Shell to Houston

n August 1969, Shell Oil Company tions prompted Shell to examine the idea The company’s Texas-sized move Iannounced plans to move most of its of moving much its operations to another took nearly a year beginning in November administrative offi ces from New York City city. During eighteen months of study aided 1969. Shell’s method of moving individual to Houston. “Shell to Move 1,000 Workers by the Stanford Research Institute, Shell offi ces only lost one working day at the Here” read the banner headline across the collected data on a half-dozen cities but end of each week. Each Thursday evening, front page of the Houston Chronicle the day eventually narrowed the list to two, Dallas equipment was loaded up in cross-country after the announcement. The fi nal number and Houston. Both cities had low costs- moving trucks. By the following Monday was closer to 1,400, and the success of the of-living, room for growth, and a Sunbelt afternoon, 1,620 miles away in Houston, move encouraged the company to consoli- ambience. And they were located in the the equipment was unloaded and arranged. date others parts of its operations in the city. Central Time Zone, making intra-company Employees reported for work Tuesday The move bolstered the Bayou City’s morning. Shell offered to transfer and emergence as a center of gravity for Shell. absorb moving costs for practically all Houston had been a Shell town for many operating headquarters personnel from top decades. It had a major refi nery in Deer Shell managers to fi le clerks and secretaries. Park since the 1930s. Its Exploration & Some 700 employees refused the offer, Production (E&P) research laboratory was to choosing to stay in New York City. Many in Bellaire. And most of its operations in others welcomed the move and adapted Texas and the Mid-Continent were run quickly. “I had heard about places like the out of the area offi ce there. Shell already Houston Shamrock Hotel and the restaurants and employed more than 5,000 people how everybody barbecued,” recalled in the area, the largest single concen- one secretary who accepted the tration of Shell employees in the transfer. “When you live in New York country. During the early 1960s, City, you never barbeque!”2 Houston’s the company started to outgrow much lower housing costs meant that its offi ces in the Shell Building, the people were able to buy homes often Fannin Building, and the Prudential twice the size of the ones they left Building. behind in the suburbs of Connecticut In 1966, the company arranged or Long Island. “I happened to be to install most of Shell’s Houston a New Yorker, but I didn’t mind employees in a new skyscraper to leaving New York,” said Jim DeNike, be built by Gerald D. Hines, whose who became vice president of Shell tallest building at the time was a Chemical a few years after the move. sixteen-story apartment project. “And I know very few people who Hines’ personal charisma, his went back.”3 The move eliminated deep-pocketed local investors, an the long commute people had been innovative design, a favorable lease, taking into Manhattan and gave the and the low cost of living in Houston company an hour more work per day helped convince Shell to commit to out of each individual. Shell quickly the project. recouped the $35 million it spent With Shell as the primary to relocate its offi ces and people in tenant, Hines agreed to name his the form of lower administrative and building One Shell Plaza. Over operating costs. “It paid out like a slot the next three years, Houstonians machine,” said DeNike.4 watched a modern-style tower Moving most of the headquarters rise up 650 feet to dominate staff to Houston was so successful that the downtown skyline. Clad in in 1971, Shell Oil decided to pull up One Shell Plaza stands over fi fty stories tall and was the tallest gleaming-white, Italian Travertine building west of the Mississippi when it was completed in 1971. its entire stakes in New York City and marble quarried from the same transfer its remaining executive offi ces region as the marble in Rome’s communications easier. Ultimately, the to Houston. The savings and effi cien- Coliseum, the fi fty-story One Shell Plaza availability of offi ce space gave Houston cies achieved by the move opened up the laid claim to being the tallest building west the edge. Gerald Hines already had plans possibilities of consolidating other activi- of the Mississippi and the highest rein- to build a high-rise garage across the street ties. In 1972-73, Shell moved all of its data forced concrete structure in the world.1 from One Shell Plaza and agreed to turn processing, with the exception of the credit In 1967, as the groundwork was laid the building