Our Neighborhood
Our Future…
We are creating new programs, new parks, online connections and events for all ages and interests: parties, happy hours, playgroups, coffees, picnics, hobby meet-ups, sports, and more. Join us, build connections and friendships for a lifetime - help us shape an even better Sunset Heights.
Our Present…
Beautiful images taken & shared by a 24th St. neighbor
6 reasons to love the Sunset Heights
Written and shared with us by Boulevard Realty, one of our community partners. (We figured when something is done so well - why re-invent the wheel - we simply added a few links for you to explore.) The content was originally posted on their RediscoveringHouston blog.
Our Past…
.
The story of Sunset Heights goes almost as far back as the city of Houston itself. Houston, and the land on which the Heights is located, went through multiple divisions and multiple owners during the first 50 years of its existence. By the turn of the century, several groups of developers, some formed ad hoc, began to carve out neighborhoods to the north of White Oak bayou and northwest of the burgeoning downtown Houston center. Sunset Heights was among the first wave of those developments, established in tradition and dynamic in spirit. Click below for a tour of the history of Sunset Heights with selected pictures and documents from that history.
A man named Richard Rodgers purchased 100 acres of this land for $18,750, or about $13 for each 3,000 square-foot lot in his new neighborhood. By August 15th 1910, Rodgers created the Sunset Heights Realty Co. to develop Sunset Heights. Clear title to this land was challenged several times over the succeeding years, so Rodgers was compelled to create a $100,000 bond for Sunset Heights as the insurance policy to protect land purchasers against title suits in court.
The original platting of Sunset Heights extended from Yale to the west, 29th St. to the north, Airline & Link Rds. to the east, and just below E. 23rd St. to the south.
Why did Rodgers choose the name “Sunset”? As it happens, “Sunset” was a very popular moniker for everything from coffee to train lines to the new railroad hospital that opened in 1911. It isn’t hard to understand that Texas sunsets could be so aesthetically inspiring.
Sunset Heights had enough resources that in January 1911 it was able to successfully fight annexation by the Houston Heights. The Houston Heights was attempting to annex unincorporated areas around it to become so large that Houston would be unable to annex it. Houston Heights was eventually annexed in 1918, and shortly after Rodgers died, Sunset Heights was annexed by Houston in 1927.