Where to Stay in West University Place, Texas

What is West University Place known for?

In the 1920s Lilly Nicholson, an English major at Rice, took names from her literature textbook for them; Weslayan Road is a misspelling of Wesleyan. The city calls itself the Neighborhood City. It is mainly a bedroom community, and around half of its houses were torn down and rebuilt in the fifteen years to 2002.

What are the main landmarks in West University Place?

Colonial Park, on Byron Street, has a playground, a pavilion, two tennis courts, and a parkour course, and the Poor Farm Ditch, which drains into Brays Bayou, recalls the Harris County poor farm that once covered part of West University Place. Oleanders planted by the Sunset Terrace Garden Club screen the ditch from Edloe Street.

What is the history of West University Place?

Ben Hooper, a former governor of Tennessee, developed West University Place in 1917 and sold its first lots that year; the name came from the nearby Rice Institute, now Rice University. Part of the land had belonged to the Harris County poor farm. In the 1920s the streets got their literary names from Lilly Nicholson.

Houston would not extend its power lines that far, so the community incorporated, declared by the Harris County judge on January 2, 1924. The city refused to consolidate with Houston in 1939. Its charter dates from 1940.

Flooding shaped it too: the Poor Farm Ditch was dredged in 1928, and in 1954 the county flood control district gave it a concrete bed. Before 1992 the city loosened its building rules, and its mid-century bungalows and cottages began giving way to larger brick Georgian houses.

Where is West University Place?

West University Place lies in southwestern Harris County, Texas, 6 miles from downtown Houston, which surrounds much of it; Bellaire and Southside Place border it too. On a map the city looks like a small house, with a chimney on the west side and a door around Southside Place, which it encloses. It covers about 5.2 square kilometres.