Brick Streets District - Tyler Morning Telegraph newspaper article:
July 08, 2004
Brick Streets Area Takes In 29 Blocks
Tyler's sixth historic district is now listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
By LAURA JETT KRANTZ
Staff Writer
Tyler's sixth historic district is now listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
The Brick Streets Historic District is about a half mile south of downtown and encompasses 29 blocks of residential, commercial and institutional structures. The district forms an irregular rectangle roughly bounded by West Dobbs Street on the south, South Kennedy and South Vine avenues on the west, West Front Street on the north, and South College Avenue and South Broadway Avenue on the east.
Historic Tyler Executive Director Janie Chilcote Edmonds said she is pleased with Tyler's latest addition to the National Register.
"We started in 1994 researching and identifying all the historic properties in town with the goal of listing individual properties and districts. We thought the districts had the potential for listing but until you do the preliminary work and actually get them approved at a national level, you're never sure," she said.
Mrs. Edmond said this neighborhood can be traced back to about 1848, when scattered homesteads and farmland occupied the area. The earliest known structure in the district is the circa 1848 Bell-Jones House on South College Avenue almost to Front Street. The house has been modified through the years, and is currently unoccupied.
The rest of the neighborhood developed through 1953. Building in the district accelerated in the 1920s when East Texas petroleum exploration began and the neighborhood was sought after by prosperous merchants and professionals. The district is now fully developed with only a few scattered vacant lots. The majority of the structures in this district are single-family homes.
Benefits of a national listing include neighborhood pride and tourism, Mrs. Edmonds said.
"I think we did it in the hope that it would encourage residents in the neighborhoods to preserve these historic properties even though national register listing carries no restrictions for homeowners. We hoped that living in a district would cause homeowners to want to preserve them correctly," she said. "In addition, people like to come and see what is historic in a city. We feel now like we have that to offer not only in the Azalea District but in our other districts."
Since 1999, several historic districts and individual properties in Tyler have been listed in the National Register. Architectural historian Diane W. Williams prepared the nominations for those and the Brick Streets Historic District.
In January 2004, the State Board of Review of the Texas Historical Commission approved nomination of the Brick Streets Historic District. That nomination was then sent to the Keeper of the National Register at the National Park Service in Washington, D.C., where it was listed in April.
Tyler's newest district joins the Short-Line Historic District, East Ferguson Street Historic District, Donnybrook Duplex Historic District, Charnwood Residential Historic District listed in 1999 and the Azalea Residential Historic District listed in 2003 in the National Register.
Signs will eventually designate the boundaries to separate it from neighboring districts.
"I think the name is a bit confusing because all of the historic districts have brick streets," Mrs. Edmonds said, "but this one we named brick streets because they run throughout and add a cohesiveness to the district."
Historic Tyler is encouraging residents in the district whose properties are considered "contributing" to purchase plaques that identify the significance of their homes. The plaques range from to 0.
For more information about purchasing a historic plaque, call Historic Tyler at (903) 595-1960.
Mrs. Edmonds said it would probably be the last district listed for several years because Tyler does not contain a substantial number of 1950s structures in cohesive areas.
"There was more building during the 1960s," she said. "We'll have to wait a few years for those."
