Gulfton: Houston's Ellis Island

In the 1970s, developers threw up dozens of sprawling apartment complexes on Houston's southwest side with names like Napoleon Square and Villa Royale, aiming them at young oil-boom workers streaming in from the Northeast and Midwest. One complex reportedly boasted seventeen swimming pools and seventeen hot tubs; locals called the whole district 'Swingersville.' Then the oil bust of the 1980s emptied the units, bankrupted the owners, and left tens of thousands of apartments standing nearly vacant — and into that cheap, abundant housing poured newly arrived immigrants from Mexico and Central America. Within a generation Gulfton became the single densest neighborhood in Houston and one of the most diverse square miles in America, a place city officials came to call 'somewhat of an Ellis Island.' This drive reads Gulfton and the historic streets just around it, tracing how a speculative suburb for singles became a gateway to America. The neighborhood has few formal monuments; the story is in the apartment blocks, the storefronts, and the older Bellaire markers on its rim.