Hiding in plain sight: the art bonanza right under our noses

Huntsville's a prison town, right? There are five in the city limits and nine within a short drive, ten if you forget they renamed one and count it twice.

All right, fine. But if we're going to get all mathematical about it, Huntsville isn't a prison town. It's a museum town, with one of the highest concentrations of museums in the country, relative to its size. You just have to count the ones we've mostly been oblivious to.

These museums contain a mother lode of art, much of it outstanding, and all of it at our fingertips – if we only knew to ask.

Take a walk on the wild side

Let's walk down a street we know well: University Avenue. Heading south from 14th St., for the next two blocks you can’t spit without hitting a museum.

To your right, at 1404 University Avenue, is the Museum of African and African-American Art, History, and Culture, which houses around 150 pieces produced by African-American artists and over 150 African tribal artifacts. The building on the outside, splashed with yellow, purple, and blue, is just as colorful as the paintings on the inside.

Two more museums lie across the street in the old Smither Warehouse (1405 University).  The Museum of Texas Furniture and its compatriot, the Museum of Texas Stoneware, each contain the world’s largest collection of its kind.  The side of the building features a massive mural of an East Texas nature scene, done by local artist Kat Black.

A little further down (1425 University) lies the Museum of Texas Art, located in a stunning red brick Victorian mansion. It contains an incredible variety of paintings, drawings, furniture, ceramics, wood carvings, blown glass, and other objects by Texas artists.  There is even an adults-only Erotic Art Gallery decorated like a Victorian brothel.

Across the street (1428 University) in another two-story Victorian is the Museum of Folk and Outsider Art, which contains a wide variety of pieces, some quite whimsical, and some from local artists.  The contents are guarded by two sword-wielding soldiers out front.

Further down the street, the Museum of Genocide and Atrocities Perpetrated Against Native Americans is on your left (1501 University), with two more on your right. The Carol Turner Children’s Museum (1518 University, now closed) has antique toys and interactive activities for children, with the Children’s Museum of World Peace and World Cultures right next door. 

A few steps more take you to Bearkat Blvd. and the city’s third most-famous crosswalk, and your journey is complete.

The biggest museum of all

While the art inside is the main attraction, these buildings represent decades of early Huntsville history and are noteworthy in themselves. You could almost consider this two block stretch a museum in its own right.

Every house along it is over 125 years old. Three are from the 1890s: the Museum of African and African-American Art, the Children's Museum of World Peace, and the Museum of Texas Art. Meanwhile, the Native American Museum was formed by joining one house built in the 1840s to one built in the 1870s.

The houses without museums are even older. There is a log cabin built in 1831 by one of the first 300 Colonists, John Bowman, and a Greek Revival home built by George Washington Rogers in 1845 (which might become a project of the Texas Historical Commission).

Ironically, the newest building of the bunch may be the most historic of all. The Smither Warehouse, home to the Furniture and Stoneware museums, is the last remnant of a bygone age: train travel. It was built almost 100 years ago to store items delivered to town by train.

The railroad spur from the east, Tilley's Tap, came into town just north of Bearkat Blvd. and ended just south of the warehouse. Look closely there and you will see an oddly flat and even area where the tracks would have been, with a historical marker nearby.

A passion for preservation

Altogether, it is a remarkable stretch of historical preservation. Coupled with the antebellum buildings in the Sam Houston Memorial Museum, all of Texas' early statehood is covered. Few cities can boast something similar.

Tom Weger, who worked for the City of Huntsville for decades, watched it all happen firsthand. He has known Russell since their time together on a forest preservation advocacy group in the 1970s.

Weger shares, "it took me time to get where he is coming from," but learned that "he is really knowledgeable about preserving things," be it nature, art, or architecture. Russell says that "nature and art [are] therapeutic" and worries about "historical buildings being destroyed for no reason, art being destroyed."

Weger remembers how Russell "tried to save all these houses (on University Avenue). He was the only one around town who wanted to save them." Russell hired his own crews, opting out of state or federal funds, to make the needed renovations as he saw fit – from the bones out on each structure, be it a brick Victorian or a log cabin. 

The result is two city blocks where the buildings on the outside are as noteworthy as the art on the inside. But that art! It deserves an article to itself – which is coming next week.

This article is the first of a three-part series. Part two: the treasures inside Russell's museums. Part three: visiting the museums. You can subscribe to The Huntsvillan for free by hitting the pink "subscribe" button at top right and receive occasional updates when this and other new material is posted.