Click on image to enlarge.
History of Newman Park
By Cindy Milazzo
This is a short history of the developers of the Highland
Park subdivision, Newman Park, and when the houses in the immediate area of the
park were built.
The Highland Park subdivision was built by one of El Paso’s
pioneers, Ezekiel “Zeke” S. Newman who brought his family to El Paso around
1882. He founded Newman Investment, a real estate company that later included
his son, Charles M. Newman, and son-in-law, C. J. Mapel. Around 1900, Newman
Investment began to develop the Highland Park area, which included around 140
blocks.
An early map of Highland Park shows the city limits at Savannah
and Louisiana and a streetcar line the follows roughly the same route as the
Highland Park bus today.
In 1907, Zeke Newman built a house as a wedding present for
his daughter and son-in-law, Myra and C. J. Mapel, at 2631 New Orleans (Today
this is the house at the NW corner of Altura and Louisiana. New Orleans Street
was renamed Altura around 1920). Zeke
Newman lived there with the Mapels until his death in 1913.
In 1908 Newman Investment donated the 1.5 acres that became
Newman Park. It was one of the largest gifts given to the city at the time and
included a stipulation that all property owners around the park invest a minimum
of $3000 in their houses.
Around 1910, Zeke’s son, Charles M., built a mission-style
home at 2601 New Orleans (today the NE corner of Altura and Alabama). Charles and his family lived in the house
until his death in the early 1940s. Barbara Leigh Rees, who grew up in the same
block as the Newman house and lives there today, remembers Charles Newman
telling stories of lights on the mountain from what he said were Indian
campfires.
It would be 10 years before the next house was built across
from the park. In 1920 Robert E. McKee, the world-renowned contractor, built
his two-story Federal-style house at 2630 Richmond. Six more houses went up in
the 20s and 30s, five in the 40s and 50s, and two more in the 80s and 90s.
An early map of Highland Park indicates the name was called
Newman Park. Many articles in the El Paso newspapers refer to the park as
Newman and local residents knew it by that name until the early 1960s when the
city put up a “Highland Park” sign. In
1967, City Council officially changed the name from Highland to Newman to honor
the original donor family.
Park Tidbits
Some of the many events held in Newman Park include church
and club picnics, dance concerts, plays, quilting club parties, Easter egg
hunts, ice cream socials, and watermelon feasts.
Concerts were also popular. In June 1937, 300 people
attended a concert in Newman Park, the first of a series of Federal Music Project concerts. [More information on the Federal Music Project.] The WPA concerts
were held throughout that summer, in Newman Park on Monday nights and in Kern
Place Park on Thursday nights. There was a WPA mariachi orchestra as well as a
concert orchestra.
In the summer of 1947, 150 Cub Scouts pitched tents in the
park for a
three-day camp out.
After metal-working, paper maché activities, and song sessions, they
closed off Alabama near the park for a soap box derby.
Another street, Richmond, was closed next to the park in May
1931 for the El Paso Garden Club’s flower festival.
Around the same time, neighborhood residents complained
about tourists camping in cars around the park and on vacant property near the
park. Maybe because of this, the park commissioner sent a watchman who
unfortunately began chasing neighborhood kids out of the park. Dr. B.U.L.
Conner, who wrote a humor/commentary column for the Herald Post, complained
that “this was a blow to the Conner and other kids of Highland Park as they had
been playing hide and seek in the park for a long time. It appears that the
park is being kept sacred for the benefit of those who have nice homes on the
avenue. Who pays for the upkeep of the park, and why can’t children of the
taxpayers play in it? If Hugo Meyer (park commissioner) thinks he’s going to
force the Conner kids to hang around the Conner home, instead of getting rid of
their pent up energy in the park, he’ll find out the Mrs. Conner is pretty
expert at mind changing."
(Sources El Paso Herald Post 1908 – 1967)
