Myth-En-Scene: Proposals for the Monumentation of Allen's Landing
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Myth-en-Scem: Cite Winter 1985-1986 21 Proposals for the Monumentatkm of Allen's Landing Drexel Turner Allen's Landing was the first wharfage established by the city's founders, the Monuments that speak about place, archetypal speculators John K. and Augus- directly or thematically, as opposed to tus C Allen, who determined the site of those that occupy it to other ends, are the enterprise at the head of navigation touchstones of a special kind. In an urban on the south side of Buffalo Bayou where landscape that is often remote and non- it joined White Oak Bayou. l It was ftom descript, they provide an antidote oi this point that Main Street was extended explanation and connection. They vary south in the original plat of the city, from literal to wishful: from the laconic. which in its first published version (fig. 1) awesome metaphor of the St. Louis arch provided for a public square comprised of by Eero Saarinen commemorating the city the half-blocks to either side of Main as a gateway for westward expansion to Street. Commerce Square, as this reserve the annotated, contextually attentive was designated, was not in fact realized explication of the plan of Washington, for that purpose but instead was retained D.C., by Robert Venturi in the midst of as a wharfage. The other two squares indi- Pennsylvania Avenue; from Charles cated in the plat - Congress Square (now Moore's festive, freely transposed memory Market, as the Aliens failed in their effort 5 Washington Monument. Baltimore, Robert Mills. of Hadrian's Villa as a piazza for the Ital- to have Houston made the permanent architect: Enrico Causici. sculptor Design, ian immigrant community of New capital of Texas) and Courthouse Square - c. 1810; construction and statue, 1815-1629 178 Orleans to the synthetic nostalgia of Ber- were eventually occupied by public build- ft. high (Photo by Keystone View Company) tram Goodhue's Churrigueresque set- ings, anticipating the city's later pieces for Balboa Park in San Diego. Each reputation for expedient civic accommoda- strands of bluebonnets to heighten its fes- imparts a resonance that is immediately tion. Allen's Landing Park, as it is pres- tive aspect, The column might rise nearly apprehensible and evocative, In Houston, ently constituted, encompasses the east 3 Aerial view of Allen's Landing and downtown Houston looking south showing hypothetical 200 feet high and support a figure of Ste- Allen's l-anding Park, a nearly forgotten half of what was to have been Commerce phen F. Austin, the father of Texas, per- remnant of the city's past, affords a sim- Square and also a contiguous sliver of the arrangement of monuments (Photo by Harper Lieper. June 1985) haps a fiberglass cast of Elisabet Ney's ilar opportunity to recover and signify, if west half. It was acquired by the city in buckskin-clad likeness in the capitols at not invent, roots. 1964 through the efforts of John H. ture for the axis of Main Street on the Washington, D C , and Austin (fig. 6). At Crooker, Jr., who, as chairman of the south bank of Buffalo Bayou in Allen's night, the column might acquire a laser Chamber of Commerce Civic Affairs Aside from the names of a handful of Landing Park, providing an immediate plume to make Committee, prevailed upon the Southern srrc-erts downtown and the equestrian connection with the rest of Main Street the spot visible Pacific Railroad to make a donation of the statue of Sam Houston at the entrance to and downtown. The formal character of from a greater land.2 A modest program of site Hermann Park, Houston proper has little such a feature is suggested by the Roman distance. The improvements was subsequently under- in the way of civic appurtenances to com- practice of commemorating the founda- notion of a column taken with private contributions, resulting memorate its past or that of Texas. Per- tion - physically and ritually - of towns admits other in the park's principal feature, a land- haps this is a deliberate choice, for with "columns, erected at the central variations as well. scaped parking lot (fig. 2). Today, Allen's Houston seems perennially beset by anx- intersection of the principal cross streets The staged towers iety as to its identity, something that has | so that they | anchored the city at one and .of Erastus Salis- rarely troubled Fort Worth or San Anto- the same time in its history and place and bury Field's naif nio. Next year, the observance of the twin in the ahistorical realm of origins." ' Such capriccio, the sesquicentennials of Texas's independence an appropriation is not Incongruous with Historical Monu- and the founding of Houston will be either the tradition of the site or its sub- ment of the impressed on the face of the city by the sequent place at the center of the loop American