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"What Houston ponenet to an excep- magnet, suggests they do, and are even tional degree is an extraordinary vital- willing to fight the traffic on the West ity. One wishes tli.n it li.ul a larger Loop to get to it (or for that matter, just conceptual reach, thai social and cul- to drive by it, as Deyan Sudjic noted tural and human patterns were as well appreciatively in The One Hundred Mile understood as dollar dynamism." City). Vi'h.n was developed by the limes Ada I.imtit' Hwctable* Interests as a corporate lawn ornament for a 64-story office building next to the owever serviceable Houston may (.alien,i has been transformed, by uncom- B Y D R K X E L T U R N E R be beneath the surface, it is not mon usage, into a case for the outsourcing Htin' kind of place thai makes air of the public realm, complete with wed- travelers want to stay over a Saturday ding parties, taco vendors, ,nul burse night, or which rewards its captive audi- drawn-carriages-for-hire. No publicly-con- ence with much in the way of a public trived attraction in the city remotely life, assuming they want it. The extraordi- approaches the fountain's concentrated nary success of Philip Johnson's Transco everyday appeal, save for the well-lighted, Fountain as an unair-conditioned people curbside jogging trail in Memorial Park, 0 0 0 If I ^ i r ( * -
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winch daily serves as the setting for an clip as it does devotees of painting and Drive to downtown; and the Texas America. What Houston's planners think evening-long, Nike-town passeggiata. sculpture. But more to the point, it serves Department of Transportation's decision to nt as good planning is the landscaping of Nor does the tit) afford much in the in confirm Lord Llewelyn-Davies' proposi- replace the Southwest freeway viaduct that parking lots, to insist on trees, and earth Wi) of neighborhoods that demonstrate tion that "In the last resort, architecture is runs through Montrose and the Museum berms along their frontages, and small am conspicuously town-like feeling) either that which changes land-use." Or, at the District with a depressed roadway. discreet business signs."- as ensembles on the varicly-within-uuiry very least, solidifies it. Of course, simply tidying things up is Ileal remedies are difficult to come by iinnk I cultivated Mom Bedford Square to Several background developments are not going to increase Houston's entertain- — especially for a city already so spread Seaside, or as harbingers of the small- worth mentioning as useful upgrades in ment value, either in the everyday sense or in its ways, whose citizens are more sell world-at-one's-doorstep multiplcxity cele- iivii .iiiu inn : the w holes.lit planting oi the air-traveler-ensnaring one. Indeed, as sufficient in the air-conditioned comfort brated from the West Village to Notting trees sponsored by Trees for 1 touston and Sud|ic noted in 1992, apart from its of their homes, via television and the 11 ill. For residential precincts oh special the related city ordinance mandating Street "shimmering, sculptured and faceted sky- internet, than anyone could have imag- cohesion and convenience, the I lonston list trees at regular intervals for all new com- scrapers ... [r|he city has yet to create an] ined ID years ago. Real remedies require usually begins and ends with the surreally mercial and residential construction; the other sense of itself.... Manning, as it is real ingenuity and investment, as opposed unified (by dark gray paint) close-set bun- building set-back ordinance precipitated by practised in I louston, has no remedies for to merely substituting private opulence galows thai enfold The Mcnil Collection. the mirror-glass walls of the Woodway this ... what planning does try to do in and public tidiness for the "private opu- This museum attracts architectural afi- (Drive) canyon; the reclamation of the I louston is to insiill [ hi M U M ill parade lence and public squalor" John Kenneth Lionados, cameras in hand, at as steady a floodway of Buffalo Bayou from Shepherd ground neatness so beloved of middle (•albiaith deplored in the mid-century .32 foil 1 9 9 9 i T r
