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 ." 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 , 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

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>*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. Unlike the Astrodome, Jones's a description of the technics of its original whether Hofheinz's Luc ire-covered tent illusion of it, America's politicos have- barn was cooled only by the draft from velarium, the retractable, rope-hung could suffice as a glorified television studio slowly forsaken swags and drapery for two immense fans. Most of the delegates canopy that had provided shade for 50,000 - a matter the Republicans had presum- architecture. Frivolity is a no-no: were housed in hotels owned by Jones five spectators. I I he S.IIIR' apparatus also ably disposed of to bottom-line satisfaction the last thing anybody wants is to look 1 or six blocks from the hall (the largest .mil intrigued the Baroque architect Carlo in the New Orleans Superdome four years temporary." ' most prepossessing ol which were the Rice luniana, who, unlike the Judge, lacked the before. (Houston can also be considered to and the Lamar), and they walked to and patronage of the Harris County Commis- have pioneered the domed television To convert the Astrodome into a com- from the convention in a manner com- sioners Court.) The Dome as Hofheinz studio format in the production facilities niander-in-chiefly-enough set for Bush's pletely foreign to the city today. The embroidered it may also have owed of its ABC network affiliate, KIRK, renomination meant taking possession of temporary hall remained in use until 1936. something to Salvador Dali's hallucinatory designed by Lloyd, Morgan, and Jones in its inner reaches for nearly a month, and when it was razed to make way for the vision of the pleasure potential of New 1961 just before their engagement with sending the city's chronically struggling Coliseum, a model of wTA sobriety York encapsulated in a round pyramid: Wilson, Morris, Crain & Anderson as National League baseball club on a much- designed by Finn that was to serve as indeed, the manic choreography of joint-venture architects of the Astrodome.) extended road trip - a decampment Houston's principal arena until the baseball, football, rodeos, circuses, and viewed bv some conspiracists as a t h i n k , ompletion ol the Astrodome in l % 5 , demolition derbies - part Barnum, part Patricia Leigh Brown, previewing designs veiled political favor. The Republican with decades, not days, to spare before the Radio I ity thai ensued under his for this summer's conventions in the New National i ommittee engaged Ruben city entertained its next national political stewardship proved not uncongenial to .in York limes, noted the primacy of televi- Keeue of Burhank. ( alilomia, an F.mmy convention. occasionally surreal cinematic climax, from sion in the calculations of both parties in winning specialist in set design for extra innings with The Rati News Bears contrast to Chicago in 1952, "when television, to oversee the transformation in (part two) to the in-flight entertainment of rom its inception, the Astro- television coverage first started [and] there collaboration with the Houston office of BrewsterMeCltntd, Robert Altaian's Icarus- dome, unlike Sam Houston was no official convention design, "only a CRSS. Keene claimed his efforts to fashion under-glass. Hall, was far more concerned messy vitality that, as Walter Cronkitc a set that was "stately, clean...and just a with its inner than its outer recalled for the benefil of her readers, was little bit lofty" were inspired in part by his being. It lies six miles south of downtown "'as inchoate as democracy itself, and... enthusiasm for the city's circa now F Since Hofheinz's departure for the |,, skylmc{s). Certainly the scale of these just inside the Loop 610 expressway, ultimate Celestial Suite, his earthbound looked that way.' The podium, he said, objects of affection would have been more surrounded by a sen ol parking lots and Elysium has become a noticeably cooler, looked like a street riot. 'People talked effective, had time and resources permit- Holiday Inns and their offspring. It is the less eccentric medium, more compatible their way up to the chair and the vice- ted, in stopping down the auditorium by outwardly expedient product of another with conventional standards of Republican chair, and the speaker was lost in a sea of half (just as Boullee had proposed to make consortium of architects in the service of decorum. To make way for additional people arguing even when he was speak- his project for a circular opera house in another legendary (and surpassingly seating, the Judge's prized 474-fooc- ing....' Mr. Cronkite recalled delegates sat Paris operable by splitting ii into audito- colorful) promoter and politician of long, four-story-high faux-pyrnreehnic on loose folding chairs,.,, [and] by the rium and backstage halves). An elaborate Democratic provenance, Judge Roy M. scoreboard, painted blue to double a,s time the convention was two hours old, computerized design simulation capability Hoflieinz. A onetime mayor of Houston centerfield sky, has been removed, as has chairs were strewn everywhere. The ("the same technology used in the and former judge (presiding executive) of his own sumptuous five-story suite of floor...was ankle-deep in newspapers and production of the animated film Beauty the Harris County Commissioners apartments overlooking right field. flyers. 'It was a pretty horrible picture,' he- and At Beast") permitted alternative Court. Hofheinz was also, as far as can be Rainbow-colored seats still ring the peri- said, speaking of the esthetics." Since then, schemes to be vetted on determined, the only one of bis confreres phery, but the corporately subdued even though the parties have seldom enjoyed video- to be photographed by Diane Arbus with a redecoration (>i all else within has. like the video monitors for the friendly candidates, midget on one knee and a chorine on the sack of the outfield, done much to obscure benefit of the they have other (to accompany an article in Sports the authentic genius of the place. Histori- client and the succeed- Illustrated tided "The Greatest Showman cally, the Astrodome has, by dint of esigners, on Earth and He's the First to Admit acoustical malaise and sheer size, proved a It")." The Harris County Domed less than optimal venue lor most kinds of Stadium, as it is still officially called, was conventions, so much so that two not the first of its class to be built, and it no inconsiderable annexes, the Astrohail and longer the "eighth wonder of the world,' as the Judge at first insisted, it remains to this day the city's most conspicuous contribution to the repertoire of mid-to- laic-20th-eentury urbanisui.

