John P. McGovern, MD: A Lifetime of Stories

Chapter Five. Building the Future

Jack was no sooner in Houston than he wrote Lottie to report on his progress and invite her down: March 6, 1956 Dear Mother: Please pardon the fact that this letter is typewritten, but you might have gathered from our recent telephone conversation that I am really “snowed under.” I arrived in Houston Thursday morning and now have my temporary license. I saw many interesting allergy patients Friday and Saturday and everything is just about all organized nicely. . . . I have taken over the Bowen Clinic for the practice of pediatric allergy and will teach at Baylor Medical School and the Texas Postgraduate School. Everything is very well organized so that I will no longer have to “kill myself.” The girls in the Clinic here know the business very well and take a great burden off of my shoulders. I will teach twice a week over at the Medical School and will also have my laboratory so that we can continue our experiments. The two books that I had sections in are both out and I will send you reprints from the sections just as soon as I receive them. After everything gets settled, perhaps you will be able to make a trip down to Houston. It is a very fine city. . . . I think of you many times each day. I am commuting back and forth to N.O. [New Orleans] each week until the end of the school year. Love to Aunt Sis. Love, Jack. A big hug and kiss!!!1 Building the Future Chapter Five building the future | 135 First Clinic Houston’s Montrose Boulevard was known as “doctor’s row” in the early 1950s because of the many physicians’ homes located there with clinics attached. Immediately southwest of downtown Houston, the Montrose area has a history almost as old as the city itself and has been home to such notable residents as Clark Gable, Howard Hughes, Lyndon Johnson, and Walter Cronkite.2 It is worthy of note that Walter L. Cronkite Sr., DDS, also taught at Fred Elliott’s Texas Dental College, as an assistant professor of prosthetic dentistry .3 When they arrived in Houston, Walter Sr. helped the Elliotts find a home4 while his son, Walter Jr., threw newspapers to their door from his bicycle as he dreamed of a career in journalism—although he probably never imagined he would one day be known as “the most trusted man in America.”5 The history of Houston’s Montrose neighborhood dates back to the early 1830s, when the Allen brothers, two real estate entrepreneurs from New York, first arrived and bought 6,642 acres of land to establish their town named for military hero and first president of the Republic of Texas, Sam Houston. They paid less than $1.50 per acre. In 1835 a widow memorably named Obedience Smith arrived in Houston from Mississippi. She brought her ten children with her to find a new life and within two years applied for a grant of land. In 1838 she was granted 3,370 acres that stretched from downtown Houston to present-day Rice University.6 This was prairie land. For decades its only residents were the cattle, deer, armadillos, and coyotes that roamed freely. As the city grew in the early 1900s, new neighborhoods like the Heights began to appear to the north of downtown, and Hyde Park, Cherryhurst, Courtland Place, Shadyside, Avondale, and Montrose appeared to the southwest. Streetcars, the main transportation used by 75 percent of Houstonians going to work in 1900,7 were now reaching outward to the new suburbs. They were joined in 1908 by a growing number of Henry Ford’s new Tin Lizzies or Model Ts that overnight made the newly developing suburbs across the American landscape both attractive and convenient. The great homes of Houston clustered near Main Street adjacent to the downtown center of commerce, but Wiley Link, a former mayor of Orange, Texas, had plans to rival them. He took the name Montrose Place right 136 | chapter five out of the pages of Sir Walter Scott8 and laid out a subdivision with four broad boulevards planted with seven train-car loads of palm trees to add a California touch. On Montrose Boulevard, Link built his own home (now the administration building of the University of St. Thomas). By the 1920s bungalows lined the streets of Montrose. They were followed by shopping centers in the 1930s and...