Revitalizing Quebedeaux Park: A Vision for Justice and Community Renewal
Master Plan Estimates by Halford Busby
Architect: Studio Avid
What began as a focused effort to restore Quebedeaux Park and respectfully relocate the Harris County Equal Justice Initiative Lynching Marker—honoring the lives of John Walton, John White, Robert Powell, and Bert Smith—has evolved into a broader urban revitalization initiative. This expanded vision now encompasses the surrounding blocks, aiming to create a dynamic civic space that not only preserves history but also fosters community engagement and healing.
PROJECT MISSION:
To develop a public space that powerfully chronicles the legacy of racial injustice and resistance, inspires collective action toward dismantling oppressive systems, and lays the foundation for a more just and equitable future.
The master plan of the park encompasses the three blocks from Congress Street to Buffalo Bayou in Houston as a united park. Block 1 between Congress Street and Franklin Street will host a series of reflective spaces for community gathering and learning, including:
- History of slavery/origins and the role of slavery in Harris County
- Lynching era
- Post-slavery periods: Juneteenth, Reconstruction/Post-reconstruction
- Today and Beyond
Block 2 between Franklin Street and Commerce Street is designed to emphasize space for artistic expression and gathering.
- Assemble – Meeting mounds, design to gather and organize as community
- Represent – Art pavilions, Express the voices of the community and engage visitors through art
- Participate – Amphitheater and platforms for performance and presentation
Block 3 from Commerce Street to the Bayou re-imagine our ideas of freedom and justice.
- Play – Misty Boardwalk is a place that celebrates recreation and the benefits of being surrounded by nature.
- Look out – The Observation Deck provides moments and opportunities to observe both the bayou and jail.
- Rise Above – The Canopy Walk presents the opportunity to float above the bayou and engage with a landscape constantly in flux.
ART
Several art installments will be featured throughout the park. Featured artists are highlighted below.
Kehinde Wiley – Los Angeles native and New York-based visual artist, Wiley has firmly situated himself within art history’s portrait painting tradition. As a contemporary descendent of a long line of portraitists, including Reynolds, Gainsborough, Titian, and Ingres, among others, Wiley engages the signs and visual rhetoric of the heroic, powerful, majestic and the sublime in his representation of urban, black and brown men found throughout the world. Wiley was included in Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People of 2018.”
Art by Kehinde Wiley
Simone Leigh – Over the last 20 years Simone Leigh has created a multi-faceted body of work incorporating sculpture, video and installation—all informed by her ongoing exploration of the Black female-identified subjectivity. Leigh describes her work as auto-ethnographic, and her salt-glazed ceramic and bronze sculptures often employ forms traditionally associated with African art. Her performance-influenced installations create spaces where historical precedent and self-determination commingle. “I am charting a history of change and adaptation,” the artist has written, “through objects and gesture and the unstoppable forward movement of Black women.”
Art by Simone Leigh
Hank Willis Thomas – New Jersey born, Hank Willis Thomas is a conceptual artist focusing on themes relating to perspective, identity, commodity, media and popular culture. His work often incorporates widely-recognizable icons—many from well-known advertising or branding campaigns—to explore their ability to reinforce generalizations developed around race, gender and ethnicity. Thomas created one of his most iconic photography series in 2006, B®anded, where he superimposed bodies of Black men with the Nike swoosh logo recalling the history of branding slaves in America as well as the literal and figural objectification of Black male bodies in contemporary culture.
Art by Hank Willis Thomas
Estimated total construction costs: $42 million
Plaza Welcome Center – 6,000 SF*
Plaza Amphitheater – 8,241 SF
Plaza Art Pavillion – 1,652 SF
Food Truck Court – 5,000 SF*
Plaza The Overlook – 4,000 SF*
Plaza Site – 131,882 SF
Total – 156,775 GSF
