The Houston Skyline | Houston

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Heightened Expectations

Houston’s ever-shifting skyline remains a testament to enterprise and innovation.

By Cynthia Lescalleet

 

Like sentinels, Houston’s downtown skyscrapers overlook a city still unfolding—in all directions. Built for commerce, for industry and for civic pride, the iconic towers of downtown represent Houston’s entrepreneurial spirit. The city’s pervading, prevailing attitude looks beyond what is or what was to what’s next or what might be.

Such transformational tendencies have been in place since Houston’s founding 175 years ago by brothers John Kirby Allen and Augustus Chapman Allen. Land speculators from New York, they arrived at the confluence of two bayous on the flat coastal plain and floated the idea of a city.

Granted, their promotional flyers took some literary license. They re-imagined the impassable, sub-tropical environs as a more bucolic setting, replete with abundant natural resources and a mountainous horizon.

Today, the monumental vista once envisioned by the brothers Allen is one that is man-made—comprised of glass, steel, concrete and stone. Soaring skyscrapers, both modern and historic, companionably reflect in each other’s presence—and sometimes visually grind like tectonic plates to further shape the built environment.

Call the ongoing evolution “a will to make urbanism,” says Bob Eury, executive director of Downtown Houston Management District and president of Central Houston Inc., which stewards downtown’s urban viability and revitalization.

“Every time you turn around it’s a new skyline,” Eury says “There’s always something on the horizon, and that’s Houston. Even if you think it has gotten quiet, it will fire back up.”

Houston’s most recognizable silhouette dominates the northwest side of downtown. There, a shiny spine of architecturally pedigreed skyscrapers overlooks the winding Buffalo Bayou of the city’s origins.

As the 21st century gains momentum, however, downtown Houston east of Main Street is welcoming a fresh wave of sky- seeking development, triggered in part by a new city park called Discovery Green.

Meanwhile, fine examples of Houston’s earlier skylines endure, although the once lofty towers are now dwarfed by their newer, shiny neighbors.

 

Keeping up with Jesse Jones

Modern day Houston is a decentralized city with several thriving mixed-use commercial districts. A century ago, however, Main Street downtown was Houston’s primary address for business, entertainment and lodging. That status was set in motion—and maintained until post-war suburbanization—by business magnate and civic booster Jesse H. Jones. An industrious builder, determined banker, powerful newspaper publisher and committed philanthropist, he was called to federal positions during pivotal economic times. Among the national positions he held were U.S. Commerce Secretary (1940 – 1945) and chairman of the Reconstruction Finance Corp. (1932 – 1945).

“Jones’ lifelong philosophy was that building community also builds business,” says biographer Steven Fenberg. He penned “Unprecedented Power: Jesse Jones, Capitalism and the Common Good” as well as the Emmy-award winning PBS documentary on Jones: “Brother, Can You Spare a Billion? The Story of Jesse H. Jones.”

“Only if the city prospered would he succeed,” Fenberg cites as a theme to understanding Jones’ motivation, philosophy and results.

Among Jones’ civic and economic contributions were marshaling federal and local funds for creating the Houston Ship Channel, which opened in 1914, and attracting early oil companies to town a century ago, thus getting the city an early lock on a fledgling industry, notes Fenberg. He is community affairs officer for Houston Endowment Inc., a philanthropic foundation established in 1937 by Jesse and Mary Gibbs Jones. Its impact continues to reverberate.

Jones began what became his Houston real estate empire by accumulating property along Main Street. “He built the most ornate movie palaces, most luxurious hotels and tallest office buildings,” Fenberg says.

Impressed with the scale of the Paris skyline, Jones’ earliest projects (1907 – 1913) soared 10 stories. Later, as other developers upped the height of their projects downtown, Jones reciprocated higher. Among the examples of Jones-era properties is a landmark building that still turns heads.

The Gulf Building, today known as the JPMorgan Chase Bank Building on 712 Main St., is an acclaimed 35-story tower conceived by architect Alfred C. Finn. The building opened in 1929 and remained Houston’s tallest tower until 1963. Dramatic lighting throws the tower’s embellishments into high relief. In its day, two aviation beacons on the building could be seen 20 miles away, according to Fenberg.

“To Jones, the Gulf Building was a monument to Houston, to Texas, to the South and to himself,” the author explains. In an editorial the day the tower opened, Jones (then sole owner of Houston Chronicle) expounds: “The Gulf Building symbolizes my conception of the Houston of Today. Both are essentially modern.”