Esperson Building and the nesting Rat- Frank Gehry's unbuilt Progressive hauses of Johnson's Republic Bank Center Insurance Corporation Tower for — most of the downtown skyline is still Cleveland. Closer to terra firma, one might beset by a numbing sameness. also reflect that Big Daddy Wade's giant In order to literally project a distinctive saxophone, made from V\V parts for Billy image. Continental Airlines last year pro- Blues on Richmond, thwarted the sign posed to beam its corporate logo onto the police by claiming special dispensation as upper face of its 52-story headquarters art, a distinction that also applies to Ant building in Cullen (enter, thereby provok- Farm's Thunderbird ready-made impaled ing the indignation of Central Houston on a pylon in front of the Hard Rock Cafe Inc. and do/.ens of other equally unamuscd on Kirby. corporate citizens. Not that anyone should If artful Thunderbirds and saxophones be particularly charmed by Continental's can slip rhrough the radar of community logo, a gridded partial globe that is less conformitarianism, and if Prank Gehry can vivid a representation of flight than the attach a real Lockheed I'I04 Starfighter jet Pegasus that brands the Magnolia Building to the facade of the California Aerospace / in Dallas, (The original 30-foot-high sign, Museum, ("an inspired piece of advertis- which rotated on a derrick-like pediment, ing" in the judgement of the Walker Art was added as an afterthought in 19.14; Center's retrospective catalog), then what's today it's a museum piece, though a to stop a Boeing 747, or its fiberglass duplicate was recently placed atop the body-double, from perching atop Conti- Magnolia by a Dallas civic group.) Even nental's pylon at 1600 Smith Street? If the by the standards of Dallas — "cleaner city fathers should manage to annul this than i Iouston ... more tightly controlled," marriage of art and commerce, Continental in novelist Larry McMurtry's reading — could still adopt the functionalist approach Continental's desire to distinguish its cor of Christine's in Pendel, Pennsylvania, in porate presence in the sky would seem an which a Super-G Constellation is parked entirely reasonable attempt at product on the root, however decorartvely, to serve differentiation, a potentially diverting as a cocktail lounge. As an operable restau- concession to the imperative of a market rant. Continental's 747 would surely be economy where products tend, like I lie entitled to the same protection as the buildings their producers occupy, to be In Dallas, Pegasus has been relumed to the tool of the Magnolia Building. Could similar signage perk up Houston's skyline? restaurant atop the I lyatr Regency I lotel. inherently the same. A more general retrofitting of the tops ittlHi-Hi society. The problem of l iouston, "In Manhattan," Colin Rowe reflects, ol I lottston's downtown skyscrapers as Ada Louise I tuxtable discerned a quar- "the earlier skyscrapers (almost everything might begin with One Shell Pla/.i, the ter-century ago, was that of providing "an built before 1950) are still obedient to tlu upper reaches of which enjoy a perma- anchor to time and place where neither is principles |oi rooftop adornment] observed nently unobscured (by the grace ol i St) defined. All of those values that accrue in Rome. No doubt New York City is a I l.illi westerb exposure. It also combines throughout centuries of civilization — vertical excess, but, until very recently, a sturdy countenance with an iconically identity, intimacy, scale, complexity, style almost every skyscraper behaved approxi- suggestive prime tenant. In fact, the archi- — are simply created out of whole cloth, mately like Sant'Agnese in Piazza Navona. tectural adaptability of the Shell Oil or whole prairie, with unabashed com- The Wookvorrh, the Chrysler, the Empire ( ompany's symbol has already been road- mercial eclecticism. How else to establish State buildings all behave this way ... At rested in a series of service stations built a sense of place or community, to indicate street level they are quiet ... The set piece, according to a shell design patented in differences where none exist?" the celebration of object, the fiimtm\i. 19.10. One can imagine the top ol t )n< belong up top." 1 Shell Plaza morphing into a t hrysleresque headdress in emulation ol those freestand- EXTRA TOPIINUN As a means of overcompensatmg for ing giant-Shell service stations — the archi- Roland Barthcs has written that skyscrap- the general disarray (others might say tectural equivalent of hie; hair, pumped up ers are "the city's great commonplace ... messy vitality) of its public ground and ,ui to conform to the scale of a "ill-story what is astonishing about the skyscraper space, 1 Iouston has tended to react harsh- building. (To Henry-Russell Hitchcock, is that it does not astonish." As if to ly against billboards and other signage. writing a short time after the patent for prove the point, in 1482 the curators of But if, as Marcel Duchamp surmised, art the shell-design stations was granted, "the the Cooper I Icwilt Museum assembled a might he the last refuge ol scoundrels, combination of strict functionalism and series ol 111 skyline views of American (. oniiiH'iil.il could perhaps think of bold symbolism in the best roadside cities and presented them without cap- declaring its corporate symbol an artistic stands provides, perhaps, the most tions in a publication on the subject. creation as a community-standards-proof encouraging sign lor "the architecture of Cities, defying readers to lell them apart. way to make its presence known among the mid-20th century."