Montrose Center

The Montrose Center is Houston's primary LGBTQ+ community centre — an organisation with roots going back to 1978, when it was founded as the Montrose Counseling Center in the early years of Montrose's development as one of America's first self-defined gay neighbourhoods. The organisation has evolved over four and a half decades into a comprehensive community services provider operating from its Branard Street facility in the heart of Montrose: mental health and counselling services, HIV/AIDS prevention, testing and care coordination, youth programming, senior services for LGBTQ+ elders, food pantry, legal resources, and community event programming. The Branard Street location is in the residential core of Montrose — a short walk from the Pacific Street bar corridor and within the walkable heart of Houston's historic gay neighbourhood. The Montrose Center's longevity — through the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, when it was at the forefront of Houston's response to an epidemic that devastated the local community; through the political transformations of Texas; and through the ongoing challenges of serving a community in a conservative state — is a measure of the depth of Houston's investment in maintaining a permanent LGBTQ+ institutional presence. For visitors to Houston, the Montrose Center provides the clearest understanding of the depth and history of the community that built one of America's oldest gay neighbourhoods.