Courtesy of Robin Soslow, Special to Chron
A piece of Houston’s cultural identity and history is being erased.
This week, demolition crews began tearing down two buildings on Leeland Street as part of the Texas Department of Transportation’s I-45 North Houston Highway Improvement Project. One of those buildings is the well-known “Graffiti Park,” an ever-evolving canvas that has served as a gathering place for artists and a destination for visitors and creative’s for over a decade.
More than just a photo spot, Graffiti Park was one of the few places where artists could speak directly to their city — on their own terms. It began as a grassroots art initiative led by local artists Daniel Anguilu, Gelson Lemus “W3r3on3” and Empyre. Over the years, it became a living archive of mural work and personal expression. It didn’t belong to a museum or gallery. It belonged to the people who painted it.
“One of my favorite memories there is just painting with my friends, it was a wholesome experience,” said Gelson Lemus, who paints under the name W3r3on3. “It was one of the first buildings people could paint with permission. When people come to Houston, they go to that building. It’s not like any other place.”
Anguilu, one of the building’s original caretakers, expressed frustration over what he said was a lack of communication from TxDOT or city officials as plans for the demolition and future art initiatives continue to move forward without input from the artists who created the space.
“Graffiti Park is one of the largest and oldest art initiatives in Houston, purely run from artist to artist,” Anguilu shared. “We are the caretakers and the original artists who started this art project more than 12 years ago. It has become a site visited by thousands, and unfortunately there is no conversation with us about the future and archiving of a Houston iconic place for creativity.”
Although the site sits within Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone (TIRZ) No. 15, which covers a substantial portion of East Downtown, it was never designated as a formal art space. Still, members of the artist community say anyone familiar with the building’s walls knew their value. To them, every layer of paint told a story, holding years of unfiltered, public dialogue, impossible to replace.
In response to the community outcry over Graffiti Park’s demolition, TxDOT is partnering with the East Downtown Redevelopment Authority, which manages TIRZ 15, in an effort to help preserve the area’s creative legacy, according to TxDOT documents. As part of this effort, TxDOT says it will provide a one-time mitigation payment of up to $500,000 to the district. These funds are intended to offset the environmental and cultural loss tied to the right-of-way acquisition and to support a new public art program within the zone.
Here’s a feature story on Graffiti Park from 2023 that gives you a good overview of the place. You might just do a Google image search on “Graffiti Park Houston” as well. I mean look, I didn’t know much about this place, so any sense of loss I feel is from having missed out. Nothing lasts forever, big infrastructure projects always result in some amount of demolition, and so on. It would have been nice if there had been some more notice about this specific demolition, maybe enough to give the place a proper farewell before it was wiped out. I don’t care for the I-45 project so this is easy for me to say, but losing places like Graffiti Park makes Houston that much less interesting. However you feel about any other part of this, that much is sad.