Beamers: the Houston Conventions, 1928 and 1992

Cite Fall 1992-Winter 1993 15 Beamers The Houston Conventions, If the Dome were to be used for some social sport, like a political 1928 and 1992 convention, wouldn't the man who controlled the screen control the convention? URRY MCMURTRY, "Love, Death, DRI-XEL TURNI R and the Astrodome." 1965 wice in ihis century, 20,0(10 or Roosevelt's speech made on Smith's behalf by air-conditioning the auditorium it to plans prepared by the architectural more invited guests and hangers- in 1924 had, as Frank Friedel notes, would be possible to accommodate the consortium of Kenneth Fran/.hcim and J. F. on have assembled in Houston "been broadcast, but radio had still seemed delegates at less expense and with greater R. Carpenter of New York and Alfred C. to sanction presidential candidates rather a novelty. By 1()2H, thanks to comfort than would be the case in the Finn of Houston (a collaborative that was Twhose prospects were less than glowing improved broadcasting techniques and 20,000-scat temporary structure contem- then also adapting the design of Elicl and whose oratorical abilities were at best national networks, it provided a remark- plated by Jones. The site of Jones's hall, Saarinen's second-place entry in the Chicago deficit-prone. The outcome ol neither able opportunity to bring Roosevelt's originally proposed lor Martha Hermann Tribune lower competition for what was to convention was ever really in doubt, nor, political ideas and personal charm directly Square in front of the newly completed become the tallest - and last - of Houston's judging from most accounts, did either to millions of people. In addition it served Houston Public Library, was shifted to a several pre-Depression skyscrapers, Jones's provide much in the way ol incidental ii> i ircumvent hostile newspapers and less temporary outpost on the east bank of Cult Oil Company Building).'' entertainment. The 1928 Democratic magazines. " 4 Buffalo Bayou where the present Coliseum convention that endorsed the candidacy of and Music Hall now stand, the new site Sam Houston Hall, so named to honor the Al Smith on the first ballot (and had to he The alacrity with which Roosevelt seized had to be cleared, lot by lot, of houses, city's namesake and Texas's first Democratic stretched to six days "to bring the guaran- both medium and moment in Houston causing the foundation to be laid section politician of national reputation rolled into tors out of the red") was described by one only seemed spontaneous, for, as he by section as the demolition proceeded. one, was an exuberantly decorated shed of participant as "the longest wake anv Irish- explained in a letter to Walter l.ippmann, "Planned Magnificence Causes F^ast to vaguely Hoffmannstil recognizance. Its 1 man ever attended." Franklin [). Roose- he had made it a point to try "the definite Marvel," a Houston newspaper assured its boarded faces, painted green and gold, velt, who placed Smith's name in nomina- experiment this year of writing and readers even before the design was made bristled with bundled fasces for pilasters, two tion in Houston as he had lour years before delivering my speech lor the benefit of the public back home" for an arena with a species ol eagle, and a skyline fringe of staffs at Madison Square Garden, wrote to radio audience and press rather than for seating capacity a third greater than Madi- and banners. An internally revealed novelty Newton D. Baker several weeks afterwards any forensic effect it might have on the son Square Carden and that "though of the hall's design was the lamella truss roof ih.it "tlu onl\ remark ol tin ' onvention delegates and audience in the convention temporary in nature, will have the appear- frame "woven" from small standardized which will live was that ol Will Rogers, who hall. Smith had the votes anyway and it ance of a permanent structure." "The hall pieces of wood curved on one side (lamellas) said that in trying to mop his brow in the seemed to me more important to reach out was erected at a cost of $200,000 in 64 that made possible the 120-foot clear span of Rice Hotel mob, he mopped three others for the republicans anil independents days, beginning in early March, according the segmentally vaulted center bay, the limit - before he wiped his own." ' At this year's throughout the country.'"' Roosevelt's new Republican convention, brows furrowed order ol battle did not escape the notice of routinely but lew required mopping the Nation, whose correspondent reported indoors in what had become one of the that it mattered not that "in the vast spaces world's most air-conditioned cities, allowing of Sam Houston