into a 28-story combination card center in Tulsa, from regional centers for the skyscraper, the lease on Shell Oil’s garage/offi ce that became Two Shell Plaza into a new building on the south side of offi ces in New York City’s RCA building once the company decided to move to Houston near the Astrodome.5 The fi nal act came up for renewal. Manhattan’s rising Houston and agreed to lease half of the new in the centralization of Shell was the closing costs and deteriorating working condi- building. of the Emeryville research laboratory in page 10 The Houston Review...Volume 3, Number 1 California and the construction of the tion of Shell Oil Company’s nation-wide specialists headquartered in Houston. The Westhollow Research Center, a sprawling operations. Shell benefi ted from the city also reaped great benefi ts from Shell’s new research complex on the west side of consolidation of its operations in Houston move, which gave Houston a major new Houston. Completed in 1975, the new through better communications and reduc- company headquarters, a potent symbol of facility housed all of Shell Development’s tions in overhead during a period of tight its status as the nation’s energy capital, and research laboratories and offi ces, except budgets. It could more closely coordinate a company that quickly established itself as those for E&P. its activities in oil, petrochemicals, and a leading corporate citizen. This marked the end of a decade natural gas, while also taking advantage —Tyler Priest 6 of major reorganization and centraliza- of the services of the many oil-related “Mama” Ninfa Rodriguez Laurenzo ften deemed Houston’s fi rst lady regulations forced her to turn the factory into a restaurant.4 Oof Mexican cooking, Mama After banks turned her down for a loan, Mama Ninfa borrowed Ninfa Rodriguez Laurenzo was a several thousand dollars from a friend in Mexico City to transform restaurateur, innovator, community the factory into a makeshift ten-table restaurant. She stocked the leader, and role model whose family, kitchen with dishes, pots, and pans from her home and furnished friends, and dining customers simply the dining area with tables and chairs she salvaged from another called her “Mama.” During her fi ve restaurant that had discarded them after a fi re. With help from her decades in Houston, the founder of children, the original Ninfa’s opened in July 1973.5 The little restau- Ninfa’s restaurants was credited with rant sold about 250 tacos al carbon on its fi rst day in business, and expanding the city’s food frontier was so prosperous that Mama Ninfa tripled its size and eventually by introducing the fajita-meat dish opened a second location on Westheimer three years later. By the Photo by Al-Fin. called “tacos al carbon,” later evolving early 1980s, the Laurenzo family’s Rio Star Corporation boasted nine Courtesy Mama Ninfi a’s into “tacos a la Ninfa,” and eventu- Houston restaurants; currently, more than fi fty Ninfa’s restaurants are ally known widely as “fajitas.”1 “I open in Texas, Georgia, and Louisiana.6 grew up in the lower Rio Grande Valley,” Mama Ninfa once said. “I Mama Ninfa’s success as an entrepreneur and restaurateur was just serving the same kind of good, honest food at my restau- inspired others in Houston to pursue the restaurant business. rant that we used to eat at home. Fajitas were an old family recipe.” Doneraki restaurant founder Cesar Rodriguez recalled how she Mama Ninfa’s indulgence of this old family recipe to the Houston changed people’s perception of Mexican food. “She took our food to community was largely responsible for the fajita craze that swept the the Anglo people. Before Ninfa’s, most people considered Mexican country in the late twentieth century.2 food cheap street food. Señora Ninfa changed all that. She said to Maria Ninfa Rodriguez was a Mexican American Catholic, born me, ‘If they like our food, they need to pay for it.’ So she doubled May 11, 1924, and raised with her eleven siblings in Harlingen, the prices. It was incredible,” he said. Although typical in “Tex-Mex” Texas. On a small patch of farmland in the Rio Grande Valley, restaurants today, at the time that Ninfa’s began, dishes like chalupas, her parents grew peppers, tomatoes, and squash, and raised cows, sopapillas, avocado and tomatillo green sauce, fl autas de pollo, chorizo chickens, and pigs. After graduation from Henrietta High School in con queso, and tacos al carbon were brand new to people.7 Kingsville, Texas and Durhan Business School in Harlingen, Mama Mama Ninfa’s fame spread far beyond the kitchen, as charity Ninfa traveled to Rhode Island in 1945 to visit her twin sister, Pilar.

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