Houston’s History through Homes

Join Stephen Sherman, housing researcher and scholar at the Kinder Institute at Rice University, as he tells the economic history of Houston through 19 homes, some of which are still standing today. These houses all reflect not only cultural expectations about the home and the family, but Houston’s evolving orientation to the local and global economy. Mr. Sherman will chart Houston’s evolution from agrarian market town, to railroad logistics hub, to oil boomtown, to the diverse global economic hub it is today. Of emphasis are not necessarily the houses of “great Houstonians,” but everyday working people’s homes, which are concrete, physical manifestations of a specific economic and cultural order in which they lived.

Stephen Sherman is a Rice University research scientist at the Kinder Institute for Urban Research’s Center for Housing and Neighborhoods. He regularly appears on local news programs, such as Houston Public Media’s Houston Matters, as an expert on local housing topics. Mr. Sherman has published in both peer-reviewed journals and through the Kinder Institute, where he is the lead researcher for the yearly “State of Housing in Harris County and Houston” report. He has a PhD and masters in Urban Planning from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a BA in American Studies and English (with a creative-writing emphasis) from the University of Iowa.