I kill it is impossible for the August delegation all the cold comfort an individual on the floor to catch the eye that could be manufactured from kilowatts or ihe ear... joi ih.u ; acoustics are s.u ri on hand. But despite the ministrations of a ftced to ventilation... |for] one man at the generous cross section ol the media elite microphone is a whole convention in this (from Norman Mailer and Molly Ivins to radio-electric year of 1928."'' Nor was the William K Buckley and William Safire), lesson lost on the Chicago Tribune, which even the best spins on the rites at the paid wishful editorial tribute to Roosevelt Astrodome offered little cause for optimism as "the only Republican in the Demo- and still less in the way of diversion or cratic party." y suspense, unless one counted George Bush's attempt to master a new word order without the help of Peggy Noonan. I hat ilu I Jeniocrats had chosen to convene in Houston at all. an out-of-the- !W way if aspiring ciry of 250,000 at the far Besides the 1928 Democratic convention's edge of the New South, was solely a distinction as a way station to the Electoral concession to the influence of Jesse H. College debacle that was to keep Mr. Jones, the city's first real estate developer *M Smith from going to Washington, the brow of note. His interests also included Li moppers assembled in Houston witnessed banking, publishing, and politics, ,md he a political transformation of bipartisan later served as chairman of the Reconstruc- scope. The convention was the first such tion Finance Corporation and secretary of event to adapt itself fully to the use of a commerce. The convention was assigned broadcast medium, thus transcending the to Houston in January 1928, less than six limits ol locality and the hall itself to reach months before it was scheduled to open. out to a much vaster audience nationwide. The ciry had then but one permanent Roosevelt, refashioning his "happy warrior" facility that approached the necessary encomium of four years before, cast his capacity, the 7,500-seat City Auditorium delivery expressly in terms of the new me- of 1910, a workmanlike Beaux-Arts dium. "Convinced," he wrote soon structure designed by Mauran, Russell & thereafter, "that the old-fashioned type of Crowell of St. Louis and located one block oratory would serve no useful purpose," southwest of the firm's Rice Hotel of he chose to direct his remarks in an inti- 1913, on the sire of what is now the Jesse mate and familiar manner toward "the H.Jones Hall for the Performing Arts. 15,000,000 radio listeners rather than the The owner of a nearby movie house 15,000 in the Convention Hall."' suggested, presciently but to no avail, that Sam Houston Hall, northeast entrance. The chain-link fence at right was a security measure. 16 Cite Fall 1992-Winter 1993 "WJE 5*§ >*tiv £-* View of Sam Houston Hatl looking west from Above: Interior of Sam Houston Hall. the top of the Niels Esperson Building. Below: Sam Houston Hall under construction. or the span being dictated by the size of the Astrodome and its environs has been the Astroarena, were erected soon thereaf- ed in tidying everything else up for the the material in stock, 3 by 14 inches.1" likened, only half tongue in cheek, to that ter to serve ordinary conventions of benefit of television, to the point where, Devised and patented by a Herman of Pope Sixtus V for the second Rome 15,000 or less. But in 1992, as 64 years as Ms. Brown observed, noi only have engineer, the lamella system had been (had he only been a Texan),1J although his before, the internal dynamics of the arena "today's conventions, preempted by the introduced to the United States only three Celestial Suite atop the Astroworld I hue! were not, at least for political purposes, at primary system,...become coronation-like, or so years before the Houston conven- suggested an ecumenical fascination with issue so long as they did not impinge on its lavish productions largely stripped of tion. It was the same technique that Ncrvi Hellini's Rome as well. The epiphany that efficacy as a point of origin for broadcast spontaneity. Design has increasingh would begin to employ more expressively led to the Dome is said to have come to communications, which in the years since become synonymous with control (trans- in the mid- 1930s, and the same that was Hofheinz after touring the Roman Colos- Roosevelt had added a video component as lation: image management) Desper- applied in steel for the construction of the seum, his showman's curiosity aroused by well. The operative question was simply ately seeking permanence, or at least the Astrodome.

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