No one could have asked for a more solicitous host than the Judge, even posthumously constrained. His vision for Cite Fall 1992-Winter 1993 17

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The A s t r o d o m e w i t h short-wave d b a n n e r s , A u g u s t 1 9 9 2 .

as well as to be auditioned, not once but several times, on the Houston public 16 television station. #;&&- The initial design, consisting of three &*& -. colossal television screens floating .imp ,i red, while, and blue banner, struck con- vention manager Bill Harris as "too much like the Third Reich." r But the final product, a mock-sandstone affair featuring two large screens assembled tlhuck (.lose fashion from a matrix of smaller monitors and surrounded by a selvage of "star- lights," could be variously perceived as indebted to the homegrown modernism of the Texas State Fair of 1936 or, as Alison Cook ventured in the Houston Press, to the Party arrangement. Illustration by John Papasian. Magna-box aglow on Family Values Night, 19 August 1992. Berlin Olympics of I he same year, flexed through the cinematic lens of L.cni unabashed enterprise /.one where the like the twcnrysomething-year-old marvel I I 1 ex Maulc, "The Greatest Showman on t'.arth and 1 Riefenstahl." Keene's Magnavox moderne heartbeat of America, or a fringe thereof, that sheltered the proceedings, was no He's the first in Admit It," Spam Illustrated. 21 April synthesis likewise impressed Elizabeth was palpable in what Alison Cook longer an object of topographic curiosity, 1969, pp. 35-49. Drew in the New Yorker as "Teutonic" in 12 I'etei C . I'.ip.iJemetriou and Peter G. Rovvc, "The described as a "hymn to the universality of and those reporters who did venture Pope and the Judge,'' Architectural Design, July 1970, feeling, but Norman Mailer, having him- bad taste," informed by a not-for-prime- outside the Dome were content to pp, s i " M 9 . self sparred inconclusively with Vincent timc "raunchy streak underlying the glitter supplement their accounts with evidence 13 B r u c e C Webb. " D i a m o n d in the Round." CiteTi Scully on the subject of totalitarian and set] i i ins and elephant kitsch."" I he of the city's social, economic, and environ- (Spring 199(1). p. 8. architecture several decades before in the great concentric circles of the parking lot mental discomforts. So prevalent was this I i P.uriaa I cigh Brown. "Design Notet It On pages of Architectural forum, was more Podiunts, Star-Spangled Symbolism," New York that surrounded the Astrodome remained practice that a spokesman for the chamber Tones. 2 July 1992, pp. C I , C 8 . guarded in his report to the New Republic, mostly empty for security purposes, and of commerce proposed a contextual I S [bid., p. C8. Kccisc's impression of the Houston while hinting at a subliminal game-show the conventioneers, whose hotel rooms evasion of what, any other week, might skyline .is "the most designed...in America" is ambience.'" were strewn in inconsequential allotments have passed tot unparalleled sophistry. If reported in Madeline M c D e n n o t i 11.mini, "Red. over a metropolitan area the si/.e of Rhode only one were to take "a strictly marketing White and O o h : Decorations W i l l Put Dome in Pony Spirit," Houston Chronicle, I I Mav 1992, i n .itiiIn>rs ul Learning From I Ms Island, were bused, in most un-Houston view of the media presence during the pp. I D , 2 D . Vegas have suggested that "the fashion, to the Dome and back each day convention," he counseled, "...the stories, 16 Catherine l hriss, "< otiipuicr Sees the Convention in occasional tour de force of an from the Rice University stadium parking even the negative ones, carried a Houston 3D." Houston Chronicle. 8 May 1992. p. 34A. 17 Jay Root, "(SompUKf 1 ets I SOP Planners See Variety Astrodome...merely prove! s] lot. Under the best of circumstances, dateline which...raised the awareness of Houston can seem visually challenging to the city in most Americans' minds. 'It's o f Staging Options," Houston Post, 8 May 1902, thaTt big, high spaces do not automatically pp. A l , A20. Dushan Stankovich served as project make architectural monunientality."'" For the uninitiated. But of the journalists in like having McDonald's on your sleeve or designer and C. 1 eland I omenot as project manager most spectators within the vast hall, the attendance, only Mailer attempted to Nike on your lapel Flouston has put its for CRSS. I 8 Alison Cook. "Ladies' Night W i t h the G O P , " experience was more out of place than in; colorize the context, beginning his dis- name out.'"" If only so long as the Houston Press. 