I did not grow up in Houston’s historic Third Ward, but something felt immediately familiar when I turned onto Emancipation Avenue on a cloudless, blistering-hot day in June. My mom would drive me to Project Row Houses from southwest Houston in the early 2000s, and even my noodly teenage brain understood that I was in the presence of something significant.

That same feeling enveloped me this summer as I walked along Project Row Houses’ 30th-anniversary installation, Round 55: The Drive By II. I found Ray Carrington and Earlie Hudnall Jr.’s towering printed figure—part of their A Tribute to the 25th Precinct installation—to be gripping, and I was transfixed by sculptor Cat Martinez’s SLABS, the joyful, candy-painted car trunk positioned as an homage to slab culture. The more I took in, the more I was captivated by the sounds of laughter, by the older man sitting on a bench outside, tapping his foot to the beat of the music and trying to stay cool in the shade. I was enchanted by the curious kids sticking their little fingers in yellow cupcake icing, and the young couples finding the perfect distance to take pictures of the installations. To visit Project Row Houses is to become instantly immersed in community in the presence of art. So much is going on, but in a perfect harmony that has persisted for 30 years.

Since 1993, Project Row Houses has shown an unwavering commitment to its founding fathers’ idea of “social sculpture.” In the Third Ward TX documentary, Rick Lowe, one of the nonprofit’s cofounders (along with Floyd Newsum, Bert Samples, George Smith, and the late James Bettison, Bert Long Jr., and Jesse Lott, who passed away this summer), describes the term, coined by German artist Joseph Beuys. “We could possibly think of the world as this big sculpture and that it’s being shaped all the time,” Lowe said in the documentary. “If we’re careful about how it’s shaped, we can determine what it looks like.”

This ethos continues to inspire the organization today. “Project Row Houses was really built around the founders when they intended for it to be social sculpture, so it’s not uncommon for a group of 20 or 30 people to walk through our actual workspaces,” says Anthony Suber, multidisciplinary artist, polymath, and educator, and a longtime artist showcased at Project Row Houses. “This is the place of cultivating culture through the arts,” he adds. Rabéa Ballin, another longtime artist and educator, attributes social sculpture to the nonprofit’s sustainability. “The founders laid that foundation,” Ballin says. “When you lay something on a shaky foundation, it can’t sustain itself. It falls apart.”

Project Row Houses has avoided such fate in part by creating an infinite loop between itself and the community it serves, which was on display on a recent visit to Ballin’s studio. Her space is quiet and airy with relics of past exhibitions on the walls, such as part of a photographic meditation on the artistic scalp lines in women’s hair. The room’s air is thick with creativity and collaboration. Andrew Davis, a Houston musician and performance artist known as TAME, The Aspiring Me, is decked out in a fisher’s hat and white Kurt Cobain glasses, working on his own music and performance art project on Ballin’s large monitor. “I love to share the space and activate it,” says Ballin, who let TAME use her space after he was awarded a Houston Arts Alliance grant.

Project Row Houses’ list of successful community revitalization efforts is long. While lack of zoning is part of what makes Houston unique, it has not shielded historically Black neighborhoods from economic discrimination. Through the Row House Community Development Corporation and PRH Preservation, Project Row Houses acquired property in Third Ward and repurposed row houses for residential use. It has also renovated the Eldorado Ballroom, a historic venue opened in 1939 that featured Black musicians and entertainers, becoming the premier place for Black joy and celebration in Third Ward. By the ’70s, the ballroom’s condition succumbed to the same economic pressures that Greater Third Ward experienced. After being gifted to Project Row Houses in 1999, Eldorado Ballroom underwent several renovations, and celebrated its grand reopening in March 2023.

“We’re really putting some stakes in the ground, showing that you can still use arts and culture as a driving factor in what revitalizing a community looks like,” says Project Row Houses executive director Eureka Gilkey. “We were able to be identified as one of Mayor Turner’s first Complete Communities because of the work we had already done, and that’s why you see things like the Northern Third Ward Neighborhood planning projects, the Emancipation Economic Development Council, and all the fruits of that labor.”

