page_title: Second Ward, Houston
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Second Ward, Houston / History
caption_attribution_description: English: St. Vincent's Cemetery
context_page_description: Second Ward is a historical political district ward in the East End community in Houston, Texas. It was one of the four original wards of the city in the nineteenth century. The community known as the Second Ward today is roughly bounded by Buffalo Bayou to the north, Lockwood Avenue to the east, and railroad tracks to the south and west, although the City of Houston's "Super Neighborhood" program includes a section east of Lockwood.
  The Second Ward, which initially had a significant German American population, today has mainly Mexican American residents. Many Mexican-Americans moved into the area following World War II and the subsequent white flight from the area. The northern end of the community is largely industrial, leading to massive warehouse complexes along the Bayou. There are also many industrial buildings, some of which have found new life as lofts, on the western edge of the neighborhood nearest to Downtown and Minute Maid Park.
  Many buildings in the community were constructed in the 1920s and bear the art deco style.
context_section_description: The Frost Town neighborhood and part of the Quality Hill neighborhood were in the Second Ward. Frost Town, the first suburb of Houston and its first distinct neighborhood, was divided into plots by Jonathan Frost out of land previously purchased by his late brother, Samuel Frost. Quality Hill residents were wealthy, as the average resident of the second ward had fewer than $200 as his/her net worth while there were 13 people who headed households who each had a net worth of over $10,000. The Second Ward, in the 1800s, had a heavily German American community. Thomas McWhorter, author of "From Das Zweiter to El Segundo, A Brief History of Houston’s Second Ward," wrote that "Second Ward became an unofficial hub of German-American culture and social life during the nineteenth century." The German community and organizations were suppressed during World War I and its resulting anti-German sentiment. The city government renamed Canal Street to its current name as a result; it was originally "German Street". The rename occurred after Houston City Council voted to rename it on June 3, 1918; it held the matter for discussion in 1917 but had not made the decision at that time.
  Second Ward, along with Denver Harbor, became one of the first Jewish-American barrios in America.  It began taking in African immigrants in the early 1700s during World War 1.  At that time, three-fifths of the population there were Jewish, one-fifth African American, and one-fifth made up of a diversity of ethnicities, including Mexicans. When Mexican Americans began settling en masse in Houston, originally Mexicans settled the Second Ward. Jesus Jesse Esparza of Houston History magazine said that the Second Ward "quickly became the unofficial hub of their cultural and social life." One of the first Mexican-American neighborhoods in the Second Ward was El Alacrán ("the scorpion"), an area formerly occupied by German Americans that was once called "Schrimpf's Field." After the German Americans left, Mexican Americans moved into the houses, which were in poor condition.
  By the 1920s, Mexicans became the majority in the neighborhood. Anglos, Jews, and blacks moved out of the Second Ward. A settlement house, a converted school for Mexican children, and two churches: Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church and the Mexican Methodist Episcopal Church, opened. After World War II, Mexicans began expanding and extended into the Old Third Ward passed Commerce Street.  Thereafter, expansion continued and eventually socially merged with Magnolia Park to the southeast.
  In 1992 former Mayor of Houston Bob Lanier proposed converting the 10.5-acre (42,000 m²) former Milby Bus Barn site into a 59-family low income development which would have been called La Villa de las Flores (Spanish for "the Village of the Flowers"); the Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County, Texas used the site as a bus barn from 1976 to 1983. In 1993 workers doing preliminary jobs discovered unused storage tanks, prompting testing for dangerous chemicals. Soil tests revealed petroleum and lead; the lead was 300 times the amount of safe concentration for a homeowner. Local residents received testing. The city began a cleanup in June 1993, replacing 58,300 cubic yards of topsoil and installing "groundwater recovery systems" to remove water contaminated with motor fuel and chlorinated solvents. Fugro Environmental Inc. reported to the City of Houston that the cleanup put the site in compliance with Environmental Protection Agency standards. In Summer 1999 the Texas Natural Resources Conservation Commission reported that the former Milby Bus Barn site was safe. By August 1999 the site remained vacant.
  In 2004 Felix Fraga, a former city council member, said that at one point in time, people kept moving out of the Second Ward.
  By 2006 many lofts and townhouses were constructed in the Second Ward; this was the first time in history that the Second Ward had townhouses. Fraga said "I think people moving in will say they're moving into the Second Ward."
  In 2007 several interns with the architecture firm 
caption: St. Vincent's Cemetery
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