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The name Bayland comes from an orphan’s home the state established in 1866 on
Galveston Bay. The Bayland Home was moved several times. One of the sites it
occupied was the 68 acres on what is now Bissonnet Street, donated by the late
Joseph F. Meyer. The county acquired the property when the Bayland Home became a
county institution in 1922. Eventually the county combined the Bayland Home with
the Burnette Girls’ School at the Burnette campus on Chimney Rock.
The Bissonnet site was unused until the late County Commissioner Jack Townsend
demolished the Bayland Home buildings and started turning the property into a
park. Townsend built the original Little League ball fields, said to have been
the first in the county park system. He may have built the original Bayland
Community Center building that still stands, east of the present center.
Development of the park apparently began in the 1950s.
The present Bayland Community Center evolved from a structure built to house the
offices and locker rooms of a short-lived professional football team called the
Houston Gamblers that played in the U.S. Football League in 1984 and 1985. The
team arranged to use the FUN football stadium as a practice field and built a
headquarters building alongside it. The building became county property when the
gamblers and USFL went under. It was larger than the original community center,
so the county turned it into a community center and put the original community
center building to other uses.
Commissioner Radack completed a major expansion and overhaul of the old
Gamblers’ building in 1997 and a big crowd turned out for a Grand Reopening
celebration February 17. The Bayland Community Center is located at 6400
Bissonnet.
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