Welcome to Brazos Matters.

I'm Jay Socol.

And with me is KAMU student content contributor Meredith Carrasco.

How are you?

I'm good.

Happy to be here.

Your first time in this studio?

Yes.

Okay, so because this is your first time in the studio, tell folks, where you're from, how you got to Texas A&M.

So I'm a senior journalism major from spring, Texas, and I came to an end because my mom did.

And then also my older brother, my mom was a bit more of a two percenter, so didn't convince me.

My older brother is in the Corps.

Learned about everything.

A&M just really wanted to win me over.

And he did.

So what are some of the activities you've been involved with?

Yeah, so I am a tour guide, so that's to show how much I love A&M.

I'm also a member of Greek Life.

I'm a Tri Delt, and I also serve at my church in Bryan.

Okay.

All right, so you're all in and graduate in May of 27.

Okay.

Well, I'm glad you're here.

And this topic today really comes from you.

And we're going to get into that in just a moment.

But first, kind of some story time from me many years ago, there was an elderly member of my family who reluctantly agreed to, be interviewed during a big family reunion.

He sat down, he answered questions about his life while videotape was was rolling, and he didn't want to do this, but he was the surviving link to a very different time and place and to deceased family members who he never knew.

And unimaginable hardships.

The future generations of our family sort of deserve to know and understand.

But he was not happy about doing this.

But he understood the importance.

And so I've been thinking about that as we come into today's conversation.

What happens when the neighborhood you're living in, full of generations of history, is under threat of disappearing, and there's really no way to stop it.

You document the history before it's too late.

And so that's exactly what's being done in the historic Southside neighborhood in College Station, this beautiful and highly desirable area across, George Bush Drive from the Texas A&M campus.

Our guests are going to be talking about the intentional effort underway to capture stories about Southside.

So Barbara Moore is university and community relations manager for the City of College Station.

And Liana Vincent is a longtime Southside resident.

Thank you both for being here.

Thank you.

Glad to be here.

You bet.

Meredith.

Awesome.

Okay, so just to kick us off, for those who may not know what is considered to be College Station's Southside area, you can start.

That's a good question.

So if you go from Fairview all the way over to Lee and then and then go south from there.

It's called the NCA.

So the neighborhood conservation overlay.

So really what that consists of is college Park was the very first neighborhood and all of College Station, it's all this neighborhood.

That's where the center of that is really Brison Park.

So that's the Fairview side.

The west side.

And then if you go over Oakwood is another part of that.

So the conservation overlay is over both of those neighborhoods.

And that was established, I want to say, in 2012 by neighbors, who worked on that to put a conservation overlay which just talks about like, you have to have so many trees, things like that.

That's why you see it so green inside South Side.

So yeah.

Super cool.

And aside from being so close to campus, what makes this area so special and desirable?

Yeah.

That's such a great thing to talk about.

I love it.

I, we, how this got started.

We moved from Katy, outside of Houston, and, it was Covid, and, you know, we had to distance.

So my across the street neighbor name is, Catherine Edwards.

She, started coming over.

I wanted to know her.

She was in her 70s, and, so we just had iced tea in the backyard.

And on her second visit, she brought this booklet.

And this is.

I'll share it with you guys.

It's a driving tour of historic College Station, and this is, the campus home book.

And so inside of it, she started telling me stories about all of the different homes that had been moved from the campus.

We're on campus right now.

And and how those, homes had been moved into South Side.

So I'm saying College Park in, okay, that we're calling South Side and I thought, oh, like, do people know about this?

So she had been on the Historic Preservation Committee and they had put this together.

And you just said, Barbara, that somebody who was here earlier helped to.

Yeah, that's a very good it's a very familiar publication.

Okay.

Was our communications director when that was done?

Yeah.

So I said, you know, and you'll relate to this.

I think I said we need to start an Instagram and a Facebook, but these stories out there.

So I started South Side, Historic neighborhood, Instagram, South side, historic, neighborhood, Facebook and started just taking, I gave credit to the booklet, but I took the picture, a real picture of the of the home and then put the story under it.

And all of a sudden we started having people look at this and go, oh.

And so like, oh, we need to to save the history of this neighborhood.

So as I started meeting the neighbors, many long time families, the Lancasters, the Glovers, the West, the Schaefer's, all of the people that have lived there for a very long time.

I'm talking generations back into the early 1900s.

Yeah.

And Kathryn's grandfather, lives three, one, three Pershing.

His boots are in the in the cadet museum.

The golden bits.

So if you go in there.

Long story short, they started telling me the stories of how many decades they had been trying to save Southside.

They actually had a banner that said Save our South Side.

Emily Jane Cohen was sort of my predecessor of of leading, neighborhood volunteers.

So, many, many Linda Harvell worked on, trying to get the message that this is a historic neighborhood, the first neighborhood in College Station and all.

