Manchester

Manchester is just east of the Interstate 610 loop on the Houston Ship Channel at the eastern edge of Houston one mile northwest of Pasadena in east central Harris County. The community began in the early 1860s as a switch on the Texas and New Orleans Railroad within the Houston city limits. In the fall of 1914 Joseph R. Cheek and associates offered twenty acres of land with 1,500 feet of channel frontage at Manchester if the city would agree to build a wharf there. The mayor accepted the offer, but the city harbor board protested that Manchester was outside city tax boundaries. Joseph S. Cullinan and other oil men supported the mayor and urged channel development from Houston to Morgan's Point, but a 1920 bond issue approving the purchase of more land at Manchester was defeated. After 1920 the Manchester Terminal Corporation built a ship terminal to handle cotton, and in the 1930s the terminal's interests were represented by R. M. (Daddy) Bain. By the 1970s the area was industrial. In the 1980s Manchester had a predominantly Hispanic population and comprised an area of multiple dwellings, Hartmann Park, and industrial development along the ship channel. By the early 2000s the Manchester neighborhood, part of the city of Houston, was identified as a toxic spot due to heavy industrial activity. Air monitors regularly detected high levels of butadiene. Of the approximately 4,000 residents in Manchester in the 2010s, approximately 90 percent or more consisted of minority groups who were low-income financial status. The petrochemical industry dominated the region.