Republic, beautification of a section of Buffalo Bayou freeway system. Moreover, it finds com- conceived for the alongside and across from the Wonham pany among other monuments in Ameri- centennial in 1876 Theater Center - an undertaking that is to can cities, especially the tower of the (fig. 7), might include, among its many parts, a "memory Philadelphia City Hall, in the center of provide an equally walk" and which will be called Sesquicen- Penn's four-square city, from which Alex- fruitful point of tennial Park. Commendable as this project ander Milne (aider's statue of the departure, perhaps is for the future of the bayou and the " 2 View Of Allen's Landing Irom north bank of founder surveys the prospect below and considered along- reception of an important civic building, it Buffalo Bayou (Photo by Paul Hester) similarly situated if thematically divergent seems only incidentally connected with its Landing Park adjoins the city's largest examples in Indianapolis and Galveston. Stephen F. Austin. Eltzabet Ney, 1894.6 ft. ostensible motive; neither does the ground surviving concentration of commercial high Statuary Hall. U.S. Capitol. Washington. D.C. it occupies offer any compelling historic buildings from the 1890s through the At Allen's Landing, such a marker might association. Meanwhile, Allen's Landing 1910s, which together with the site itself, assume the vertical form of a column on the south side of Buffalo Bayou at the were listed as a historic district in the devoted to the founding of Texas, reserv- foot of Main Street, traditionally regarded National Register of Historic Places in ing the commemoration of municipality as the most important site in the founding 198 J. for a related but subsidiary monument. of the city, continues to await any visible The particular models for such a column recognition of its role as a point of origin The most imposing aspect of the topog- might include that of Trajan in the or even the prominent station it occupies raphy of Allen's Landing Park is an Roman forum, an immense Doric column in the plan of the city The possibilities UT 11 inclined approach to the Main Street Via- with a spiral frieze of relief carvings for its eventual monumentation, though duct, a vehicular bridge completed in 1913. depicting Trajan's campaigns against the omitted from the scope of the sesquicen- The viaduct crosses Buffalo Bayou at an Dacians, which originally supported a tennial observances, nevertheless deserve angle which bends the axis of Main Street gilded statue of the Emperor (fig. 4), and consideration as part of a more compre- approximately 20 degrees to the west, hensive reclamation of the bayou front as splitting the site on the diagonal (fig. 3). Historical Monument ol me American Republic, a means of diversifying the city's growth Erastus Salisbury Field, c 1876 (Museum ol This deflection, similar to that of the of public art and places with civic art of Fine Arts, Springfield, Massachusetts, Morgan Michigan Avenue Bridge in Chicago, narrative and associational qualities. Wesson Memorial Collection) makes it possible ro locate a terminal fea- side a child's toy Plan ol Houston, Augustus C. and John K. Allen, 1836 Snel! and Theurel. publishers. New Orleans r (Houston Public Library) ziggurat composed of stages in the shape of five- THK (>RM;IXAI\%PLAN OF HOTSTOX A pointed stars (fig. 8). / Toy ziggurat of %j*> five-pointed stars (Photo by ••'•J J Paul Hester) i i' i' \ ~ i The commemoration of the city itself would make use of a Hellenistic invention, the figure of a tyche or protectoress (var- 4 Trajan's Column. 114. Rome. 130 It. high. iously Fortune or Luck) specific to a par- (The Architecture ol Ancient Rome, New York. Scnbner's. 1927) ticular city, Tyche of Antiocb from the ST third century B.C., considered the likely its many offspring, among them the progenitor of this phenomenon, was a column to Napoleon in the Place Ven- colossal figure of a woman with a castel- ISAlMZAl dome and the Washington Monument in lated headdress, who held in one hand a - Baltimore (fig. 5). In this case the column sheaf of corn, for which a palm branch might be made of lightweight aluminum sometimes was substituted in copies. This L m BII a Lu m with a frieze of brightly colored sil- convention of municipal personification, repeated elsewhere in the Roman empire, - 5 «*_ houettes depicting events in the founding and history of Texas, applied as stencils was adopted for the new Horel de Ville in \Jl with the bands of the frieze separated by Paris and the Alexanderplatz in Berlin in 22 Cite Winter 1985-1986 the late 19th century; by Daniel Chester might be placed atop a miniature locomo- 12 —Tr French for figures of Brooklyn and Man- tive, the most prominent element of the Seal of the City ot hattan to adorn the approach to the Man- city seal, devised to promote Houston as a Houston, 1839 c hattan Bridge (fig.