So I just want to say McCall as another first neighborhood and as well as college Hills on the east side, some people call the East side.

And there's a study done in 2007 or 8 that is a windshield study that was done the neighborhood asks for that to be done by the city.

And, it goes through the 11 different architectural styles that are in the south side.

When you go through a one of the wonderful things I notice was how you know it.

Every house is not cookie cutter like a, you know, and that's what I think students love and residents love.

And, and so this windshield study was done back in 2007, in an effort to again get this message that this is historic, this is for all this neighborhood.

So, and, and summer 2020, 2021 meeting with the neighbors, I said, you know what, we need to get this message out.

And so we started organizing different events and things.

When we looked into the history, we realized we're 2022, 20, 23, 100 years old.

And we were like, we need to do something.

I feel like I'm going past your question.

Okay, okay, okay.

So we we organized a centennial celebration.

So this was, the new mayor came and we just talked.

We had some of the people that have lived in the neighborhood for a long time.

Come and speak.

It's just tell stories.

Right.

And then we had, actually, the family that restored our bungalow, three one, four person, they, she, Tammy Stein ran a historic tour, so we had five homes that people could come through, and they.

And the city helped us, you know, get the word out on these things.

But again, with this idea of, these are special homes in the sense of their historic with they've some of them.

So let me clarify something that we have we had 20 campus homes that that were left.

I think there's 15 now because they do get scraped and new buildings.

So we're not a national historic.

We never got the national historic because people wanted freedom.

They didn't want other rules.

So we have about 15 campus homes left, but you'll see these designations on many of the homes.

More than 15.

Anyone who's home is older than 50 years old can go to the has to the, historic preservation.

Preservation Committee and get, one of these.

And then they tell the story of their home and the people who lived in it.

So every home that you see that has this designation has a story behind it.

So you're like, what is the significance of that?

If you begin reading in here, these are very short blurbs.

You know, there are some very just significant people related to the university, the community.

It's so tied to history.

So I'm a former AP teacher, and I just the history of it is so rich and so deep.

So it's interesting how, you know, as as waves of students come through, we want to keep that heritage of you guys knowing the history of that is as students and then knowing some of the people who've lived there and and really yesterday I did an interview.

So so what we did, as we decided.

So after all these events and things like this, I was over at the University press and I was getting this book for the centennial.

Party.

And this is a book about, the young man who grew up on campus.

So it's called over at college, and the community on campus was called over at college.

And these were homes right here, right where we're sitting right now.

And again, those homes were made just outside.

But he writes a book about the stories of playing on this campus and running in and out of Guion Hall and stuff like that.

And, so I'm sitting there getting ordering some books for the Centennial, and I found this book right here.

This is Waco It says More Historic Homes of Waco, Texas.

And so I open it up and I'm like, oh my goodness, look, it's just like our book.

It's just like it's got the it's got the picture of the home and then the story of the people.

Right.

So it's just like the it's just hard cover.

And so I took it back to our neighborhood, to all of our volunteers.

I said, guys, we how if we can't see the actual structures, what if we save the stories somehow, you know, and I can talk more about what we're doing now, but that's kind of the significance behind it.

To answer your long winded answer.

So it's sorry.

Well, I want to turn to you, Barbara, and and ask, how is this city work with residents to protect Southside?

And where does this city's ability to help end?

Yeah.

So one of the things that the city has done, as Liana mentioned, was like the conservation overlays, those have been done.

I've said 2012, and they've been several different ongoing efforts since then to kind of give the neighborhood some opportunities to be able, to have some form of control and discretion on how things get built and what they look like.

And so, that is kind of been the extent of what we've been able to offer, along with just assisting with basic code enforcement.

Regulatory things that we could control that were ordinance violations.

So our code enforcement department for many years has been heavily involved in Southside vehicle ordinance violations of parking or things like that.

So, we we spent a lot of time in that area because it's such a densely populated area, so many people, so many structures.

And so we do spend a fair amount of time working in that neighborhood.

I'm pretty sure a lot of the people over there know their code enforcement officers by name.

Because they become such good friends.

So that's kind of what we've done.

And then I know our historic preservation, division department has worked really, really hard.

With making sure that there is a focus on preservation of not just College Station history, but like specific neighborhoods.

And so, they've done a great job of looking at South Side and McCullough and on the Eastgate East Side neighborhood behind, City Hall, making sure there are ways that we can help to preserve that history so that we can keep it around for generations to come.

So we've done some similar work as what Lianas Group has done with McCullough, neighborhood, which is one of two, black neighborhoods in College Station.

The East Gate neighborhood is, not that many people, from the original inhabitants are still there.

Maybe just a few.

But we were still able to get some stories from people who lived there, and we got quite a few from people in McCullough.

And then we just kind of done some general, information out there on, just what some of the early black residents lives were like and who they were and their contributions to College Station.

