Historic bricks displaced in street repair
Officials, preservationists angered by disruption in Freedmen’s Town
A contract worker who mistakenly disturbed bricks laid by former slaves leaves city officials steamed and preservationists seeking relief.
A worker who mistakenly disturbed bricks in Andrews Street laid by former slaves left city officials steamed and preservationists seeking relief on Monday.
“There is a complete disrespect of the historical significance and — quite frankly, from a policy standpoint — the land is just too valuable for officials to take seriously the preservation of the street and its role in contributions blacks have made in Houston, often overlooked,” said Ben Hall, a former Houston city attorney and lawyer for the Freedmen’s Town Preservation Coalition.
A city contractor Monday morning displaced a car-size segment of the historic bricks along Andrews Street, Houston Public Works spokeswoman Alanna Reed said.
A crew with BRHGarver Construction was removing a concrete slab that was unknown, but encountered as part of ongoing drainage work at Andrews and Genesee, just east of Carnegie Vanguard High School.
“When he tried to remove the slab with a backhoe, some of the bricks came up,” Reed said.
City officials said they were still assessing the scope and exact cause of the disruption. Visiting Mexico City, Turner voiced his strong displeasure over Twitter.
“The contractor should preserve any and all bricks removed,” Turner wrote. “No one should
have touched Andrew(s) St w/o my specific authorization.”
Turner vowed to address the situation on his return from Mexico City.
In a statement, the public works department said the contractor “began hand stacking the bricks to preserve them in the same manner used approximately nine months ago when the historic bricks were initially removed, cleaned, categorized and stored in crates in a secure facility. Bricks removed this morning will be processed and handled in the same way.”
Preparing injunction
Officials plan to replace the bricks within three months on a more solid foundation, helping with preservation efforts, they said.
Any contract for work in the area should require a provision protecting the bricks and laying out what steps will be necessary should any become displaced, said Jacqueline Bostic, chairwoman of the Fourth Ward Redevelopment Authority.
Community leaders, however, might take matters in their own hands. Hall, who found out about the mishap Monday afternoon and campaigned for mayor last year, said he was preparing to seek an injunction barring the contractor doing anything to displace the bricks. The preservation group won a similar injunction halting construction along Andrews and Wilson in January 2015.
“I am confident we can go in and make the same arguments,” Hall said, noting that the previous judge’s order only covered Conrad Construction, not other projects and crews.
District C Councilwoman Ellen Cohen, who represents the area, said her understanding from public works officials is that an earlier infrastructure project may already have disturbed the same bricks dislodged Monday.
“I feel terrible about it,” Cohen said. “I’d say the concerned residents of the Fourth Ward were probably in my office on the second day after I was elected, so we’ve been working on this now at least five years and have a great appreciation of the historic value of what they’re trying to do and what we’re trying to protect. It’s very disturbing that something like this, albeit an accident, did happen. We’ve got to see what we can do to protect the area and to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Especially as Fourth Ward and Freedmen’s Town have gentrified with new town homes and shops, black community leaders have rallied to protect the bricks, which date back more than a century.
Samuel Smith, pastor of nearby Mount Horeb Missionary Baptist Church, said officials had made their feelings clear that bricks were not to be disturbed.
“Somebody has to stay on top of it,” Smith said, in response to what the community can do to make sure the construction does not compromise the streets.
Bricks laid by ex-slaves
Blacks settled in the area along the southern edge of Buffalo Bayou for affordable land — whites passed up the area because it was prone to flooding. Churches organized men — some former slaves and their adult sons — to make and lay the bricks after city leaders refused to give the area upgraded streets.
Hall, who is active in preserving the bricks, said bricklayers also placed trinkets in the ground beneath the bricks and often showed their craftsmanship by using designs laid into the bricks to point toward local landmarks.
He said Monday’s mishap is merely the latest in a series of actions Houston has taken showing disinterest in the bricks or Freedmen’s Town’s history.
“We thought with this present mayor, he would have more concern and more interest,” Hall said. “We can preserve the things that we deem important and can’t preserve the things we don’t. Protecting this history has not risen to the level of importance where you don’t have these accidents happen.”