Bellaire, Texas

== History == Bellaire was founded in 1908 by William Wright Baldwin, who was the president of the South End Land Company.

The street car line, which ran a four-mile (6 km) stretch from central Bellaire to Houston's Main Street, started construction in 1909.

In 1910, Edward Teas, a horticulturist, moved his nursery to Bellaire from Missouri so he could implement Sid Hare's landscaping plans.

Bellaire first received a post office in 1911.

Bellaire was incorporated as a city with a general charter in 1918, 10 years after its founding.

On September 26, 1927, the trolley line was abandoned and replaced by a bus line.

Bellaire's population had reached 1,124 in 1940.

On December 31, 1948, the city of Houston had annexed the land around the city of Bellaire, stopping the city of Bellaire's land growth.

Bellaire remained independent of Houston, and adopted a home rule charter with a council-manager government in April 1949.

By 1950, the city's residents had numbered 10,173, with 3,186 houses.

The Weekley YMCA in Houston includes Bellaire in its service area, It opened in 1951 as the Southwest YMCA.

In 1953, the Consulate-General of Sweden moved to Bellaire.

Jack Gurwell had established the newspaper in 1954; Lynn McBee of the Bellaire Examiner described him as "a Damon Runyonesque character".

The land contains an 11-story building, with 502,000 square feet (46,600 m2) of area, that was built for Texaco; In August 1963 officials from the company asked the city governm...

By 1975 it became known as the Bellaire & Southwestern Texan and was published by the Preston Publishing Company.

==== Local politics ==== Zoning and land use controversies, common throughout Bellaire's history, resulted in the 1977 recall of the mayor and three council members.

Episcopal High School opened in fall 1984.

In 1985, a similar streetcar was acquired in Portugal and brought to Bellaire for permanent display.

The price of an average house in Bellaire increased from $75,000 to $500,000 from 1986 to 2006.

It re-opened as a relief school in 1988 for Elrod and Cunningham schools.

Gulfton Center, a 35,100-square-foot (3,260 m2) campus building owned by HCCS, opened in 1990 after Mutual Benefit Life Insurance Co.

According to a Bellaire resident quoted in the Houston Post, prior to 1992, the tax base of the city of Bellaire had been decreasing.

As of 1996, Bellaire prohibits smoking in public parks and dogs in all non-dog public parks; as of that year, smoking in public parks incurs a fine of $500.

The West Loop Center, an HCCS-owned campus at 5601 West Loop South which opened in Spring 1999, is in Houston and in close proximity to Bellaire.

Bellaire had 8,120 employed civilians as of the 2000 Census, including 3,835 females.

The current facility in Braeswood Place, Houston broke ground in 2001.

In 2002, the City of Bellaire attempted to acquire all or part of the 10 acres (4.0 ha) Teas Nursery, Bellaire's oldest business and the oldest nursery in Greater Houston, for p...

In 2005 the lawsuit was settled out of court.

In 2006, it had about 4,000 regular parishioners.

The City of Bellaire voted against banning smoking in bars and restaurants on Monday January 15, 2007.

On March 23, 2008, a tour bus carrying Tejano singer Emilio Navaira crashed in Bellaire.

The resulting lawsuit was settled in June 2009.

The trial in Harris County District Court on criminal felony charges against Cotton began on January 25, 2010.

In 2011, Phil Nauert was elected as the new mayor of Bellaire.

In 2012 HISD opened the Mandarin Chinese Language Immersion Magnet School Chinese language-immersion magnet school, in the former Gordon Elementary building.

In 2014, long-time City Manager Bernie Satterwhite retired and was replaced by Paul Hofmann.

Andrew Friedberg became the mayor in November 2015 and remained in his position after a 2019 election.

In 2016 900 employees, working in company's pipeline division and other divisions, worked in the office.

In August 2017, the city was affected by Hurricane Harvey.

Bellaire is in Texas's 7th congressional district; as of 2018, Lizzie Fletcher is the representative.

=== 2019 American Community Survey === The 2019 American Community Survey determined the average household size was 2.78 people in the city.

As of July 31, 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic in Texas, 78 people were confirmed to have had the disease; at that time, no Bellaire residents had died from it.

The first COVID deaths in the city occurred by March 2021.

The houses were about a fourth as expensive as Tanglewood houses, around $25,000 each (equivalent to $260,000 in 2024).