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Elizabeth Baldwin Park

The City of Houston acquired Elizabeth Baldwin Park in 1905. It consists of 4.88 acres on Elgin Street, between Crawford and Chenevert Streets, in a proud old neighborhood facing revitalization in the Twenty-first Century in the form of renovated houses and newly built townhouses and businesses.

Across the street is Will Jones Elementary School. Nearby is the central campus of Houston Community College in the former San Jacinto High School building, and locations in Downtown, Midtown, the Third Ward, and Montrose are all close by.

Little more than a lawn for picnics in its early days, Baldwin Park was fitted out in 1912 with a stone fountain dedicated to the wife of Houston’s founder, Charlotte Allen. The park was upgraded through a bond initiative in 1930 and 1931, and was a popular tennis center for years. The most recent improvements have resulted from the 2003 bond sale by the Midtown Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone and the plans of the Midtown Management District.

New trees have been planted to supplement the hundred-year-old specimens dating from the park’s birth, and an irrigation system has been put into place. A crushed granite jogging trail has been installed, as have new picnic tables, chess tables, and sidewalks. The Vietnamese Heritage Plaza greets visitors in a variety of languages and honors the Vietnamese community that flourishes in Midtown. The old park has been reborn as a monument to civic pride and the efforts of the area’s Twenty-first Century citizens.

A serene atmosphere surrounds the 1912 stone fountain. Standing in Elizabeth Baldwin Park, one would never know that its history involves a wife’s double-dealing and the contesting and forging of wills, her husband’s murder, and the founding of one of America’s premiere institutions of higher learning. It is Houston history at its most fascinating.