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Writer's picturePaige Keaton

Through the Looking Glass- Houston Heights

Vintage photography of an American family growing up in The Heights in Houston. They all loved to take pictures and be in pictures and from what I can tell they all seemed like fairly happy people living in a lower-middle-class America. The stories heard from the years in the home on Allston Street are abundant, from my great-great-grandmother having it built for $1500 to my 2nd cousin putting a bomb shelter in the backyard 100 years later. Everyone always had a fond memory, or someone experience to laugh about and the stories were passed down.

People lived in this house until they died in it, and then more people lived in it until they died in it. I think my Aunt Hazel was the last to die in the house, in a room I was always scared of because I knew my Uncle Ed had died in that same room. My father told me during the depression up to 25 people lived in the house, sharing one bathroom with the upstairs separated females on one side and males on the other. These people built The Heights in Houston, they were plumbers, electricians, carpenters, and so on. They all were day laborers and what we have left behind by them are the structures still standing today that are preserved for history.

We lived as a family in that home for a hundred years and I myself was born in Heights Hospital and grew up as a young child running down the streets to Milroy park in the heat of the summer while my grandma would visit with Winnie who I called Woo Woo. We would sit and look at these pictures. There was no a/c or television. I played hopscotch on the sidewalks and paper dolls on the front porch. I love looking through these images even though I have never met many of them I only know where they sit in my family tree. I also feel obligated to label them and organize them into one family history that will make sense forever #family #HeightHouston #Houston #Texas #Vintage #Americana


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