Greenway Plaza, 1980. Photos courtesy Fondren Library Woodson Research Center and Rachel Dewane.
Unexpected City: Greenway Plaza Parking Garage
OffCite presents the eleventh submission to the Unexpected City challenge, made by Aaron Carpenter. Click here to learn about making your own submission.
In his frustratingly insightful text After the City, Lars Lerup argues that it is all the in-between places that define Houston geography. And seemingly most important (or most glaring) of them all — even above those power line ranges, freeways, and underpasses — is parking, whether it be in lot or garage form. So is it “unexpected” for a lifelong Houstonian to have the Greenway Plaza parking garage pop into his head as a place where he feels a most personal connection to the city? I think it deserves a real tribute. There’s a lot of Houston here.
Why Greenway Plaza parking? Why not that of the Galleria, or the Edwards Palace cinema right next door? Its newer, right? To start: the memory of the Houston Rockets. You’d exit from the Southwest Freeway only to take a quick right cut turn off the feeder into an orange light and a labyrinth where the above-ground world just disappeared and you were plunged into something almost magical. After finding a space, you then had to go through ramp after ramp in a mass of directed Houston pedestrian foot traffic, only to be met with a mountain of stairs to the Summit and its cool late-seventies “S” logo on the floor. It was like walking under the train station to get to Disneyland. You then got to see Hakeem Olajuwon.
After the Rockets moved to their car-dealership arena downtown, I didn’t visit Greenway Plaza for years until I finally developed the prerequisite taste for the Greenway Theater. Buy a ticket, watch a film, and write your review on the sticky note. That feeling of going to the movies in a bunker. Get there for a weekday matinee and enjoy the Galleria III essence of the food court. Choose Taco Cabana or Village Barbeque brisket. Remember Richard Linklater used to sit in that theater there while on break from his offshore oil rig gig, and wonder whether Slacker was thought up while trying to remember where he left his car. And once again, enter and exit under in that weird orange glow.
And of course, the place still works its magic on thousands of Houstonians and pilgrims who congregate there every Sunday to watch Joel Osteen give off positive energy and sermonize on a grand stage to the world. It may keep going on there for years. More power to it.
Greenway Plaza: 3800 Buffalo Speedway Houston, Texas 77098
Further reading:
Spiritual Summit: Lakewood Church Recasts the Role of Sacred Architecture by Brian Lonsway (Cite 74)
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Filed Under: Lars Lerup
Jenny Johnson writes:
03.31.11
8:45 pm
I was just talking about the Greenway garage yesterday! In addition to the memories of the Rockets, what sticks in my mind is being lost down there trying to find the Greenway 3 Theater.