-1) I >i>unii.\\:i I Imision is no exception. the upright cigar boxes of downtown. The I hough I'hilip Johnson began to point the glimmer of such a strategy can be detected Not every tall building needs a talking way out of this identity crisis with the ski in the hat trick of t Lies Oldenburg's head, hut some clearly invite It. Enron. slope tops of Pcnnzoil Place, with few rolled-up I'lttiii Dealer, tossed across the whose core business is natural gas, might exceptions — the tempietto-capped Niels puddle of Lake Erie onto the roof of light up the range as a torchere on the C T A 2 0 0 0 rV I It f » I 33
w order of the 40-srory Pharos of money had bought him that he loved Alexandria. Something of the sort was completely and never rired of." contemplated in 1966 for the "lamp" of In a similar vein, Le Corbusier rhe Aladdin Casino and Hotel in Las developed schemes in 1926 for the entre- Vegas, in the form of a 40-foot-high, gas- preneur Joseph Mege to construct a small jet-fueled flame that was to flicker atop a "colony" of studio houses on top of the 200-foot pylon sign. What is needed here, seven-story Garage Raspail; two densities however, is an un-natural gas effect, per- were studied, one for 2K, another for 46 haps a liquid-crystal-cnhanced nocturnal units, all arranged back to back with a flare that no real flame could match. peripheral garage-top "sidewalk" provid- Nor should one forget the oncc-revolv- ing access, in what amounted to an airlift nig Spindletop restaurant of the terminally of his light-weight "student housing" pro- sober Hyatt Hotel downtown. Recall also ject of 1925. (Possibly, Le Corbusier was that in her inspection of the city's freeways, aware of a group of apartments construct- Ada Louise I luxtahle was fascinated hy the ed in the early 1920s on top of a garage at "revolving neon piano" that provided a 22 rue liarrault by the Citroen automobile grace note between rhe giant roach and the company to house Russian taxi drivers, a mummy's head on the Southwest Freeway. development that remains intact today, Surely no hotel anywhere has a piano bar, though presumably the occupants have revolving or not, at the scale the platform changed.) Garage-top condominiums presented by the Spindletop suggests. could, one suspects, find takers here, per- haps even Houstoni/.ed in the manner of M All of which is not to suggest that rhe I logg bungalow/penthouse atop the downtown's towers should function simply old Great Southern Building Itiow the as product placement opportunities — Hogg Palace Lofts). Also, learning Irotn Le although when the connection is apt there Corbusier and the creche on the root ol is no reason not to go public. In fact, the rhe Unite d'habitation, if is conceivable "spires of Zenith" can also look like spires, that the fops ol garages would make or any other species of ornament, or folly, viable work-place linked day-care sites so that suits: the metallic helmet of the that parents could park their cars and pre- Chrysler building, the buttressed round- Cass Gilbert's Rodin Studios in New York (1918) presented a model that later studio and lolt builders could aspire to. school-age children at the same coordi- about oi I food and I [owell's Chicago nates before shuffling off to work. Tribune tower, the broken pediment ot studio apartments built in New York ments ... ,i type] almost without prece- Philip Johnson's AT&T Building, and Siah around the turn ot the 19th century. In dent in Lurope" and the idea of "pair|ing| Armajani's 127 foot-high open-work tiara Mom Si n I'l us New York, apartment buildings of this ... each unit with a duplex-height garden tor Cesar l'ellt's unbuilt Verba Ikiena I KCCpt for the upper-income towers ili.n type sometimes affected the names of terrace within the shelter of the blo^k." 'lower all suggest, with varying degrees of spike the leafy fringes of River Oaks, artists, as did Cass Gilbert's 14-story Rodin Constructed in reinforced concrete .wn\ success, other non-product-specific means Nriargrovc and rhe Museum District, Studios on West 57th Street (19IS) and the stacked four-high (plus a set-back pent- ol establishing an aerial identity. apartment construction in I louston has Gainsborough (1908) on Central Park house range! above basement parking, Le been mostly a manifestation of what Walt South. All were in essence amplifications ol Corbuiser's "freehold maisonettes" — vil- DRIVE-OPS Whitman called the "pull-down-and- Richard Morris Hunt's'tenth Street las in the sky — were prefaced by deep, Closer to the ground, most outsiders seem build-over-agam-spirit" of New York in Studios, which he introduced in LSSfi as a double-height, very uu-lretich balconies uiu/ed In the uhli|uil\ and cuormit) • <\ the mid 19th century. Typically, sub-high- new building type, and which survived lor ("each ... completely shut off from its
