are your natural protectors?” But what is a woman afraid of on a lonely road after dark? The bears and wolves are all gone; there is nothing to be afraid of now but our natural protectors.”
—Frances A. Griffin, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 19, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)