Downtown, Midtown, Montrose and the Museum District

Houston began here. Augustus Chapman Allen and John Kirby Allen advertised the Town of Houston on 30 August 1836, on a site they claimed ships could reach up Buffalo Bayou, and Allen's Landing, where White Oak Bayou joins it, is the city's recognized birthplace. Midtown carries downtown's street grid southwest along Main Street and the Red Line; it was a residential district before the 1950s, emptied out, and has been rebuilt since the Midtown Redevelopment Authority was formed in the early 1990s. Montrose was first platted in 1911 by J. W. Link's Houston Land Corporation as a streetcar suburb. The Museum District is the name of the museums the City recognized as a district in 1989; the guide takes it as the City's Museum Park super neighborhood east of Main Street, which holds the Children's Museum, while the Museum of Fine Arts and the Museum of Natural Science are across Main and in Hermann Park. 4 guides are listed below.

Two things set buying here apart. Much of what there is to buy downtown and in Midtown is a unit in a building or a townhouse rather than a house on its own lot, so the association's budget, its reserve, its insurance and what its declaration allows belong in the offer. And downtown, Midtown and Montrose each sit inside a management district, a special district created by the Legislature and funded by a levy on commercial property; the Downtown district was established in 1995. There is no zoning under any of it, so what can go up next door is set by the deed restrictions recorded on that block, where any survive, and by the City's rules on how land is subdivided. Montrose shows what happens when they lapse: deed restrictions kept commercial uses out of parts of it until 1936, and commercial building followed when they ended. Six small City historic districts inside Montrose review exterior work as well.