If what constitutes “modern” has shifted with the times, Houston’s interest in being modern has remained steady, says Jim Parsons. Parsons is the Greater Houston Preservation Alliance’s special projects director and co-author with GHPA’s David Bush of “Houston Deco: Modernistic Architecture of the Texas Coast.”

The Gulf Building marked the high point of the Roaring ’20s construction boom that was transforming Houston from a Southern town to major metropolis, Parsons says.

Other gems of Houston’s Jones era skyline, though not Jones’ buildings, include:

Houston City Hall at 901 Bagby St.: It’s 10 stories tall, though it looks even taller, and the 1939 limestone-

clad Art Deco design by Texas architect Joseph Finger still holds its own in the skyline. Finger is attributed with having called his civic design “for the masses not the classes,” Parsons says. The exterior features medallions depicting great lawmakers and inside, the stylized lobby evokes a civic feel.

Niels Esperson Building at 808 Travis St.: Built as a memorial to its namesake by his widow Mellie Keenan Esperson, the landmark building was designed to be impressive when it opened in 1927 as the tallest building in the South. It’s still impressive today, both from a distance and from the sidewalk. A column-ringed tempietto, or temple-like cupola, caps the 32-floor building, which is punctuated with terraces, urns and obelisks. A steer skull motif in the keystones harkens both Roman style and Texan roots. The architect, John Eberson, was known for his opulent movie palace designs. Parsons describes the building’s exterior detailing as “a fantasy version of Italian Renaissance” and compares the effect to an inside-out grand movie house lobby of its day. Mellie Esperson eventually erected a smaller, adjacent Moderne-style building bearing her own name.

Building an Identity

Oil overtook agriculture as Houston’s economic engine in the first decades of the 20th century.

After World War II, the city’s “explosive growth redefined the city and its skyline,” says architectural historian Anna Mod, who specializes in Houston’s transformation from “The Bayou City” to “The Space City.” She’s the author of “Building Modern Houston” and a historic preservation specialist with SWCA Environmental Consultants.

“Houston grabbed the reins of its ‘look to the future’ attitude,” Mod says. A perfect storm of conditions enabled this, she says, citing infrastructure like the local freeways and the Houston Ship Channel; local industry retooling post-war; overall post-war prosperity; and NASA’s announcement it would locate its headquarters here.

Architecturally, modernism’s more streamlined, stylized expression fit this new space-focused mood in town, she says. “Houston in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s is really the city’s heyday, and buildings that mark this bold and modern spirit still stand downtown.”

Parsons, meanwhile, suggests that Houston’s buildings from this design period tend to exhibit a more restrained style—and thus are perhaps aging better—than trendier buildings from the period found in other cities.

Important examples built downtown from this period include:

El Paso Energy Building at 1001 Louisiana St.: Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and completed in 1963 for Tennessee Gas Transmission Co., which became Tenneco, Inc., the building design responds to Houston’s warm climate by having deep, recessed windows shaded by the tower’s exoskeleton. Mod describes the site-sensitive design as a harbinger of today’s best building practices that seek energy efficiency and sustainability.

One Shell Plaza at 910 Louisiana St.: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill also designed this 1971 building, which retains an antenna to bring total height to 1,000 feet. Architectural historians call it a local landmark for its engineering, which features a framed-tube structure rather than one of traditional steel. Since the walls and central core carry the building’s weight, interior space is open and flexible for both workers and building mechanics. At 50 stories, the tower remains the tallest, lightweight concrete buildings in the world. “It paved the way for the super tall towers,” Parsons says.

 

Building Blocks

By the 1970s, the race to touch the sky was in high gear, fueled by the oil economy, banking and developers eager to build—and build big. Notable architects and rivaling industry players vied to produce the arresting postmodern results that decades later continue to dominate Houston’s horizon as monolithic sculptures.

“A byproduct of Houston’s lack of zoning was to allow a great skyline to be created very quickly,” says Mark Cover, CEO of Hines Southwest Region.

A prolific developer then and now, Gerald D. Hines is often credited with having the attitude that “good architecture makes good business.” Cover says this concept is still in force at Hines. Buildings designed to be both artful and functional have enduring value, he says: “Higher utility buildings increase their useful life due to extended tenant interest.”

