Buy some oranges, if you lived here.

From Traces of Texas FaceBook. A house in Houston as taken by John Vachon in 1943. It was located at 1900 Franklin Street.

I google mapped this address, knowing it would no longer look like this. It's now an empty lot, a block from I-26 the Eastex Freeway, and the Minute Maid Stadium. Very much downtown, but most businesses aren't the thriving kinds. Lots of parking and I saw a bar near the stadium.

But that's avoiding the question of how this houe was built and what it looked like in its heyday! It's kind of Victorian, with Queen Anne touches...though I'm not an architect. I love the floating tower room, which doesn't attach to other attic rooms apparentlly, but must have had a ladder of some kind from the corner room below it.  The laundry hanging all over the second floor doesn't help much. But wrap-around porches were the traditional way to deal with the heat.

 Unknown ruined home.

Apparently Queen Anne style homes in America are very different than in other parts of the English speaking world (according to Wikipedia.) But after being built, often the fortunes of the owners, or their descendants, had a down-turn which did not include fresh paint. Having lived in Houston through four summers, I know how hard the humidity and heat was on buildings, and people. I can't imagine how people lived there without air conditioning for the first hundred years or so!

And then there is the wagon driver looking right at the photographer in our leading photo. He's probably wondering why anyone would want a photo of this dump! The house is definitely connected to the fruit stand, with an awning strung from the house to the front of the Valley Fruit Stand, where Golden Age beverages, Coca Cola and even Pepsi Cola signs on the roof.  The bushels look as if they are full of oranges and maybe other citrus.  Yes, the Rio Grand Valley was a great source of citrus fruits, not too far away. I'm guessing the wagon was used to take some of those citrus bushels to the nicer homes/restaurants in Houston.

But in this neighborhood, I dare say the original residents were enjoying a good income and expectations of a positive future. The current inhabitants are just trying to make ends meet. Was this house condemned? Though it needs paint, the roof and decorative gingerbread seems to be intact.