Setting Near Rice University
Rice Village is a shopping district in Houston, located about a half-mile west of the center of Rice University’s 300-acre campus. Its core area extends across several blocks bounded by University Boulevard, Kirby Drive, Tangley Street, Morningside Drive, Rice Boulevard and Greenbriar Drive.
Retail activity has also spread beyond the core, with businesses reaching north as far as Bissonnet Street.
Retail Character
The district brings together shops, restaurants and pubs in a dense, unplanned mix of older and newer retail spaces. From its beginnings as an ad hoc cluster of stores in the 1930s, Rice Village developed into a Houston shopping destination.
The area has hosted more than 300 shops within a 16-block area and is known for small, eclectic shops and boutiques. More recent expansion has added high-end clothing stores and nationwide retail venues.
History and Change
Rice Village began operating in 1938. During the 1950s and 1960s, it filled in and prospered, while the economic boom in Greater Houston during the 1970s drew development elsewhere.
Beginning in the 1980s, the arrival of young families in Southgate, Southampton and the City of West University Place was credited with helping revive Rice Village. In the mid-1980s, Rice University began purchasing land in the area, and in 1996 the university’s vice president for investments described the district as strategically located, with room for possible growth and flexibility.
Blocks and Notable Features
The Village Arcade occupies land bounded by Kirby Drive, Amherst, Morningside and University. The development also takes up most of the block bounded by Kelvin, Amherst, Times and Morningside.
As retail density increased in the 1990s, limited parking contributed to the closing of Rice Food Market, the last remaining grocery store in Rice Village. Residential real estate later returned with the opening of Hanover Rice Village Luxury Apartments. The opening minutes of the film The Chase were filmed in Rice Village.
Civic and Community Details
Rice Village is part of the West University Place Super Neighborhood Council and lies within Texas’s 7th congressional district. Police service is provided through the Houston Police Department’s South Central Patrol Division.
The area is zoned to Houston ISD schools including Poe Elementary School, Lanier Middle School and Lamar High School. In the mid-20th century, the community newspaper Southwestern Times was headquartered in Rice Village.
What it is like
Rice Village is at Kirby and University Boulevard, Houston, TX 77005, nestled between Houston’s West University neighborhood and the Medical Center and adjacent to Rice University. It is described as a walkable, historic haven and pedestrian-friendly shopping center in the heart of Houston. Known as one of Houston’s oldest and best-loved shopping districts since the 1930s, it offers local and national boutiques, many restaurants, nightlife hot spots along Morningside Boulevard, and a farmers market on first and third Sundays.
Sources: Rice Village (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA); rice-village.com