And so it's very similar to what Liana in her neighborhood is doing with Southside is saving the stories, saving the information, making sure that people know, like the city that we enjoy today.

It's a lot of people who really did a lot to make this city the great city that it is today.

And we just want people to know who they are.

Because you might drive down Hereford Street, you may not even know who her fruit is.

It's like, know or you may drive down, you know, a Langford and not even realize.

Oh, there's a building on campus that's also called Langford.

Langford.

So we want people to know who these people are.

Or if you drive down Sterling Street, a lot of people don't know.

The Sterling family was one of, the first black families in College Station.

One of the larger black families in College Station still has descendants here today.

So we just want to make sure that people know, the people who made this city what it is.

Like Harvey Mitchell and Richard Carter, we have lots of information about them, but some of the people who came after them, like the people in South Side and McCullough also had made some great contributions to the city.

And I think our goal with both groups is just making sure that people know, yeah, well know what this city is all about and who helped to make it become what it is.

Before Meredith fires another question out to you, let me let me stop real quick and, reintroduce both of you if you're just tuning in.

I'm Jay Socol Along with campus student content contributor Meredith Carrasco and our guests today are Barbara Moore with City of College Station and Ileana Vincent, who lives in College Station's Southside neighborhood.

Yeah.

So you talked about this a little bit earlier.

But you talked about in 2023, the City council recognize the 100th anniversary of the neighborhood.

So could you expand a little bit more about the early history of the neighborhood?

You talked a little bit about the campus homes moving.

What else do we know about that?

So so, in the early times, really where it started was in College Park.

So there was an development company and the Lancasters actually, were there were five men who formed this development, which is College Park.

And so they just we actually have, pictures of the plat, that show they started selling lots in College Park.

And so they, they had professors who, you know, bought the lots and other people as well.

And so they just cut it up there.

It's funny when you look at it because they're kind of different shapes and things like that in the early days.

But yeah, so one of our things, some of our documents say 20, 1922 and some say 1923.

So we have a little the, thing in my south side, you know, saying, is it 20, 1922 or 1923?

So I keep saying 22 or 23, but, so, they developed that area and it did go all the way over to, West Park that now really has has been taken over with, with rebuilds and wasn't able to be saved.

So, so it kind of cuts off at Fairview.

All of that on the end is, is really student housing at the end on the corner of Washburn and, George Bush.

So but all of that was part of it.

And little, Brad Lancaster would go to the library and our centennial year and shared the details of the story.

But one of the stories he likes to share is that, in Brison Park, it actually had a lake.

So you see photos of.

Yes.

Yeah.

So it was dammed up.

And, he tells the story that when he was there were some kids out in the middle of this lake and, they were had a little boat or whatever while they went, you know, they had read about pirates and, went and got their mom's silverware and then it got dumped into the, into the lake and so somewhere and Bryce and Park, there might be some silver people.

Katelyn.

Right.

So, but yeah, so he just describes, to wife, as a kid in the neighborhood.

All of the residents really describe it as people running across the neighborhood, you know, and, and having just a lot of freedom.

No fences, all of that.

So.

So then after that, then Oakwood was developed.

But the.

Yeah, the first one was College Park.

So.

So, Janet, who who is this collection of stories intended for?

Oh, so what we're doing right now, we have collected about 25 to 30 stories.

And so we are putting them in Project Hall.

So that is something that we're working on with the city right now.

So Nicole Cross is the archivist.

So she comes to our meetings once a month.

And so we're we I did an interview yesterday with Doctor Frye and Mrs.

Frye.

This is Debbie Frye, and we, learned the city trained us to actually do interviews with residents.

And then we they download those into Project Hold.

So Project Hold has stores all of the the oral history.

So what we would like to do going off of this book idea is to talk the city into creating a book, you know, whether it's like this, like the campus handbook, but sort of this idea of maybe a series of, of books where you have the newer stories.

This was the campus homes, but we have so many other stories to tell.

So who would the audience be?

So the, the audience for this, this is at, what's the name of the.

It's at visit college station.

Visit college station?

Yes.

So this can be picked up.

So really visitors, residents and students, you know, anyone who is interested in the in the history.

So that would be that would be a wonderful that would be our goal, to, to reach that where it would actually we would take those stories, write them.

I did an interview with Jerry and Carol Cooper and I, and this is the beginning of writing, and I know Jerry so well.

Jerry is a city favorite.

I think we all know Jerry.

Yes, yes.

So we sat down with, him and and Carol and, and so this is the beginning of the story that I'm writing from the, from the oral.

And so really, anyone can go to our interviews and then take those and write stories.

It would be wonderful for, you know, the newspapers to go into some of these archives and begin writing some of these stories from our interviews.

But but again, our goal is to try to have a booklet.

We haven't taken those steps yet.

