The area encompassing the district was open land until the late 1880s. Streetcar lines through the Highlands encouraged residential development by 1886 and by 1888, Gibson Street and Florence Avenue had been laid out. When the trolley lines were electrified and extended west to Pine Street around 1893, Mrs. Samuel Tyler sold a large pasture that was subdivided into a fashionable neighborhood known as the Tyler Park Lands. The parklike setting soon attracted many middle class families, businessmen, professionals, and merchants.
A small number of buildings in the district pre-date the area's subdivision with most of the residences built between 1890 and 1924. Exempted from the construction was a 2.74 acre park site that Mrs. Tyler and her daughter donated to the City for a public park. Tyler Park, designed by
Charles Eliot, and constructed under the supervision of landscape architects Olmsted, Olmsted, and Eliot, became the central feature of the subdivision.