Houston’s two tallest skyscrapers downtown are examples of this longevity. Although built as contemporaries, their designs could not be more different. One is all angles, the other all curves.

Chase Tower at 600 Travis St.: At 75 stories, Houston’s tallest tower is easy to spot. Built for Texas Commerce Bancshares in 1981, it was designed by world renowned I.M. Pei & Partners. Among the tower’s lore is that the original plan for 80 stories would have caused aviation issues for nearby Hobby Airport. An interesting element of its design, executed in gray granite and steel, is that there are no seams on the corners of the building. The granite wraps around the edges, adding to the precision of its record-holding five-sided presence.

Wells Fargo Plaza at 1000 Louisiana St.: Built in 1983 and designed as Allied Bank Plaza by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the 71-story glass- skinned tower is Houston’s second tallest by a mere 10 feet. The building’s footprint incorporates two off-center quarter circles, which some architectural observers describe as a dollar sign.

Also anchoring the Houston skyline are two highly recognizable buildings by Philip Johnson/ John Burgee Architects. Built just seven years apart, their vastly different silhouettes are monumental benchmarks of Houston’s postmodernism.

Pennzoil Place at 711 Louisiana St.: Built in 1976, the project’s distinct profile in bronze glass features two 36-story towers offset by a mere 10 feet and culminates at a 45-degree angle—as if a taller tower had been severed in half, Parsons says. The design is modular; two office windows equal one display window, 12 windows equal an entrance. The double-tower footprint also reflects how the building was leased: one company per tower. During construction, the developer added two extra floors to accommodate tenant interest.

Bank of America Center at 700 Louisiana St.: Looking a bit like a pink granite sandcastle, the 1983 building designed for Republic Bank echoes both 16th century Dutch canal houses and 1920s-style skyscrapers, architectural historians say. The tower rises in three segments stacking back from the street. A portion of the lower level encases the former Western Union building since moving its telegraph cables was cost prohibitive.

Heritage Plaza at 1111 Bagby St.:The oil boom was a bust by the time this distinct building was completed in 1987. M. Nasr & Partners designed the 53-story tower. Its unique Aztec pyramid cap reportedly was inspired by the architect’s vacation in the Yucatan. The tower is a signature of the downtown skyline in its role as backdrop to city festivals, events and fireworks displays held along the bayou it overlooks.

 

Houston of Yesterday—and Tomorrow

Houston today is building another layer into its ever-shifting skyline. However, the 21st century commercial, residential and civic projects downtown are clustering on and east of Main Street.

Some of this growth is on property once amassed for an ambitious $1.5 billion development launched 40 years ago, but later discontinued after only a few of its towers were completed. Houston Center was billed as an entirely new “downtown within downtown,” with a dozen high-rise offices, residential towers, hotels, shopping and entertainment facilities, underground parking for 40,000-plus cars and an enclosed pedestrian level two stories above the existing streetscape, explains Laura Van Ness, director of business development at Central Houston.

The initial completed office buildings of Houston Center carry vestiges of the greater plan in subtle places—for example, the elevated pedestrian levels. Meanwhile, blocks of land from the failed project that were donated to the city made way for the George R. Brown Convention Center (1987) to become a colorful anchor to downtown’s eastern border. More recently, Discovery Green, a popular new 12-acre park adjacent to the convention center, opened to provide programming as well as open space for those who work, visit or live downtown.

The area’s newest towers, meanwhile, exhibit the sustainability and best building practices of a new millennium, Van Ness says. Among them is the 46-story BG Group Place, a Hines project at 811 Main St. that is one of only three LEED Platinum core and shell buildings in the world. And, the recent $442.5 million sale of 29-story HESS Tower at 1501 McKinney St. shattered records as the highest sale price ever paid for a Houston office tower and highest price per square foot.

“The office tower sale is a vote of confidence for the city, an example of how Houston grows despite recent economic challenges and a reiteration of good architecture being good business,” says Rusty Bienvenue, executive director of AIA Houston.

Houston Mayor Annise D. Parker describes how the city’s skyline endures: “Each building in our skyline—whether it’s a gleaming skyscraper that is home to an oil giant or the historic Houston City Hall and Harris County Courthouse—stands as a symbol of our personality, spirit, power and history. It is a skyline that is recognizable ’round the world for its architectural beauty. It is a skyline that continues to evolve—just like Houston.”