Location
Arthur Coleman Comey
Years: 1886–1954 | Role: Landscape Architect | County: Harris
Topics
Description
Comey was a landscape architect, city planner, and professor who trained under Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., and came out of the City Beautiful tradition. In 1912, he was hired by the Houston Park Commission to prepare the report, Houston: Tentative Plans for its Development (1913). This study foresaw the meteoric growth of Houston, the “Bayou City”, and proposed a systematic layout of parks, rather than a set of isolated green spaces. His plan proposed a continuous park system integrated with Houston’s streams, including Brays, Buffalo and White Oak Bayous, turning flood-prone waterways into recreational spines. Comey’s stragey laid the groundwork for Hermann Park (1924), and decades later, the modern Bayou Greenways, a program underwritten by $100 million in city bond funds (2012) and matching grants from the Houston Endowment and the Brown, Hildebrand and Kinder Foundations.
Location Notes
A marker at Stude Park, on the north side of White Oak Bayou, might be a good place for a Comey marker. This location could celebrate Comey's vision of an urban form in keeping with natural features, one that saw Houston's bayous not merely as floodways and sewers but as recreational amenities.