N. Velasco St. – Houston TX (build date unknown, pre-1944)

 

This pair of chimneys on North Velasco street east of downtown Houston is often mistaken for the city’s Velasco Incinerator shown here, at the 7 minute, 20 second mark: http://digital.houstonlibrary.net/film-archive/hmrc-film_6803-16.php. The chimneys still here today are located farther north, just south of Buffalo Bayou near the old city dumping ground and show up on aerial imagery as early as 1944 (the incinerator in the video was built in 1947). The footprint of the 1947 incinerator can still be seen in current aerial images.

Confusingly, the 1951 Sanborn map inset below shows the 1947 city incinerator at N. Velasco and Ball streets, while the video shows it at N. Velasco and Freund streets, one block south. Over the years, about five streets near the bayou have disappeared intersecting N. Velasco – Ball, Lenehan/Freund, Kennedy/Freund (names have conflicts on different maps), Fox,  and Bering streets. Engelke, which is still around today, is now the southernmost existing street. All of those, except for Ball St., still exist east and west of N. Velasco St.