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Some purpose-built lolts going up In Houston, such as the four-unit-high Metropolis (1997), above left, reflect ideas expressed more gracefully by Le Corbusier in his 1922 plans for low-rise, block-filling immeubles-vilias, above right. the Renoir in the manner of early 20th-cen- enclosed, b a m - l i k e nature of the stadium Croom's Ruckus Rodeo or Luis Jimenez's 1925) conforms to present-day expecta- tury M a n h a t t a n , though it shows a pavil- precludes any real chance of simulating "Progress" series. Here, the division of tions for such buildings. " I f I should try ro ion of the new Louvre as its design concept the shapely, quasi-floating quality of labor between the sports specialist archi- name the most beautiful building in N e w in pre-eonstruetion advertising. open-air arenas such as Rice Stadium. tects and those better equipped to cope York," Marianna G r i s w o ld Van Rensselaer Problematic as t ho exterior treatments Since neither the view in (to the underside with the romancing of the stadium's public wrote in 1H94, " M a d i s o n Square Ciarden and street friendliness of these projects may of the grandstand) nor out (to the desola- face is in order. asserts itself w i t h o u t a r i v a l . " No one in he, they nevertheless provide a market-test- tion of the parking lot) arc w o r t h cultivat- If the rodeo theme itself were not their wildest hoop dreams could make such ed armature that could readily accept cos- ing, the belter part of valor w o u l d be to enough to set the venue apart f r o m the a claim for the d o w n t o w n arena proposed metic upgrading of the kind Edwin l.utycns lorgo the expense of a thermally-suspect ponderous herd of other N F L stadiums, it hy the Sports Authority, though there applied, .n the behest of the Westminster window wall and instead decorate four would also be possible to add other seems to lie a effort to attend to business Estate, to the outsides of apartments and utilitarian masonry facades as audaciously attractions to create a k i n d of year-round better than usual in M i a m i , where ottices otherwise built to the plans of "spe- as possible. horse-opry land on the order of what Arquitectonica was paired w i t h H O K cialist" architects in I ondon in the late As a thematic basis lor such a diver- Judge Hoflieinz produced seasonally in Sports to provide the salsa for the just- 1920s and early I 9.10s. A string of such sionary once-over, one might begin by the W i l d West m i d w a y of the temporary opened American Airlines Arena. cosmetically enhanced, street-friendK lotts recalling that it was the participation of the l olt st.uluun. A reincarnation of Ciilley's could provide the basis for a potentially Rodeo — a cash-cow of more than fran- might take the place of the Judge's Long PtiMi'Lti Ur pleasurable transformation of M a i n or chise player proportions — that ultimately Branch Saloon, in company w i t h a revival I Iouston has a long history of making only Montrose. As a bare-bones expedient, even made the new stadium attainable. Whereas o f Kiddie Wonderland , the long-playing the least costly and least imaginative provi- the maximally glazed, halcony-griddcd ele- "NFL officials initially wanted an open-air purveyor of pony and carousel rides that sions for flood control, in contrast, for vations n o w associated w i t h the type could stadium lor football only," the former once occupied the corner of M a i n Street example, to the Prussian countryside of the accept a " M a j o l i c a House"-lik e (or hang- chairman ol the sports authority, |ack and K i r h y Drive. early l''th century. As M. N o r t o n Wise has ing garden?I patterning all over through Rains, was obliged to explain "that if there Moving d o w n t o w n , it is tempting ro documented in "Architectures lor Steam," application of the see-through dot-matrix was going to be a stadium ... it was going wonder if the basketball/hockey arena the I iohen/olk-rn royal family had numer- sun screens/scrims n o w employed for 1 to accommodate both the rodeo and the bond proposition lailed to pass because ous gardens in the naturalistic "English* advertising over bus and taxi w i n d o w s . NFL, and it had to have a roof on it ... if of the breathtaking banality of H K S style built in Berlin and Potsdam, dotting the city and county [had| to make a choice, Architects' proposed design rather than the which were elaborate structures built to 1 SeoKnisic, CHANCES the rodeo | w o u l