Neartown Houston - Cityscape

Cityscape

Neartown is southwest of Downtown Houston. The Neartown Association area is roughly bounded by U.S. Highway 59 to the south, Allen Parkway to the north, Bagby Street on the east, and Shepherd Drive to the west. Neartown neighborhoods include Montrose, Courtlandt Place, Winlow Place, Hyde Park, Cherryhurst. and First Montrose Commons. According to the Neartown Association, the area's character is often likened to the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan, New York City. The Neartown neighborhood at Van Buren Street was the Houston Press "Best Hidden Neighborhood" in 2002.

In 1973 Neartown had what Thorne Dreyer and Al Reinert of the Texas Monthly described as "old buildings ranging all the way from Victorian Epic to Ramshackle Plywood." During that era locals disputed the community's boundaries. Thorne Dreyer and Al Reinert of Texas Monthly described Neartown as "that kind of neighborhood: people either want in or out of it." In 1973 the two said "generally speaking" that the boundaries would be Shepherd Drive, Smith Street, U.S. Route 59 (Southwest Freeway), and West Gray. The area consists of 7.5 square miles (19 km2) and, in 1973, had around 30,000 residents. Dreyer and Reinert said "The spatial boundaries are relatively easy to determine—Exxon makes maps that help with those—it's the spiritual borders that are hard to fix."

At that time the "Westheimer Strip" was a commercial area along Westheimer Road. Dreyer and Reinert said that Neartown became "identified" with a group of European-style restaurants and sidewalk cafés along five blocks of that strip; many of the restaurants were housed in renovated pre-World War I houses. The two said that the establishments are giving Neartown the title "Houston's Left Bank" "not altogether deservedly." They added that the restaurants and "an electric assortment of" antique stores, boutiques, specialty shops, "and the like" give the Westheimer commercial avenue "a little cosmopolitan flash to an otherwise languid Boomtown." Non-Americans started the sidewalk café phenomenon in Neartown.