The Houston Building Atlas

Explore Houston’s story through its buildings. The Houston Building Atlas maps every property by age, helping you track the city’s growth, spot patterns across neighborhoods, and visualize history in a whole new way.

The Houston Building Atlas is an interactive map Preservation Houston created to help you visualize the city’s history through its buildings. With its intuitive tools, you can see when neighborhoods took shape, trace growth patterns over time, and compare the age of structures across Houston.

Key features include:

Age of structures: Every property is color-coded by the age of its structures, making it easy to visualize how the city developed.

  • Date sliders: Adjust sliders to filter properties by year of construction and explore changes over time.

  • Decade-by-decade view: Use the dropdown menu to focus on specific eras and spot architectural trends and growth spurts.

  • Historic districts and landmarks: Toggle layers to see City of Houston historic districts and landmarks.

  • Interactive details: Click on individual properties and landmarks for more information.

The Houston Building Atlas is a powerful tool for anyone interested in the city’s built environment — historians, urban planners, architects and curious residents.

Where does this information come from?

The Atlas uses public data from the Harris Central Appraisal District (HCAD) and the City of Houston.

Things to keep in mind

  • Properties are color-coded based on the oldest structure on the site. Darker colors indicate older buildings. (When more than one structure is located on a property, the color of the property is based on the age of the oldest structure.)

  • Structure completion dates come from HCAD and may not always be precise — especially for older properties.

  • Vacant parcels and some non-taxed properties (such as schools, hospitals, and public buildings) appear in gray because HCAD does not provide data for them.

  • The list of City of Houston landmarks is mostly complete, but the newest designations may not yet appear.

We want to hear from you!

The Houston Building Atlas is a work in progress. We’re refining the interface and planning future features, and we’d love your input. Share your experience with us.