Heights Neighborhood Library is a public library facility in the Houston Heights area of

Houston Houston ( ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in the U.S. state of Texas and in the Southern United States. Located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, it is the county seat, seat of ...

Texas Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the we ...

. It is a part of

Houston Public Library Houston Public Library is the public library system serving Houston, Texas, United States. History Houston Lyceum and the Carnegie Library The Houston Public Library system traces its founding to the creation of the second Houston Lyceum in ...

(HPL) and is located at 1302 Heights Boulevard, in Heights block 170. It has a pink Stucco

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façade and arches in its doors and windows. Jason P. Theriot wrote in the '' Houston Review'' that the ceilings are "high" and that the arches were "beautifully" done.Theriot, p. 40. The library has of space.Theriot, p. 65. The City of Houston designated it as a protected landmark in 2005. The

National Park Service The National Park Service (NPS) is an List of federal agencies in the United States, agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government, within the US Department of the Interior. The service manages all List ...

added the facility to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

(NRHP) in 1984 as Houston Public Library.

History

The first Heights area library facility was the Baptist Temple Library, opening in 1909, which was established by Reverend Fred Huhns. This collection moved to Heights Senior High School in 1918. The Trustees and the Heights Committee spent $7,500 to buy the land for the current facility in the mid-1920s. The current building opened in 1925 and was dedicated on March 18, 1926. It initially had of space.Theriot, p. 42. Theriot stated that the library "became an instant hit". Jimmie May Hicks, an

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from the state of Georgia, served as the head librarian at from 1931 to 1964 and organized a collection of documents and photographs related to the Houston Heights.Theriot, p. 41. In 1974 the Houston Heights Association (HHA) classified the library as a beautification project. From 1977 to 1980, an expansion project added a square footage higher than the original size, including to the north end, since HPL deemed the existing amount of space held by the library insufficient. During the expansion the library was temporarily in an unused building in Merchant's Park.Theriot, p. 64. The north addition did not use the original architectural styles due to a lack of financial feasibility. Theriot wrote that the expansion "drastically altered the allure of" the original style. The facility previously had a garden in the back area established in by the Heights Womans' Club in 1939 where people may read books, but the community center room was built on top of it circa the 1970s.Theriot, p. 42-43. In 2001 HPL considered completely replacing the building, but community outcry, including from HHA, caused the library system to instead renovate the existing facility, starting in early 2002, to

Americans with Disabilities Act The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 or ADA () is a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination based on disability. It affords similar protections against discrimination to Americans with disabilities as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, ...

(ADA) standards.Theriot, p. 66. The

blaxploitation In American cinema, Blaxploitation is the film subgenre of action movie derived from the exploitation film genre in the early 1970s, consequent to the combined cultural momentum of the black civil rights movement, the black power movement, ...

film '' Sugar Hill'' (1974) depicted the library as the "Voodoo Museum of Natural History."

References

Notes

External links

Heights Neighborhood Library
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** * {{National Register of Historic Places Renaissance Revival architecture in Texas Library buildings completed in 1925 1925 establishments in Texas Libraries established in 1925 Houston Public Library Houston Heights Libraries on the National Register of Historic Places in Texas National Register of Historic Places in Houston

History

References

Notes

Further reading

External links