Suber adds that Project Row Houses is not just an artistic venue; it’s about business development and creating a sense of community. “It’s its own ecosystem,” he says. Visitors can bear witness to this ecosystem by simply looking northwest down Holman Street, where they’ll see Doshi House, a beloved Third Ward coffee shop. A few blocks away lies the quietly abundant Kindred Stories, a rare Black-owned independent bookstore. Not far from that is Crumbville, TX, a bakery offering regular, gluten-free, and vegan baked goods. Owner and baker Ella Russell told me the shop went from mobile bakery to brick-and-mortar by collaborating with Suber for a Project Row Houses art installation years ago. Together, they created a general store display of Russell’s edible art—cookies, stuffed cups, and brownies—that reflected their respective familial backgrounds. The ladder from the installation is at the center of her store today, serving as a permanent reminder of the way Project Row Houses invests in the entrepreneurial potential of its community.

“This was beyond my wildest dreams,” says Russell, who knew her baked goods were excellent, but did not know they’d be sold in a storefront someday. “It was a springboard that catapulted me into a space that I had not imagined.”

While Project Row Houses was an instant artistic mainstay in Third Ward, it leveled up in 2014 when Rick Lowe was awarded a MacArthur “genius” fellowship. “That solidified that this was an exceptional project that cemented its legacy in the historical narrative of what we know as contemporary art in the United States,” Gilkey says. However, work continues to be done to make people more aware of just how much skill and methodology goes into creating the masterpieces at Project Row Houses. Just as Michelangelo used geometry for his paintings, Martinez used the laws of physics when creating SLAB. Martinez grew up watching candy-painted cars in MacGregor Park, and she knew that these car owners were artists themselves. “They are able to create movable art,” Martinez says. “You’re looking at mobile curated art pieces.”

“History doesn’t record the sophistication that’s affiliated with the arts when it comes to Black and brown people, and especially Black people,” Suber says. The failure to acknowledge the ingenuity of Black people begins with the houses themselves. They are colloquially referred to as “shotgun houses,” a term that wreaks of negative connotation. Gilkey tells me about the racist roots of the term, and how they erase the original intention for this special structure. “In actuality, it’s architectural ingenuity brought over by the formerly enslaved. The houses sit on blocks and there was a column with a hole in the center that allowed the air to circulate, keeping it warm in the winter months and cool in the summer months. And it’s a Yoruba term: shogun,” she says, meaning “God’s house.”

Project Row Houses aims to create art, space, and community for all Black people. “Project Row Houses is supporting the LGBTQ+ community in ways that, historically, the Black community has struggled with for various reasons,” Suber says. Gilkey doesn’t see how the nonprofit’s vision can be fulfilled without complete inclusivity: “How can we call it collective creative action, how can we send the message that everyone has value no matter what their background, education, sex, creed, nationality…how can we do that, and not just be the most open, tolerant and inclusive?”

While the organization welcomes all with open arms, the Project Row Houses experience can sometimes be lost on visitors who’ve been conditioned to appreciate art only in sterile gallery environments that often cater to white audiences. Gilkey is aware of this, but undeterred. “We ain’t for everybody, and that’s okay. We’re here for Black people, Black spaces, Black joy,” she says.

Three decades is a lot of time to prove that this organization is firmly rooted in the community, but what about looking forward? Ballin and her peers are thinking about ways to expand physical space to create larger pieces of artwork and to preserve Black art. When thinking about its future, Jaison Oliver—a community organizer, current Third Ward Monopoly champion, and longtime Project Row Houses visitor—considers it in terms of influence and exposure. “I really want more people, whether they’re from Houston or not, saying, ‘I found out about my favorite artist at Project Row Houses,’” Oliver says.

I recently joined a Saturday yoga class offered at Project Row Houses. It started out like most yoga classes do: amicable introductions, mats repositioned so that friends could Warrior 1 and 2 next to each other. But the moment class started, the significance of being gathered in the space, a room full of Black people inhaling the intentions of our ancestors, and exhaling in a present communion, was emotionally overwhelming in the most joyful sense. For 60 minutes, we were community. Our heart rates slowed down together in unison, mere feet from Ballin’s studio, Martinez’s installation. I couldn’t help but think that we were, in fact, the founders’ wildest yet intentional dreams.