Emancipation Park

The park sits on 11.7 acres in the heart of the Third Ward, and its conservancy calls it the oldest public park in Houston. Formerly enslaved Houstonians led by Richard Allen, Richard Brock, Elias Dibble and Jack Yates bought the first ten acres in 1872 to celebrate their freedom each June 19, and through much of the Jim Crow era it was the only public park in the city open to Black residents.

In the 1930s the city added a swimming pool and bathhouse designed by William Ward Watkin, finished in 1939. By the 2000s the park was worn, and in 2006 two Third Ward natives, Carroll Parrott Blue and Bill Milligan, began a campaign to save it. The city named it a historic landmark in 2007. A rebuilding designed by the architect Phil Freelon, costing about $33.6 million, was finished in 2017, with a new recreation center, pool, performance space and playground. In 2017 the city also renamed Dowling Street, which bordered the park and honored a Confederate officer, as Emancipation Avenue.

The Emancipation Park Conservancy, formed in 2014, has run the park with the city under a thirty-year agreement since 2016. Juneteenth celebrations came back to the park with its reopening.