Brick Streets Neighborhood Historic District

Brick Streets Neighborhood Historic District covers 29 blocks in south central Tyler, Texas, about half a mile south of the courthouse square. Development began around 1848 with the Bell-Jones House and gathered pace from the 1880s through several platted subdivisions. Growth peaked between about 1890 and 1940, and the discovery of the East Texas Oil Field in 1930-31 created a housing shortage that led to new bungalows, duplexes and four-plexes. Most of the 586 resources are single-family houses and their garages, built in Queen Anne, Classical Revival, Colonial Revival, Tudor Revival and Craftsman styles, mostly by local craftsmen. A few commercial buildings, a school and a church are also present. Red brick paving, laid beginning in the mid-1920s, survives on many streets and forms the largest such concentration in the city, along with concrete curbs, stone walls and a stone-lined drainage channel built under Depression-era programs. Mature trees and consistent setbacks tie the varied architecture together.