Installation view of Olivia Erlanger: If Today Were Tomorrow at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, 2024. Photo: Sean Fleming.
Riverside Terrace: Where Today and Tomorrow Collided with Stephen Fox
About
Join us for a talk with Stephen Fox in conjunction with the exhibition Olivia Erlanger: If Today Were Tomorrow. This talk examines the history of a Houston subdivision, initially developed for a middle-to-upper-middle market of (implicitly: white) Houstonians beginning in 1924. As Houston’s economy recovered from the Great Depression during the mid-1930s, Riverside Terrace became the neighborhood most associated with Houston’s Jewish elite. Then, in the 1950s, the neighborhood's demographics flipped as it was desegregated, becoming by the 1970s the neighborhood most associated with Houston’s African American elite. Riverside Terrace has it all: parkways, freeways, segregation, integration, and architecture. It’s how history really happens.