Just How Weird Is Houston Heights

If you want to see random weird stuff in Houston, you go to the Heights, preferably the bits north of I-10 near where the legendary Fitzgerald’s rock club stood before it became a parking lot for nearby bars that most of us can’t afford to drink at. This is kind of the problem with the Heights.

Recently, I spent a happy afternoon tracking down some of the stranger pieces of yard art that decorate the stately homes, some of which are more than a century old. A single-story house can cost around $650,000, almost twice the average home price in Houston.

It wasn’t always this way. Despite being founded as a bedroom community for white-collar downtown workers near the end of the 1800s, the Heights saw a dramatic decline after World War II. The oil boom and war work both dried up, and by the 1970’s it slowly fell into decrepitude. The stately houses were rotting, and people were out of work. This made it the perfect backdrop for the serial killer Dean Corll, who would abduct boys off the street by promising them money, alcohol, drugs or candy (hence his nickname). 

In a way, Corll is directly responsible for the transformation of the Heights. The Houston Heights Association was founded in 1973, the same year Corll was killed by his teenage apprentice, Elmer Wayne Henley. Though rebranding the neighborhood after a series of brutal murders was probably not the only reason it was founded, it certainly lent some urgency to transforming the area from decaying to thriving. Old houses were flipped, turning them into quaint cottages with Southern Gothic charm for young professionals who wanted a quick, freewayless commute into town.

However, the gentrification also drove up rent and home prices. Young artists who could afford apartments and still wanted to create works began to get priced out of the market in the 1990’s. 

I asked for opinions online about the Heights’ weirdness. Houston film critic Alan Cerny remembers when it was still a bohemian mecca. 

“I grew up in the outskirts of the Heights (Timbergrove),” he said. “The Heights always felt, before the suburbs became a thing, where workplace Houston went to sleep, and party, and live. It was a melting pot of all kinds of people - races, creeds, orientations, religions. In later years, as we became further compartmentalized, it became a place that was impossible to afford but still wanting to be that melting pot. I miss the Heights Festival in the fall, and now, it’s basically River Oaks North.”

Matthew Hall, a Houston project administrator, is a little more cutting with his criticism.

“The Heights used to be weird because there were a lot of artists, musicians, and other interesting people living there,” he said. “Now it’s weird because it’s populated with McMansions and people who don’t talk to their neighbors.” 

The housing crisis in 2008 led to a few less-affluent people being able to return to the Heights as they snatched up houses and office space vacated by the investor class. There is definitely a slightly more working class weird that live there now.

The Heights is home to dozens of the city’s best independently owned coffee spots, the Thorn and Moon witch supply shop, and plenty of pop-up stores and galleries launched by young entrepreneurs.

But there’s no arguing that rich weird dominates the scene. Until recently, the Art Car Museum was housed in the Heights until the wealthy benefactor passed. The Heights was also home to the Wilde Collection before a religious fanatic and jilted boyfriend of an employee torched the place. The store was an oddities emporium that was loved by fans of the weird across the economic spectrum, but the price of goods there was certainly aimed at the higher brackets.

“I remember when the Heights used to be run down and full of crime,” said Houstonian Sheena Williams. “Then the city decided to turn it into a historical district. Next thing you know, the area got a nice little facelift. After that, it was gentrified and now the area is full of [very pretentious] folks, and the rent is higher than a giraffe [neck].”

One of the reasons you see so much weird and cool art is because the people who live in the Heights have resources to buy it and keep it safe behind iron fences on their property. Spending thousands on a deer statue right out of a David Lynch flick or a fairy house taller than most people’s actual houses is something you can do when you can afford to own one of the historic homes.

Yet, it does retain some of the old charm. It’s not like the weird yard art is competing with more standard fare. The most normal thing I saw driving around was a lawn gnome, and even it was the biggest and most elaborate one I’ve ever seen. Aside from a few college flags, the Heights seems determined to be weird.

Maybe that will change. The gentrification of Houston is moving east these days, following Buffalo Bayou and gobbling up the traditionally Black and immigrant communities in EaDo. That’s where you find East River, lots of new parks and art galleries, and places like the Ironworks that are launching the next generation of quirky businesses.

When all that moneyed energy is pointed east, maybe the Heights will change once again. It’s not like that yard art is going anywhere. If there’s one thing I learned driving around seeking the strangest yard art in the Heights, it’s that sometimes the art is next to a for sale sign 

“It’s never been only one thing,” said journalist Martin Hajovjy. “It was a master-planned community, but also a small town, but also home to the wealthy, but also home to the poor, but also home to first-time home-buyers, but also its own city, but also an annexed suburb, but also a semi-rural settlement, but also a place that sought annexation primarily for better schools, but also a small town, but also in the heart of a large city, but also the place that had a lot of early car-owners, but also a place that was heavily dependent on its mass-transit connection to downtown, ad infinitum. I could go on.”