Embraceable Glenbrook Valley

Houston has a long history of hard-fought battles over whether and how to preserve the city’s landmark buildings, neighborhoods, churches and other structures. By inclination, Houstonians are not so much interested in looking back at the past as we are peeking around the next corner to see what the future holds.

So when a group of preservationists organized in 2008 to seek historic district status for the Glenbrook Valley neighborhood in southeast Houston, some eyebrows were raised. Glenbrook Valley, a neighborhood built from 1953 to 1964, as a historic district? Why, that was barely a half century ago, well within the lifetimes of hundreds of thousands of Houstonians. Where’s the history in that?

After much debate, the ranch-style neighborhood was approved for historic district designation, the first postwar neighborhood in Texas to be so recognized.

But the skeptics and doubters remained. We, too, had some second thoughts about the wisdom of elevating such recent construction to historic district status.

The complete Houston Chronicle article can be found here