4th Ward Cottage

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4th Ward Cottage
This house was moved from its location at 809 Robin Street in Houston's Fourth Ward (Freedmen’s Town) to this site in the fall of 2002. It is at least as old as 1866, when records indicate that it was occupied by Charles Englehard and his family, who purchased the land on which the house sat in 1858. Parts of the house are likely much older than that, although archival and architectural research are still taking place to determine the building's exact age. It is known, however, that the house is the oldest documented "working man house" in Houston.

By the turn of the century it was part of the thriving African American neighborhood known as “Freedmen's Town”, which has been a major hub for black education, business and culture from emancipation until the present day (for another Freedman's Town house, see the Yates House across the Park). The house is similar in several ways to Acadian-style houses in Louisiana, although on Robin Street it was surrounded by late 19^th-century “shotgun houses”, which many scholars believe are based on African and Afro-Caribbean building styles.

The Heritage Society intends an exhaustive study of the house and will use it to demonstrate the changing demographics in Houston in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.

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