We're just pitching it to to Barbara right now and to to never watches us.

But but that would be a great ask.

And, and something coming off of what Barbara was talking about.

So we're we are the oral history.

We're trying to preserve.

We are doing one other initiative, which we started last spring in this is we are going to the builders and the Remodelers and South Side historic neighborhoods.

So you asked ways that we're trying to preserve.

We have this PowerPoint presentation for any, builders.

Realtors remodelers in South Side to say this is the history of our neighborhood.

And so we have a whole history section.

And then we have you can see their history, we have the campus homes listed out, and then we have the architectural styles.

And so we just sit down at Blue Baker and try to share one person at a time.

Like this is the history of our neighborhood.

So we're just really doing grass roots.

That's right.

Yeah.

So is the idea to preserve as much as can feasibly be preserved, or even if that's an architectural element or just something that's a nod to to the history.

Absolutely.

So, I'll give one example.

Well, really there's many examples.

But right next door to our house, the tinkers have, restored a house.

And so RJ Tinker, they, moved here in the past five years, and they're building a huge home on Dexter.

But right next to us, they bought the home.

And so we went to her and said, hey, shared information about the history.

And then she, in her designs, made sure to keep some of the historical elements within the house.

And she was mindful of okay, this is the time period.

You know, the third, these homes were here in the 30s and 40s.

And so if you go, she just they just sold the house.

But if as you could go and you could see, you know, doorways, you know, just just different elements that she kept even sometimes it'll be tile, things on the outside, things like that, that they're trying to.

We're trying to stay fit and, you know, try to make it fit into the same time period.

Our architectural styles are 11.

There's a lot of different styles, the Tudor style queen and things like that.

So yeah, so that that's what we're trying to do with that.

And a quick plug for Project Cole.

It stands for Historic Online Database and a huge nod to and book in the city's original archivist, and longtime history buff and all all knowledge, all knowing of College Station and did a great job with helping to put Project Hold together.

It is a online database of all things historic related to College Station and anybody who hasn't been and looked on it, it's a jewel.

You find some great stuff on there.

Yeah.

It is fascinating that there's there are photos that'll just knock your socks.

Absolutely.

And original documents, I mean, it's such a great resource of a way to, to, capture our history and have it memorialized for years to come.

Yeah, yeah.

One person I talked to about Project Hold was Chad Hyde.

And though he disagreed about no more than four, we do agree about history.

So we so he's been a great resource as well to talk about the early days with the, Boykin putting all of that history and, into the project.

And so that's been helpful.

Meredith, you have time for one last question.

Okay.

So as a, history buffs and someone who lives in the area is very fond of it, I'm sure you continue to feel that tension between all the new development and eager students who are excited to live there, you know, someone who lives there.

I love it because it makes us college students feel like we're at home.

I mean, houses, you're walking through the parks, it's more quiet and just makes you feel at home.

So I'm sure you all feel the tension of that with also the families who've lived here for generations.

All the new development and just the crowdedness and having things look different.

How do you think the students who do live in this neighborhood and residents and families can work together to preserve the charm of Southside?

Because the development is going to keep going, you know, and we've left you about 90s straight.

Sorry.

Go ahead.

Okay.

So how can students help?

I would say they're.

A lot of things are practical things.

You know, a lot of the residents talk about, you know, taking your garbage and things like that.

Parking.

Parking is one of the biggest things I would say.

It's hard to answer because no more than four.

That was sort of the answer before.

Right?

Just not overcrowding.

So the answer, now, I would say show up to some of our social things.

That would be great.

We'd love to know you.

Don't be afraid of the residents.

Beautify the front yards.

You know, maybe put maybe mowing or or, you know, flowers or whatever, things like that.

And, and then.

Yeah, be a good neighbors.

Really.

The Texas A&M talks about that a lot.

And so but maybe get involved with us here if you want to come to the stories, meetings and things like that, we would love to have students.

So, Barbara, any final note?

No, I think and a couple it, we just want to make sure people know for years to come what College Station is all about and places where you can find that info and your Facebook page and your Instagram page for the South Side neighborhood, it's still active.

Yes.

Right.

We can go check on site Historic neighborhood.

Yes.

On both Instagram and Facebook.

And thank you.

Oh thank you Barbara Moore land.

Vincent, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And and, Meredith, congrats on your first episode.

Thank you.

Well, that was awesome.

Brazos Matters is a production of Aggieland's Public Radio, 90.9 KAMU-FM.

Member of Texas A&M University's Division of Community Engagement.

Our show is engineered and edited by Matt Dittman.

All Brazos Matters episodes are available on YouTube and on your favorite podcast platform Spotify, Apple, iHeart, Amazon, also on the NPR app and on our website.

For Meredith Carrasco.

I am Jay Socol.

Thank you so much for watching and for listening, and we hope you have a wonderful day.