d ] be the favorite child.'" opposition of the potential owner of a shelter and disguise the enormous steam- Sometime before the middle of the 21st Thar being the case, it w o u l d seem that N l If. hockey franchise and the l o w voter driven pumping equipment required to century, Houston's p o p u l a t i o n w i l l be p r i - the four faces of the stadium should not turnout Faced w i t h the possibility, howev- make the artificial hydrology w o r k in marily of latin-America n extraction . only acknowledge, but celebrate, this mar- er remote, thai the swing votes might have "these immense works of art |lhat| exist Already, M e x i c a n l e a g ue soccer teams riage of convenience. N o r w o u l d n hurt, in been architecturally motivated, the Sports today as public parks, somewhat like Kensington Park or Regency Park in regularly d r a w capacity c r o w ds ro the process, to recognize the roots of long- Authority should take no chances the next London, but even more like the great Robertson Stadium at the University of horn cattle and c o w b o y i n g , w h i c h extend time. As things stand, Frank Geary's prac- estates at Windsor Castle or Stowe." I i o u s t o n , and one w o u l d hope that the in back to the Spanish settlement of Texas, tice rink for the M i g h t y Ducks of Anaheim stadium that w i l l be built to a c c o m m o - without also neglecting ihe parallel inven- outclasses any arena currently in the N B A In H o u s t o n , the standard approach to date the Rodeo and the city's entry-to-be tion of ranching in the back country of or N! I I . by leaps and bounds. N o t that the flood control involves little if any pump- in the N a t i o n a l Football I eague w i l l also Virginia. The ticket, so to speak, is some- type itsell is inimical to the application of ing or other special technology to create be soccer-compatible, (I Iouston is m o r e thing that might measure up to the C o r n architectural talent, as demonstrated by water features ot esthetic and recreational likely than San A n t o n i o to be awarded a Palace in Mitchell, South D a k o t a , as an Renzo Piano's unbuilt project for the value. On a small land private) scale, the Saitama (Japan) Sports Center a 45,000- major league soccer franchise.) exposition of uncritical regionalism. W h a t Hints Interests' office park that adjoins seat indoor arena that Piano descrilies as As presently conceived by 1 [ O k is needed is a C o w Palace outfitted w i t h Transco Tower, The l a k e s on Post O a k , "inserted into a disorganized urban fabric Sports of Kansas City, the design for the something more bodacious than the feature a g r o u p of small detention ponds. ... w i t h the force of a geographical fea- new N F L stadium envisions an enormous solemn, pioneer pageant tile friezes of the These are kept partially filled w i t h water ture," and Hero Saarinen's Ingalls 1 lockey box w i t h glazed end-zone " l o b b i e s " and Will Rogers Coliseum in f o r t W o r t h , and, like the Transco Fountain, have Rink at Yale, "a marvelous space in many glazed containers for out-board ramps something more in the spirit of the Harriett attracted a steadfast f o l l o w i n g , w i t h fami- Street face of Jim doode's 11.ill of f l a m e , ways, swooping like hockey" in the view attached ro the long sides like saddlebags. lies arriving on weekends to picnic in this with its outsized, tall-tale-picmre-post-card of Vincent Scully. Rather than dissimulate the bulkinesss "I land ot mini-lakes. broadside. What is needed is a curio- the whole, this window-wal l skirting sun Reaching further back, it is w o r t h not- Water features for golf courses are encrusted wrap-around wonder-wall brim- ply demonstrates that transparency is not ing that at the time of its construction in managed in essentially the same manner, ming w i t h patterns, brands, murals, and always a public virtue. IK90, Stanford White's Madison Square but the currently preferred public technol- a [ u m b o i r o n screen or t w o , plus beefy Though the attempt to avoid duplicat- Ciarden, was considered one oi N o v York's ogy is that of shallow d r y - b o t t o m earth- ledges to accommodate such dioranuc pos- ing the gray-washed, cinderblock charm principal civic ornaments, although only its works, whether at the scale ot many thou- sibilities as might be suggested by Red of the Astrodome is understandable, the abbreviated life-span (it was demolished iti sands of acres as in the low-levee-walled 2 o o o I W I t> t t t 35 ^ , t «
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HOK Sports' plans for a new football stadium near the Astrodome lack the sense of play and regional identity found in such memorable structures as the Corn Palace (1921; minarets and domes added 1937) in Mitchell, South Dakota.
