Established in 1911, the neighborhood is a demographically diverse area with renovated mansions, bungalows with wide porches, and cottages located along tree-lined boulevards.

Developer J. W. Link and his Houston Land Corporation envisioned a "great residential addition" according to the neighborhood's original sales brochure.

Link's planning details for the area included four wide boulevards with the best curbing and extensive landscaping.

Link built his own home in Montrose, known as the Link-Lee Mansion, which is now part of the University of St. Thomas campus.

The hotel was home to many of Houston's leaders, including Edgar Odell Lovett, the first president of Rice University.

[10] Thorne Dreyer and Al Reinert wrote in Texas Monthly in 1973 that the area "wound a tortuous course from Silk Stocking and Low Rent and back again.

KPFT's transmitter was twice bombed by a local Ku Klux Klan group, making it the only radio station in the history of the United States to be blown off the air.

Ralph Lasher[citation needed] and it later, at a different location in Montrose, became a community health center.

Later, punk and new wave clubs like The Paradise Rock Island, the Omni, and Numbers opened in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Montrose has been "a haven for Prohibition honkey-tonks, antique stores, wealthy socialites, motorcycle gangs, gays, harmless eccentrics and a broad array of exiles, writers, artists and musicians.

"[14] It has been called "a uniquely Houston kind of Bohemia, a mad mix made possible by the city's no-holds-barred, laissez faire form of growth.

"[15] Since the 1990s, Montrose has become increasingly gentrified with a trend towards remodeled and new homes, higher rents, upmarket boutiques and restaurants.

In 1997 Katherine Feser of the Houston Chronicle stated that "Montrose [is] not for starving artists anymore".

[5] On June 6, 2006,[16] a teenage MS-13 gang member named Gabriel Granillo was stabbed to death at Ervan Chew Park in the Montrose area.

On Montrose Boulevard and Westheimer Road, there are few original homes remaining—a majority have been converted to businesses and/or restaurants since 1936.

Examples of Houston's historic residential architecture including century-old bungalows and mansions can be found in Montrose.

As of 2017[update], the nightclub Numbers, which was established in 1978 and was "one of the most important venues operating in the '80s",[18] remained a landmark of the neighborhood.

Some area residents stopped patronizing restaurants in Montrose, believing that they would acquire AIDS from gay waiters.

AIDS tore through the neighborhood and the gay community flocked to the nightclubs for a reprieve from sickness and death.

Barnett Newman's sculpture, Broken Obelisk, dedicated to the late Martin Luther King Jr., stands in front of the chapel in a reflecting pool designed by architect Philip Johnson.

Dreyer and Reinert wrote in 1973 that "[g]enerally speaking" the community would be 7.5 acres (3.0 ha) of area within the Southwest Freeway (nowadays Interstate 69), West Gray, Shepherd Drive, and Smith Street;[11] they stated there was no agreed-upon boundary of "Montrose" and that "residents are always arguing, with equal vehemence, whether they should or should not be considered part of "that place.

[41] As of June 2010, The Montrose was home to six of the nineteen designated Historic Districts in the city of Houston.

[47] Montrose held the core of Mayor of Houston Kathy Whitmire's political support in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

[48] Montrose provided political support for former city councilperson and mayor Annise Parker.

[52] The Montrose Remembrance Garden, a memorial to victims of violent crimes, was established in 2011 at the intersection of California and Grant streets.

[65] Beginning in 2018 Baylor College of Medicine Academy at Ryan also serves as a boundary option for students zoned to Blackshear, Lockhart, and MacGregor elementary schools.

Thorne and Reinert wrote that HISD officials at the time called it "the most successfully integrated school in the city.

Facing Montrose Boulevard, the original stained glass window of the church can be seen featuring a dove with an olive branch in its beak.

A modern office building complex in the surrounding area is known as The Campanile, named after the bell tower in the library.

[77] In March 2024, the library system closed the church-based Freed-Montrose, stating that concerns about safety were the reason for the closure.