Brick Streets District – Tyler Morning Telegraph newspaper article:

October 7, 2004
Signs To Designate New Brick Streets Historic District

Residents may start noticing signs designating Tyler’s sixth historic district in about three months, Tyler’s new planning director told the Historical Preservation Board on Wednesday.

By LAURA JETT KRANTZ, Staff Writer

Residents may start noticing signs designating Tyler’s sixth historic district in about three months, Tyler’s new planning director told the Historical Preservation Board on Wednesday.

Planning Director Stephanie Rollings said once the order is placed, it will take about three months to make and hang the new signs. That order may be placed as soon as this week.

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 and South Broadway avenues on the east.

The 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.

The district joins two that already bear signs – the Charnwood Residential Historic District listed on the National Register in 1999 and the Azalea Residential Historic District listed in 2003.