Art & Environmental Architecture: Historic Frost Town

Frostown (Frost-Town), an early settlement in what is now the city of Houston, was named for the Frost family, who arrived in the 1830s. It was located on Buffalo Bayou in Harrisburg (now Harris) County eight miles upstream from Harrisburg and several blocks east of the conjunction of White Oak Bayou and Buffalo Bayou, west of present U.S. Highway 59.

In 1822 the area was settled by the Wilkins family, Dr. James A. E. Phelps and his wife, Rosalie A. Yerby, Stephen Holston, John Austin, and others. Austin received a two-league survey in 1824 under the supervision of Stephen F. Austin. The 1826 census of Austin's colony taken by the Spanish government listed about twenty inhabitants, mainly farmers and stockraisers. Between the late 1820s and the 1840s, Germans began settling in the area, and the settlement was called simultaneously Germantown and Frostown.

(Cited from Handbook of Texas Online. The complete article is available at Handbook of Texas Online.)

Related Links:

More on the History of Frost Town

Buffalo Bayou: An Echo of Houston's Wilderness Beginnings I

Buffalo Bayou: An Echo of Houston's Wilderness Beginnings II

1868 Map of Frost Town

1891 Map of Houston including Frost Town

Birdseye Map of Frost Town

Tour tells of history of Second Ward area,
By DANNY PEREZ
(Houston Chronicle article featuring
historic Second Ward and Frost Town)

The historic Frost Town site is a significant element within the James Bute Park. We host historic site tours for the Greater Houston Preservation Alliance and the Rice Design Alliance. We continue to expand our fundraising and active pursuit of additional property to conserve as park. AEA also is in a legal process in District Court 129 to resolve title issues on 10,000 square feet of critical Frost Town property.

At the end of 1999 and the beginning of 2000, Art and Environmental Architecture raised $62,000 in contributions for the acquisition of remaining private lots in the Frost Town Addition, to expand the park as a historic site. Additional cash funds are still being raised to secure remaining non-government owned sites that are part of the original Frost Town Addition.

In early 2000, AEA began working in partnership with the Second Ward Association as part of the Mayor Lee Brown's agenda for neighborhood-oriented government. The Second Ward area has been named a Super Neighborhood by the Mayor's office. With the City of Houston's Director of Public Works and Engineering, Jerry King, AEA became part of a public Capital Investment Project (CIP) in conjunction with the Building Services Department. Several million dollars will be spent on embellishments to city-owned rights-of-way at the Frost Town Historic Site, and these will include Frost Town.