About Save Our Landmarks

Save Our Landmarks is a grassroots organization founded by Sarah Gish of Gish Creative that is made up of concerned citizens, architects, theatre enthusiasts, and community and professional preservationists and historians. It serves as a communication resource for preservationists and concerned citizens.

Our mission is to save the Alabama and River Oaks Theatres, along with their adjacent retail centers, from demolition. With this preservation campaign, we also want to promote the debate about historic preservation in Houston, resulting in a stronger and more enduring preservation ordinance that would benefit all historic structures in our city. The River Oaks and Alabama buildings represent some of the oldest, most historic, and architecturally significant structures in Houston. Their loss would not only destroy Houston’s oldest retail center and two of our last examples of movie theatres from the golden age of cinema, but would profoundly impact Houston’s quality of life that is shaped by vibrant community treasures such as these.

In our efforts to save the Alabama and River Oaks Theatres and their shopping centers, we have worked with the various stakeholders in this issue, including Weingarten Realty Inc. (the property owners), the city, and the citizens of Houston to bring about an outcome where everyone wins. We feel a preservation approach to these properties will pay real dividends to Weingarten Realty Inc. and will increase the quality of life quotient that is so important in promoting economic development today.

We want all Houstonians understand the importance of preserving Houston’s historical and cultural heritage, so we organized a celebration of the City’s founding, called “Happy Birthday Houston: Honoring Our Past, Inspiring Our Future” for the first time in 2007. This celebration placed an emphasis on youth education and the idea for it sprang from the 2006 recommendations by the Mayor’s History Task Force. It is hoped that this event will become an annual celebration of the city’s founding which took place on August 30, 1836 and, as a result of this event, we will elevate public awareness of the importance of preservation.

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