Eastwood Civic Association

A new lease on life:
Rebounding Eastwood is a resident-friendly neighborhood

Houston Chronicle, September 30, 2003
By Louis B. Parks

Looking up and down McKinney from the brick and tile porch of their newly restored 1920s Tudor home, where two ceiling fans stir a breeze, Jessica and Trace Morrill agree they made the right decision moving to Eastwood.

"I'm used to a certain way of life," says Trace Morrill, a student at the South Texas College of Law. "I have my own idea of what a community is like."

Jessica, a nursing student at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, has had a passion for old homes since her parents restored one, so she quickly fell in love when she drove through this neighborhood, where the earliest homes were built right after the turn of the 20th century.

The industrial areas to the west and north of business-free Eastwood didn't bother them. Neither did the many rundown homes that still outnumber the renovations on some streets in the northern, older section. Those made entry cheaper for a young couple buying a first home they were eager to renovate.

Just 13 months after the Morrills moved in they are rushing to finish last details: Their now beautiful home will be featured on the annual Eastwood Historic Home Tour next month.

Even as the Morrills show off how they've opened up the kitchen while restoring it to 1920s style, or how the new bathroom tiles are in the exact pattern of the originals, their conversation is more about the neighborhood than the house. After several years living in bland apartments in impersonal neighborhoods, the young couple, both 27, found themselves yearning for the social warmth they knew growing up in Beeville in South Texas.

"Everyone just took us in," Jessica Morrill says. "Something I'd never experienced anywhere else in Houston. it was like a sense of family. We walk our dogs and people invite us into their homes."

Neighborliness is officially sanctioned here. Friday night "porch crawls" are promoted at civic association meetings. Residents stroll from home to home under a canopy provided by old oak trees that line the streets.

"Everybody brings a bottle of wine and something to eat," says Rick Newlin, a 24-year resident who lives on Coyle in south Eastwood with partner Keith Davis. "So we know people who live (all over) the neighborhood."

There are also many impromptu parties.

"When everybody gets off work the phones start ringing and everybody ends up at someone's house," says Eastwood Civic Association president Cathy Sessums, who, with husband John, has lived in Eastwood four years. "We've ended up with 60-70 people in this house. They bring everything. It helps us take care of each other."

The get-togethers remind Hector Ayala , an Exxon engineer, of college days.

"You bounce around from house to house throughout the night and you get to meet your neighbors and socialize with them," he says. "We have snacks, we have drinks. We just chill out and meet new people from surrounding areas."

The interaction is also about safety. The more the neighbors know each other, the more they can look out for one another. It's certainly a less controversial approach than a year ago when one resident started a short-lived vigilante group because of East End gangs and crime. That stirred increased police presence in the area.

"Eastwood is actually kind of quiet," says Houston Police Captain Dwayne Ready, in charge of the South Central Patrol Division. "Some of my more active community citizens come from Eastwood. They attend my P.I.P. (Positive Interaction Program) meetings regularly. They have a graffiti abatement van. We go to their meetings, they go to our meetings. Anytime things surface, they send me an e-mail or call."

Ayala , a 30-year-old who grew up here - he went to Milby High School - left to attend Stanford, then work on the East Coast before returning to the Houston area. He and wife Tina and daughter Isabel, now 3 , did a lot of hunting before picking a partly restored 1914 home on Walker with high ceilings, gleaming old oak floors, a wide veranda - and now a modern kitchen.

"We looked in the Heights and Montrose," Ayala says. "They have the same type of homes for twice the cost. We saw a lot of cheap townhome construction being done. That takes away the neighborhood feel."

Townhomes, restoration and bargain deals are standard topics with Eastwood residents. So far, says Bill England, president of the Eastwood Historical Commission, they've been able to discourage townhomes. Most of the residences are single-family homes, with a smattering of duplexes and fourplexes, and a few small apartment buildings.

Eastwood, which officially opened in 1913, is one of the few old communities where deed restrictions never lapsed, the reason it has no businesses. Eastwood was developed by William A. Wilson shortly after he established Woodland Heights.

The original neighborhood was upscale, with trips to downtown work and shopping facilitated by trolley and by the Galveston-Houston Interurban rail line. England says Howard Hughes grew up on McKinney, although the exact house is open to debate.

In the 1930s, the neighborhood got a large Italian population: "Half the restaurateurs in Houston grew up here," say England, a 19-year resident who lives with partner Sonny Garza.

A strong Hispanic influence arrived in later decades, plus some African-American residents, although the neighborhood has retained a strong Anglo presence. These days there is also an Asian population.

The neighborhood's latest reincarnation involves the influx of empty nesters and young families, many of whom are restoring their homes.

"When we first moved over here, there were still five or six original owners on our street," says Newlin. "There was a lot of rental property of people who left in the '50s and '60s for the suburbs. The area had seen better days."

Now his street, like most of those in southern Eastwood, is almost completely restored.

Gloria Acker, a broker with Heritage Texas Properties who focuses on central city locations, has sold several homes in Eastwood in the past two or three years, all to young professionals.

"It's very difficult to find anything comparable to Eastwood, but we still have a psychological block to the east side of town," she says. "There has been a wonderful appreciation of home cost, but they are still well behind what Heights and Montrose cost."

The current rebuilding of Gulfgate Mall is helping. And once you cross the boundaries of non-commercial Eastwood there are plenty of good eateries such as Kanomwan Thai just a block east of Dumble on Telephone Road, or the original Loma Linda a bit farther along Telephone Road.

But who needs food? Some mornings the aroma of fresh-ground coffee wafting over from the Maxwell House plant and the scent of rising bread from the Rainbo Bakery meet over Eastwood to make local mouths water.

"We've always said you could have breakfast just breathing in Eastwood," says England.

EASTWOOD

Location: 2.5 miles southeast of downtown Houston, just north of Interstate 45 between Cullen and South Lockwood exits.

Boundaries: Sidney Street on the west, Harrisburg on the north, Dumble on the east and Harby on the south.

Community events: The eighth-annual Eastwood Historic Homes Tour is noon-5 p.m. Oct. 18-19 and features six homes and Lantrip Elementary, built in 1916.

Established: 1913, as a planned community on the "social center idea" by William A. Wilson. A few earlier homes were built 1900-1909 and most in the northern section were built by 1919. Building progressed southward in the 1920s and 1930s with period homes and bungalows. Most of this southern area has been restored.

Architecture: The early homes were custom homes: craftsman, foursquare, arts & crafts and mission. Lantrip Elementary, the oldest in-use school in HISD, is mission-style, built on the cottage plan, designed by Maurice Sullivan, architect of St. Anne Catholic Church in Montrose. In the newer section (built from the 1920s and 1930s) are bungalows, prairie, colonial and federal styles. A few out-of-place period homes from the 1950s-'70s dot the neighborhood.

Number of homes: about 800.

Home prices: 13 homes on the market vary from $84-$135 per square foot, depending on size (1,300-3,000 square feet), condition and location.

Schools: Lantrip and Cage elementary schools, Jackson Middle School and Stephen F. Austin High School