Image of Sally Walsh from Cite 9, Spring 1985
“When I walk through Houston buildings today and find good contemporary design, whether or not I had a hand in it, I find myself taking credit… because on this specific turf it flourished with my help.” -Sally Walsh (Cite 28)
Last Wednesday with only the help of a pdf copy of “All Around Downtown: A Personal Tour” from Citemag.org, the late interior designer Sally Walsh took me back in time.
Walsh worked as Hans Knoll’s assistant before moving to Houston and ultimately served as a partner at S. I. Morris Architects. By retracing her steps, I encountered a portion of our city center left relatively unchanged over the past twenty-five years—bold glass towers, predominantly subterranean traffic, and a mix of executives and the unemployed smoking cigarettes and never meeting my eye. It was Downtown Houston: unapologetic and unreformed.
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Pool deck of Morris Architects' proposal to adaptively reuse an oil rig as a resort
Oil rigs normally do not bring to mind images of men and women sunning themselves on a pool deck. These days oiled beaches, dying pelicans, jobless fishermen, and the gushing pipe saturate our screens. But what if, a team at Morris Architects asks, rigs could be adaptively reused as ecological resorts? Rather than extract fossil fuels from below the sea, the rig would harness wind and wave energy. The design won an international competition last year called “Radical Innovation in Hospitality” and received extensive coverage in the blogosphere. The ongoing Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, however, brings new relevance to the concept.
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Copper pinnacle replica lowered on Harris County Courthouse, all photographs Nash Baker
In 1910, the Harris County Courthouse defined Houston’s skyline. As the tallest building in the city by over 100 feet, the courthouse quickly became the crown jewel of the modest downtown. Today, the courthouse remains standing at 210 feet, but it is somewhat dwarfed by the surrounding skyscrapers. With building technology so closely tied to scale, it is no wonder that Houston’s downtown has evolved to great heights. But recently the city’s skyline has taken on a new look, the Harris County Courthouse has grown a little taller, and it is worth craning your neck to notice.
On March 14th, a 15-foot copper pinnacle that looks a bit like a chess pawn was mounted on the Courthouse’s dome. Crowning the top of the building, this piece serves as a replacement for the building’s 1910 original, which reportedly has been absent for over 90 years.
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University of Houston Downtown from Allen's Landing, this photo Wikimedia Commons, all others Celeste Williams
Houston is home to a wealth of Art Deco and Streamlined Moderne architecture. Celeste Williams received a grant from the Rice Design Alliance in 2000 to develop a self-guided tour along the METRORail. Williams, an architect with Kendall/Heaton Associates, worked with graphic designer Peter Boyle to produce a brochure (download front and back). Below is an online version of the tour.
University of Houston DOWNTOWN CAMPUS
1 North Main Street
The University of Houston Downtown’s compact campus is composed of several smaller annexed structures to the former Merchants and Manufacturers Building. Originally designed in 1930 by Giesecke & Harris Architects, the building’s classic Art Deco vertical detailing was meant to call out the pinnacle of commerce near Houston’s historic Allen’s Landing. The eleven-story mid-rise height of the building allows it to hold its site amidst the larger scale freeway overpasses and bridges that surround it. On the south side, a roof terrace provides beautiful views of the downtown skyline. A detail of interest is the monel mailbox, part of a chute system that was state-of-the-art for its time.
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The first preservation ordinance in the country came to life in Charleston, South Carolina in 1930. The Vieux Carre in New Orleans and Nantucket Island off the coast of Massachusetts followed shortly after, and historic preservation gained steady strength in the United States. Houston joined late in the game, with the city’s ordinance put into effect in 1995. Fifteen years later, Houston is home to fifteen historic districts, and preservation in the city continues to evolve. Mayor Annise Parker, a known advocate for preservation of Houston’s historic districts, recently organized a task force to investigate strengthening the city’s ordinance to offer increased protections for historic resources.
Increased protections? When developers catch wind that the ordinance may bulk up, it is easy to imagine the rush to demolish before the ordinance gains strength.
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