Barker and Addicks reservoirs, or the Dvoretsky. Before the fountain appeared in West End is still s t r o n g , " Sudjic writes, cit between the park and the R o t h ko Chapel; innumerable chain-link-fenced vest pocket llie early 1960s, the site was occupied by a ing the example of the Crosvcnor Estate, and a little light magic for night prowlers. depressions that developers may elect to sunken flower garden, which suggests the whose "polic y ever since the IKth century ( ednc Price once suggested that, as a rule scrape out and fence o f t ' o n an individual possihlity of filling the basins w i th enor- ... has always been to hold on to freeholds of t h u m b , half the capital cost of any park basis for every tilt-wall store or small mous, translucent flowers in the spirit of and sell leases. Development in this sense should be allocated to the yearly expense apartment complex they build. One might Raul Rodriguez's 197(> porte-cochere (or is closer to farming than trade. It aims to o f its maintenance — a proposition that hope that these detention obligations tin- Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas. Since the produce a rent roll that provides a regular might be w o r t h testing at least once. could be banked in /ones ,ind satisfied Mccom Fountain is a strictly drive-by income, not to accumulate capital by sell- through the construction of sizable water proposition, it requires a bigger splash than ing assets. Of course, this means raking a GirtiNi; T u i K i features sprinkled throughout the city. A n d eonu'iitional civic art can usually muster. long view on the economic health ol the Ada Louise H u x t a b l e was not u n m i n d f u l just as the sewers of Rome were begun by The treatment should be legible at night, properties and the artful managment of o f the potency of Houston's "unabashed simply enlarging the transverse section of from a considerable distance, and at 4(1 tenants.... It amounts to a private system commercial eclecticism" as a means of 1 and covering over existing gullies, one miles per hour — the bouquets of the gods, of zoning."* tilling the void in a city where " n o one might consider increasing the carrying so to speak, constantly misted. Viewed in this light, the M e n i l seems to feel the need for the public- capacity ol some bayous in this fashion, Collection neighborhood is actually an vision that older cities have of a hierarchy perhaps providing a shallow, more domes- Vnt .At a- 1*1-1)111 accidental "estate," w i t h much of its prop- of places and buildings," a place where ticated water tray nn top for scenic and Augustus, the emperor w h o by his o w n erty initially assembled to accommodate a the " v i s i t o r accustomed to cities shaped recreational purposes. admission found Rome a city of brick and projected expansion of the University ot by rivers, mountains , and distinguishing lii imagine what I louston might be left it one of marble, is also, m a way, the St. T h o m a s , and only afterwards recon- topography, by local identity ami histori- like w i t h water pumped around to all inventor of neighborhood-based municipal ceived as a campus ami cordon domes- cal and cultural conditioning " could feel kinds of useful and ornamental places, one administration, having divided his capital ttqttc for a museum and its satellite gal- some sense of having arrived somewhere. needn't look as far as the Prussian coun- into 14 regions and those regions into sub- leries and chapels. As such, the neighbor- "One might say of I l o u s t o n , " she w r o t e , tryside, but only several hundred miles sections called via — ward-like precincts hood has developed according to its o w n "that one never gets there. It feels as west, where beginning w i t h the small dams consisting of "a street and the neighbor- at once altruistic and pragmatic logic, in a if one is always on the way, a l w a j •< and aqueducts of the first Spanish mission hood spreading around it into alleys and way that conventional municipal zoning arriving, always l o o k i n g tor the p o i n t 1 settlements San Antoninus have shown little squares." as |olm Srambaugh would have precluded. Unlike the L o n d on where everything comes together.'
(low water can be collected and redistrib- describes them in The Ancient Raman estates, the primary focus of The M e n i l Perhaps some unabashed civic eclecti- uted to noticeable effect. The becalmed < itv. The vici acquired names in a remark- Collection is museotogical, and its cism is both necesary and desirable to loop ol the s.in Antonio Riverwalk, a bit ably eclectic fashion, just as real estate resources are concentrated primarily on confront this enigma of a r r i v a l , some- of bypass surgery performed by the WPA ventures do today, some taking their name the acquistion. conservation, and preserva- thing that might also yield postcards in 19.59-40, is the basis for one of the from a landmark such as an oak grove. tion of art, rather than realizing the neigh- worth sending back home. {Try the test deftest urban transformations anywhere. and others being named for the type of borhood's potential for housing more fully yourself the next time you're at the air- I lie Riverwalk has since been expanded, tradesmen w h o worked there. — although Renzo Piano's 220-unit, m o d - port or a drugstore: W h i c h w i l l it be, the while the continued manageability of the erate-cost Rue ile Meaux housing provides Although H o u s t o n has no similarly Astrodome or the d o w n t o w n tunnels? entire watershed has been assured In lIn- a model that could be gracefully applied to fine-grained structure of municipal gover- Nope, the giant armadillo. I This, together recent construction of a major storm outlying parts of the M e n i l holdings, per- nance, the vici might be said to corre- with some h l l i n g - i n , of