page_title: Braeswood Place, Houston
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Braeswood Place, Houston / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Houston Fire Department Station #37 in 1976 Español: Estación de Bomberos #37 del Departamento de Bomberos de Houston, en 1976
context_page_description: Braeswood Place is a group of subdivisions in Harris County, Texas, United States. The vast majority of the land is in Houston while a small part is in Southside Place.
  Braeswood Place is a mainly single-family neighborhood inside the 610 Loop, east of the city of Bellaire, south of the cities of Southside Place and West University Place, west of the Texas Medical Center and the neighborhood of Old Braeswood, and north of the neighborhoods of Linkwood and Knollwood Village. Braeswood Place consists of approximately 2,200 homes and includes seven subdivisions: Ayrshire, Braes Heights, Braes Oaks, Braes Manor, Braes Terrace, Emerald Forest, and Southern Oaks.
context_section_description: The Braeswood Place Homeowners Association was charted in 1951.
  On September 19, 1988, a group of robbers murdered 66-year-old Gloria Pastor in her Braeswood Place house. Police traced the first suspect to an apartment in the Link Valley area, less than 2 miles (3.2 km) away. The apartments were nicknamed "Death Valley" due to drug-related crime. The Pastor murder led to members of the Braeswood Place community and other nearby communities into putting pressure on the city government, asking for a cleanup of the Link Valley area. As a result, police evicted criminal elements from Link Valley in a 1989 raid.
  In the 1990s a group of community-minded residents spearheaded the effort to purchase dilapidated apartments and commercial businesses in a four-block area. The Stella Link Redevelopment Association (SLRA) emerged from the early efforts and further organized the fund-raising endeavors. SLRA was successful in its attempts and the apartments and commercial buildings were purchased and torn down. New deed restrictions were put into place, two streets were closed and the area was developed into a neighborhood asset. SLRA created a master plan for the area and worked with the City of Houston and other independent entities to turn the once-blighted blocks into a landscaped backdrop for several community activities. The facilities now located on the $42 million Stella Link Park community service corridor site include the neighborhood library, the Weekley YMCA, and the national headquarters for The Sheltering Arms senior citizens facility.
  The neighborhood was deeply impacted by Tropical Storm Allison in 2001 which flooded about 500 of the community's 2,200 houses, which amounts to about 20% of the houses. Before Allison, the neighborhood had been in a slow transition from mostly 1950s style ranch homes to two-story Colonial, Tudor, and Stucco houses.  With the razing of many houses flooded by Allison, the transition pace quickly accelerated. Many upper-middle-class families moved into the newly built houses.
  In 2004 Anjali Athavalley of the Houston Chronicle said "Established areas like Braes Heights, Braes Terrace and Weslayan Plaza have performed solidly over the past five years. But real estate agents say the chances of finding a bargain in those areas are slim." In 2008 the Houston Press named the Stella Link Road area by Pershing Middle School as the "best hidden neighborhood."
caption: Fire Station 37, 1976
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