Today was the first pretty day in a while around here so I thought I would go out and take some photos. Nancy, Theresa and I went downtown about 11:00. We strolled around for about an hour while I took some shots that I thought might be interesting.
Something that I had never noticed until today is the skyscrapers in downtown Houston cast lots of very harsh shadows. I tried to work around them as best I could but they are still very obvious.
The photo samples in this post are linked to the original image files that are very large (HD resolution) so you probably do not want to click them if you are using cellular data. Just wait until you get home and use your Wi-Fi.
First up is the Julia Ideson Building. Ideson was a long time director of the Houston Public Library. At one time it was the main building of the Central Library. The Ideson Building first opened in 1926 and had extensive remodeling completed in 2011.
Here is Houston City Hall as viewed from across the reflecting pool in Hermann Square. There is a lot of stuff around Houston named “Hermann”. They had a lot of money.
City Hall opened for business in 1939. As you can see it is quite small. Most of the current day city business in done in the City Hall Annex located directly behind City Hall.
All great cities have a great newspaper and a rail system. Since we do not have a great newspaper we went out and built a rail system. Houston MetroRail is not very long and does not go very many places but it does have a quite scenic stretch as it passes between Rice University and Hermann Park (See, I told you that we have a lot of stuff named Hermann). Rice students have named it the Fannin Area Rapid Transit System.
After shooting the train, I turned around to face the lurid edifice. El Big Bad bills itself as “a feisty, gastro-cantina specializing in infused tequilas, fresh juice margaritas and fresh Mexican fare since December 2013”.
Here is 1400 Smith Street. It was the home base of Enron when it went down the toilet (Enron, not the building). It is currently occupied by Chevron. The building on the right is also occupied by Chevron.
The view of downtown from the front porch of the M.W. Kellogg KBR Tower is temporarily quite nice. The open space you see was the location of the Downtown YMCA before it was relocated to a new building 3 blocks away. The old YMCA had a dormitory that was home to a diverse and eclectic clientele. Chevron plans to put another skyscraper there some day.
The Harris County Courthouse of 1910 was built in 1910 (no kidding).
The new Criminal Courts Building opened in 2001.
