Beginnings
The City of Shreveport was founded in 1836 by the Shreve Town Company, a corporation established to develop a town at the juncture of the newly navigable Red River and the Texas Trail, an overland route into a recently independent Republic of Texas and, prior to that time, into Mexico. Newly named for the westernmost street in the original city survey, Common Street, the area now known as Shreveport Common was for many years unimproved farmland with few formal streets or roads. One of the clearest early representations of the areas appears in the 1872 Bird’s Eye View Map of Shreveport, but unfortunately, few maps have been found that depict the area before 1890.
The area is easily recognized as the original city grid ended and the roads meandered among small farms to the west and eventually Texas, just twenty miles away. Since the street now known as Texas Avenue was the actual trail between the now independent Republic of Texas and Shreveport, and was also the most reliable means of transport to and from markets, this trailhead became an important node for immigrants, planters, livestock and land speculators. The open triangle just outside the grid, now framed by Texas Avenue, Common, and Crockett Streets became an important staging area—almost a market place unto itself—as large collections of wagons and herds could prepare either to enter or leave the city from this open, bare expanse of land. It is not surprising that up to and beyond the advent of the railroads in the region and the subsequent reduced emphasis on the riverfront port, this triangle remained undeveloped. It was not until 1900 that a two-story hotel with attached commercial buildings was constructed on this central site.Westward beyond this site were some few scattered wooden buildings that served as private homes and small entrepreneurial businesses, often all on the same property in the tradition of an earlier America. These small business owners, who supplied services and goods to the trade route, included recently emancipated African-Americans who lived off the land and their agri-industry labors.
For many years the most important land use in the immediate area was the city cemetery, now known as Oakland Cemetery. It was informally used since the 1830s, but was made official by the moving andre-interment of burials from an earlier site in 1847. In addition to its role as the community’s burial ground, away from the noise, smells, and dangers of the riverfront, this 10-acre hillock served as the City’s principal community’s park, in the 19th century tradition.
It was in the late 19th century that Shreveport’s growth as the distribution center of the Ark-La-Tex region took hold. With its combination of river and rail connections to markets—particularly to New Orleans, one of the nation’s largest ports – and via railroad connection from Vicksburg to Dallas, the city attracted more than its share of both domestic and foreign immigration. Merchants and industrialists flocked to the Red River and soon the original city grid overflowed its 64-block footprint.
“On The Twentieth Century”
Since much of this area was still widely used as residential, sites along the rail lines were the first to transition to commerce, inspiring citizens of all economic levels to venture out from the original city and begin the first suburban neighborhoods. One of these neighborhoods was immediately west of town beyond Common Street, where, in the 1890s some of the largest and finest houses were arranged on newly established streets: Grand Avenue, Christian Street, and the extension of Cotton Street, to name a few. These were the addresses of choice for wealthy merchants, industrialists, and socialites, as well as famous politicians such as former Governor and U.S. Senator Newton Crain Blanchard. Blanchard’s house at the southwest corner of Common and Cotton Streets was perhaps the city’s largest and most extravagant home built up to that time. The African-American community lived on unpaved lanes called REO Quarters, Jones Alley and Gable Court on the outskirts of this district, primarily in rental properties along the railroad. Another African-American neighborhood began along the blocks north and east of the cemetery in areas later known as St. Paul’s Bottoms and Ledbetter Heights, extending further west to near the current line of Interstate 20.
This outward growth paved the way for other construction in the area, notably fine places of worship with a new building for St. Matthew’s AME Church on Grand Avenue, (1896-1899), a new St. Mark’s Episcopal Church (1904), and the B’nai Zion Temple (1914). Social clubs and other institutions chose the area for their homes as well with the BPOE, Elks, and other lodges ultimately joined by the magnificent Scottish Rite Cathedral in 1917. The Kate P. Nelson Seminary, a girls’ school in an imposing three -story turreted wood frame structure, appeared in the late 1880s and might have been a draw for other institutions. This complex, located in the 900 Block of Texas Avenue where a new parking lot is located today, was later converted to a hospital known as the Shreveport Sanitarium.
The new residents created a market for the middle class white, black, and ethnic citizens who could afford the small commercial lots strung along Texas Avenue and Crockett Streets. There they built service-oriented businesses from which they could ply trades and goods with a remarkable breadth and depth. Initially, commerce began to creep across Common Street from the “City” on Texas and Milam Streets to Texas Avenue. The first blocks that began to develop in the 1890s showed a mix of labor services and tenement houses for African-Americans; positioned side-by-side were painters, wheelwrights, woodworking and tin shops, blacksmiths, notions stores, small groceries and a bakery. The many small wood frame dwellings (some we would today describe as sheds or shacks) served double duty as live/work spaces, a trend that would continue as buildings grew in size and quality.
As the decade progressed, more and more substantial buildings were constructed directly on the sidewalk frontage with a decidedly commercial form. But by 1899, only one substantial two-story masonry building had been erected on lower Texas Avenue, still surrounded by one-story frame buildings. However, City directories and the Sanborn Maps document that the area had begun its transition from labor- to service-oriented businesses, and now included restaurants, lunch counters, a dressmaker’s shop, a confectioner, and a wallpaper shop. Also by 1899, Texas Avenue wasbrick-paved, at least for the first few blocks west of Common Street, and was the only paved street in this part of town.
That same year a major promotional piece was created and published by the Shreveport Progressive League. The purpose of Shreveport ofTo-Day was to “[set] forth the opportunities offered the homeseeker, investor and capitalist because of the agricultural, stock-raising, manufacturing, mineral, climatic, educational and other resources.” This impressive work documents the entire city exceptionally well, and includes a number of listings and views of the Shreveport Common area prior to the boom years that would soon follow.
Within the short span of five years, both sides of the 800 block of Texas Avenue were filled with commercial buildings. Houses were concentrated at the lots near the intersection of Cotton Street. The north side of the block was comprised of a mixture of nearly halftwo-story masonry buildings and half one-story frame buildings, while the south side featured predominantly one-story frame structures. With the exception of the tiny frame hotel, on “The Triangle” (bounded by Common, Crockett, and Texas Avenue) held a random collection of dwellings fronting Common and Crockett Streets and small frame offices along Texas Avenue. This cohesive commercial fabric paused for institutional and residential blocks—St. Mark’s Episcopal was completed in 1905—before resuming in a continuous commercial streetscape on the north side of the 1000 block.
The streets intersecting Texas Avenue were all predominantly residential, but it appears the era of the grandest houses had passed. While many large frame houses occupied the surrounding blocks, none were as large as those from the 1890s, even on Grand Avenue. Predictably, corner lots (highly desirable for their visibility, prestige and superior ventilation) attracted the wealthy and their larger houses. In this area, where houses could be situated facing away from the hot western sun, those lots were most desirable. Many of the earliest and largest houses occupied those prime locations. From analysis of maps and city directories, it appears that few large houses were built west of Christian Street (now Austen Place). As a choice residential neighborhood, it is evident that the area had peaked and newer developments had begun to draw the wealthy to the suburbs south of downtown. Even with the planting of important religious and social institutions in the immediate area, the heyday of Shreveport Common as a wealthy residential district was over; almost every lot was filled, and a cohesive, mixed upper-and middle–class neighborhood thrived, sandwiched between what would now be termed “neighborhood business districts.”
Part of the technology that encouraged the growth of the city south and west was the expansion of the trolley, or electric streetcar system. Inaugurated in 1890 and serving the immediate central business district, the lines grew to encompass the new suburbs of Park Place and Holmesville, now better known as Fairfield and Highland.
The 1920’s
(more to come…)