|
The main building of this museum is a re-creation of an early Houston street front. Although it looks like there’s an entrance in the front along Bagby Street, the actual entrance to the museum is from the courtyard in the rear of the building. You can’t miss the huge live oak growing in the middle of the courtyard – its limbs are so massive that they have to be supported with ties to the trunk.
The free galleries inside the museum include a replica of the interior of a general store, two old photographs of Houston, and temporary exhibits that could be interesting depending upon what’s being featured (at the time I was there it was old clocks). Although not particularly interesting, at least the galleries give you something to look at while waiting for a tour to start. Unless you need a fast primer on Texas (not Houston) history, or you’re still waiting for the tour to start, forget about the useless 10 minute video presentation.
The tours themselves are excellent. You’ll probably get more tidbits of Houston history than you’ll find anywhere else in the city. The admission price only includes a tour of four of the structures, but you get to pick which four. All of the houses are furnished in period.
The nine houses, all in Sam Houston Park, represent typical Houston residential architecture from the 19th century through the early 20th century: the 1870 Yates House, a townhouse built by a freed slave; the 1847 Kellum-Noble House, the only home on its original site and the impetus to the creation of the Heritage Society; the 1850 Nichols-Rice-Cherry House, a townhome once sitting on courthouse square; the large 1905 Staiti House; the 1868 Pillot House, typical of the Gulf Coast Victorian cottage; the c.1823 Old Place, an early cabin built along Clear Creek; the c.1870 San Felipe Cottage, typical of smaller Gulf Coast cottages; and the 1891 St. John Church, once belonging to a German Lutheran congregation in northwest Harris County. I’d go with the Nichols-Rice-Cherry House, the Staiti House, the Kellum-Noble House and St. John Church (you get to ring the church bell!). If you can talk the docent into throwing in one of the Gulf Coast cottages, either the Pillot House or San Felipe Cottage, go for it. Begging does help. Not open yet is a shotgun cottage (called a ‘shotgun’ because it’s said that if a gun is shot through the house the bullet travels through all the rooms) from the Fourth Ward.
|
Staiti House
Nichols-Rice-Cherry House
Kellum-Noble House
|