OffCite presents the fifth submission to the Unexpected City challenge, made by Bart Truxillo. Click here to learn about making your own submission.
I purchased the Magnolia Brewery Building in the late 1960s from a bank trust at a time when no one thought old buildings in Houston were good. The bank thought the building was a teardown. Located at 715 Franklin Street near Market Square, it had been vacant for some years and what we today call street people were occupying it. I loved the architecture and the history of the building. It was the home of the Houston Ice and Brewing Co. at the turn of the last century, one of the largest businesses at the time, which produced Magnolia Beer, Richelieu Beer, and, the most popular, Southern Select.
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Three ponds at Sheldon State Park. All photographs by Theresa Keefe and Keith Koski.
OffCite presents the fourth submission to the Unexpected City challenge, made by Theresa Keefe. Click here to learn about making your own submission.
Sheldon State Park is a wonderfully unexpected place in Houston. It is located in east Houston, wedged in the corner where 90 comes off the Beltway. I would say no more than an hour’s drive from anywhere in Houston.
My partner and I have driven past the treeless pipe yards along 90 numerous times but never noticed the signs for the State Park. We went to the part that was once an old fishery.
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OffCite presents the third submission to the Unexpected City challenge, made by John Bryant. Click here to learn about making your own submission.
This train car sat between the old “Success Rice” building and Winter Street Studios on the Washington Street Corridor, which is part of Houston’s historic First Ward.
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Aerial image of the San Jacinto monument in its industrial context. Photo by baldheretic.
OffCite presents the next submission to the Unexpected City challenge, made by Cite editor Raj Mankad. Click here to learn about making your own submission.
Anyone who has attended the fourth grade in Texas knows there is no place more central to the state’s history than the San Jacinto battleground. The monument there was designed by Alfred Finn, also the architect of Houston City Hall. At 570 feet, the obelisk is taller than the Washington Monument. As architectural historian Stephen Fox noted in his Houston Architectural Guide, the “heroic scale,” “radical symmetry,” and the “ceremonial conception of public life” are “so disconnected from the landscape in which it stands…that the monument seems meant for some other place, some other culture, and to have ended up here by mistake.” That disconnect is why I think the site makes for a wonderful visit and a prime example of the Unexpected City.
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OffCite presents the first submission to the Unexpected City challenge, made by bicyclist Peter Wang. Click here to learn about making your own submission.
I found a treasure along the eastern and southern edges of the Addicks Reservoir as I sought a way to ride my bicycle to work from Cy-Fair to Westchase.
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A man fishes on the Houston Ship Channel at the site of the San Jacinto monument. Photograph by Hester & Hardaway.
Houston has its share of famous buildings like Mies van der Rohe’s addition to The Musuem of Fine Arts, Houston and Renzo Piano’s Menil Collection. While places like these garner global acclaim, it is often Houston’s unexpected places—from the warehouses surrounding downtown to old-school barbershops to open fields, and the many places in between—that give Houston its spark. Other times, the unexpected allure of Houston exists in a personal experience of a well-known place—like the sensation of wondrous disorientation as you walk into the slanted-glass entrance of Philip Johnson’s Pennzoil Place. Houstonians are often walking libraries of beloved places that may go unseen by other passersby.
It is these places and their accompanying experiences that the Rice Design Alliance wants to know about. This month, we are launching a campaign entitled “Unexpected City” that is asking Houstonians, or anyone who wants to participate, to submit their favorite location in the city. Submissions will be published here on Offcite. In addition to submissions, Katie Plocheck and others will also be visiting many of the locations and documenting the time spent there on Offcite.org. Our expectation is that we can have an exhibition of places at the end of the year, and one day, a publication.
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