Houston

V

Education and Culture

Among Houston’s numerous institutions of higher education are the University of Houston (founded in 1927 and now with three campuses in the city); Texas Southern University (1947); the University of Texas-Houston Health Science Center (1972); the Houston Community College System (1971); and private institutions such as Rice University (1891), Baylor College of Medicine (1900), the University of St. Thomas (1947), Houston Baptist University (1960), and South Texas College of Law (1923).

Prominent historical and cultural institutions include the Civic Center Complex, located in the central business district. The complex is composed of the George R. Brown Convention Center; the Wortham Center, which is the home of the Houston Grand Opera and the Houston Ballet; and the Jesse H. Jones Hall for Performing Arts, which is the home of the Houston Symphony. The nearby Alley Theatre houses a professional repertory acting company. Among other local professional performance groups are the Main Street Theater and Theatre Under the Stars. The Hobby Center for the Performing Arts, designed by architect Robert A. M. Stern, opened downtown in 2002.

Houston’s museums include the Contemporary Arts Museum; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, which includes the outdoor Cullen Sculpture Garden, designed by Japanese sculptor Isamu Noguchi; and The Menil Collection, housed in a building designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano, and containing art from antiquity, the Byzantine world, the 20th century, and tribal cultures from Africa, Oceania, and the American Pacific Northwest. John and Dominique de Menil, who amassed the Menil collection, also funded the nondenominational Rothko Chapel (1971), decorated with interior paintings by American artist Mark Rothko. Close to downtown are the Heritage Society, a collection of 19th-century buildings; the Museum of Natural Science; the Burke Baker Planetarium; and the Museum of Medical Science in Hermann Park. The battleship Texas and the San Jacinto Monument and Museum of History are in nearby Pasadena.

VI

Recreation

Houston has an extensive park system that includes Hermann Park, the home of the Houston Zoo; Memorial Park; the Armand Bayou Nature Center; and the Houston Arboretum and Nature Center. The Houston Astros of major league baseball play in Minute Maid Park. The Houston Rockets of the National Basketball Association and the Houston Comets of the Women’s National Basketball Association play at the Toyota Center. Reliant Stadium hosts the Houston Texans of the National Football League, and Robertson Stadium is the home field for the Houston Dynamo of Major League Soccer.

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Among the city’s many annual events are the River Oaks Garden Club’s Azalea Trail, a tour of azalea gardens at Bayou Bend and homes in River Oaks; Houston International Festival, a ten-day downtown celebration of the city’s different cultures; and the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.

VII

Government

Houston’s government consists of a mayor, a city council, and a city controller, all elected to two-year terms. The mayor serves as the city’s chief executive, the city council is Houston’s legislative body, and the controller is responsible for the city’s financial transactions.

VIII

History

The Karankawa people lived on the Gulf Coast before the arrival of the Europeans. The first European settlement in the area, Harrisburg (1824), was destroyed in 1836 by the advancing Mexican Army in the Texas Revolution. That same year, Augustus C. Allen and John K. Allen laid out Houston. The Allen brothers persuaded the legislature to designate the site as the temporary state capital, because the present capital, Austin, was close to the fighting during the revolution. Houston served as the capital from 1837 until the permanent capital was returned to Austin in 1839. The legislature granted incorporation to Houston on June 5, 1837, and that same year it became the county seat of Harrisburg County (renamed Harris County in 1839).

From the early days of the city, businesspeople counted upon Buffalo Bayou, which served as a point of connection to Galveston, to encourage trade and growth. However, the Bayou was difficult to navigate. Various efforts were mounted to dredge a better canal, and a turning basin was created in 1881. The Houston Ship Channel, which created an inland ocean port, opened in 1914. Since then the channel has been widened and deepened, making Houston a deep-water port that is among the busiest in the United States. Houston residents also built railroads into the outlands, which complemented the water route. The Houston and Texas Central Railroad, a local railroad, was completed in 1853, but the American Civil War (1861-1865) interrupted further railroad construction, and the city did not join the national rail network until 1873, when the Houston and Texas Central met the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas Railroad at Denison.

The growth of Houston was also limited by the city’s climate and unhealthy coastal environment. Yellow fever epidemics struck often in the mid-19th century. In 1839 the disease killed approximately 12 percent of the city’s population. Despite coastal quarantines after the Civil War, yellow fever was not controlled until widespread spraying for mosquitoes began in 1900.

Lack of potable water, another environmental problem, was not addressed satisfactorily until the mid-20th century. Houston’s water supply had been improved in the 1880s with the drilling of artesian wells and the replacement of bayou waters that had been used to dispose of solid wastes, creosotes, and other impurities. Continued pumping from the aquifer, however, led to the sinking of land in southeast Houston in the 1960s. To correct this, the city turned to the Trinity and San Jacinto rivers for their water supply. These actions did not solve all the problems, however, and surges of rainwater into the bayous, rivers, and ship channel have caused pollution problems in Galveston Bay. Severe floods in 1929 and 1935 led to the formation of the Harris County Flood Control Districts. Houston and areas to the south still suffer from periodic flooding.

The livelihood of the city depended on commerce and cotton throughout the 19th century. Oil was discovered nearby at Spindletop in 1901, and the completion of the ship channel in 1914 encouraged oil companies to locate refineries along the channel, where they were safe from Gulf storms. By 1929, 40 oil companies had offices in the city, but cotton was still the driving force behind the city’s economy until World War II (1939-1945). The war created demand for not only oil and gasoline, but also synthetic rubber, explosives, ships, and other Gulf Coast products.

Houston became the center for this wartime economic development. The city built upon this base, becoming the largest city in the South and overseeing an industrial complex of 250 interrelated refineries that extended from Corpus Christi, Texas, to Lake Charles, Louisiana. The collapse of oil prices in the mid-1980s caused Houston to lose population for the first decade in its history. However, as its economy diversified during the 1990s and 2000s, the city returned to moderate growth. The rise in oil prices in the 2000s benefited Houston’s energy industries.

The city’s expansion into the suburbs and its reliance upon the automobile for primary transportation resulted in the construction of more than 320 km (200 mi) of freeways by 1990. This new infrastructure produced pollution, urban sprawl, and traffic jams, and it changed the character of the region. The new freeways created a new opportunity for commuting, which enabled members of the middle class (mainly whites) to move from the city to the surrounding suburbs.

While this population shift lessened racial hostilities in Houston, separate residential areas for blacks, Hispanics, and whites continued to exist, and riots and confrontations between ethnic groups and the police were common in the mid-1900s. However, as the city grew more multicultural and multi-ethnic in the late 1900s, the city leadership and institutions became more sensitive to nonwhites and more concerned about the livability of all the neighborhoods.

The spectacular collapse of the Houston-based Enron Corporation in 2001, one of the largest bankruptcies in U.S. history, quickly became a symbol of corporate excesses of the 1990s. As the Enron scandal unfolded, the innovative business practices for which the company had been praised turned out to be based largely on fraudulent accounting. A number of the company’s top executives were indicted and later convicted of securities fraud, money laundering, insider trading, and conspiracy.

The Enron debacle was not the only disaster striking Houston in the early 2000s. In June 2001 tropical storm Allison caused severe flooding and left 30,000 residents homeless, after 89 cm (35 in) of rain fell on Houston. After Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf coast in August 2005, Houston took in tens of thousands of displaced residents from New Orleans and from other devastated towns and cities along the Gulf of Mexico. A month later, half of the population of Houston fled the city as Hurricane Rita approached. Although Rita caused billions of dollars in damage, its effects on Houston were less severe than anticipated.

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