2" August 1992, p. 10. the hall itself seemed to fade away, leaving patch with a metaphorical exposition of Republicans' preelection pageant kept the host city's transition from "agreeable 19 f.liyahcth Drew, "letter from Washington.'' New one to watch the proceedings on a giant, spinning through the air from the Judge's Yorker, 7 September |9*)2, p. 89; Norman M.ulei faraway television screen, along with tens I i-\,is town" id "tncg.u in ... noi yel built.., all-weather wheel of fortune. • .111,1 Vincem Vnllv Mallei \, Sadly." Aithitccinral of thousands of others. Instead of masking except in parts,... never crowded except on Forum. April 1964. pp. 9 6 - 9 7 ; Norman Mailer, the unneeded half of the Astrodome, the superhighways." From Mailer's wind- OSCH I l.inJlin, Al Smith ami His America (Boston: "By I leaven Inspired." New Republic, 12 October shield, the city loomed as a late-20th- , 1 ink-, Brown and Company, l9S8),p. I2f>. 1992. pp. 2 2 - 3 5 . fiscally responsible magnificence of Kcene 20 Robert Ventori, Dellise Scott Brown, ;nid Steven century incarnation of the car lots' ghost Frank friedc-l. Franklin IX Roosevelt: Tin Ordeal and company's set appeared like only so bsenour. Learning From Lis Vegas (Cambridge: M I T trapped inside I [timer Thompson: "One 3 i Boston: l i t t l e , Brown and Company, 1954), p. 243. much cabinetry - a biopticon breakfrom Ibid., p. 243. Press. 1972), p. 46. adrift in the middle of a room that, as the could now think of it as a gargantuan Ibid., p. 242. 21 M c M u r t r y agrees with Wright: "The first promising Judge was fond of pointing out, could humanoid in a special effects movie (after Ibid., p. 143. iiiimir I heard about the Harris County D o m ed Stadium was thai it was going to he large enough ih.it easily accommodate the emerald-capped the humanoid has been dismembered by a Irwis I I . Gannett, "The Big Show al Houston." The Nation. 11 July 1926, p. 34. the Shamrock I lotel could be put inside it. Great. 18 stories of the once neighboring magnum ray-gun wielded by Arnold s f riedel, Roosevelt, p. 243. I thought assuming naturally that the powers that Schwarzenegger)...sprawl[mg] over the Shamrock 1 loiel (scorned as an architec- 'Dem Hall W i l l Be 'StirpriscVI'lanncd Magnificence he would take advantage ol such -ul opportunity. tural jukebox by Frank Lloyd Wright, but nappy carpet of Texas soil in shreds, ( .lusts I jsi in Marvel: Mayor F.n Route to N'York," At last a real solution to the Shamrock problem aptly cast as James Deans oil-slicked real bones, nerves and holes, a charred skeleton l} Houston Pms, 18 January 1928. seemed al hand, forty-live million dollars is .i with an eve retained here, and there a An informative account ol the l u l l and i he respectable sum, but who would cavil il it got that estate bubble in the movie (iianl)," No hotel out ol sight?' "Love, Death, and liie Asm. prosthetic hand still smoking.""' convention based primarily on newspaper clippings matter, the inability of the Republicans is provided by Doris Closer and Nancy I iadly. "The dome," Texas Observer, I October 1965, p. I. plywood console to slice through the big Democratic Nation.il Convention of 1928." Houston 22 Cook, "Ladies' Night," p. 8. sky of the Dome was a detail that could be 23 Mailer, "By Heaven," p. 22. Special effects aside, the makeup of the Review, vol 13, no. 3, pp. 148-59, telegemeallv deleted from signals beamed 'Building I Illusion's Cre.it Convention I iall." 24 Revner Banham. " C o l l e d S2.000.U00." New Society. city Revner Banham had acknowledged, I d lime 1978, p. 605, into living rooms across the country. Ettginttrhtg News-Recorti, 24 May 1928, pp. 8 I S-1 ~ not without trepidation, to "have gone Tlu riKil was designed by W. Klingenbcrg. chief 2"> Bennett Roth, "National Media Use Houston As even further than Los Angeles into the engineer. lamella Roof Syndicate. Ness York, and [•sample ol Ills Afflicting Cities," Houston Chronicle, 23 August 1992, pp. 1A. 26A. Perhaps the freest, most entertaining post-urban future,""' was perhaps more (icnlge I Kcuy, I bio engineer, 1 .imell.i I russless Root Company, Houston lis construction was familiar to most Americans (and most spectacle of the convention was the flea supervised In Robert I. C u m m i n s, consulting market set up in the Astroarena - an reporters) than Mailer supposed. Houston, engineer, Houston.