The Houston Saengerbund, a German singing society founded on October 6, 1883, bought the former Heights Christian Church property at 1703 Heights Boulevard in 2022 and turned its former fellowship hall into a Saengerhalle, beside Lambert Hall. By its own account the society traces its roots to a German Quartette Society formed in Houston in 1847, and it counts itself the city's oldest musical society. Its first formal meeting on record, on June 1, 1884, listed 24 singers and 50 non-singing members, and its early meetings were held at Turner Hall downtown. Houston hosted the Saengerfest of the statewide German Texan singers' league in 1885, 1894, 1902 and 1913.
Membership reached 176 active members by 1908 and 407 by 1913. C. C. Lieb directed the choir from 1895 until his death in 1927. By 1915 the society had a clubhouse on Milby Street, which it sold in 1925, and from 1935 it occupied a hall on Feagan Street, given as 3908 Feagan on a 1952 membership card. A Ladies Auxiliary formed on April 6, 1937, and its women's chorus, the Damenchor, followed in 1938. During the Second World War the society called itself the Houston Singing Society to deflect anti-German feeling.
It sold the Feagan Street property in 2004, citing rising taxes and upkeep, and met for years in Midtown, chiefly at First Evangelical Lutheran Church, before the Heights purchase. Its surviving papers, 1874 to 2013, are held by the University of Houston Libraries.
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29.8017, -95.3984
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