One of the things we understandably don’t think about much is that the names of streets, even major streets, sometimes change over time. Why does this happen? I guess sometimes it’s to honor a person but other times I just don’t know. In any event, it can leave gaps in my understanding even of photographs that are labeled. Here’s one that I noticed a while back, a picture of the April 1912 flood that I’ve talked about before, labeled neatly in the bottom left corner:
It’s an impressive amount of water, but where the heck is the intersection of Reynolds Avenue and Westmoreland Boulevard?
There’s a nice clue in the box full of maps and drawings that I came across before Christmas, a 1909 map I’ve never seen anywhere before called “Westmoreland Farms.”
Zoom in and there’s Reynolds Avenue Road, running north to south along the west side of the still undeveloped Rice Institute property. (You can also see the notch along Main Street where Charles Weber’s farm was.) What I can’t find is any evidence of Westmoreland Boulevard, although it must be near campus somewhere for them to have bothered to photograph it. I wonder if it might actually refer to Bellaire Boulevard, which goes out to Westmoreland Farms. That would explain the presence of those tracks in the foreground of the picture, wouldn’t it? Or am I all turned around? Help me out here, people.