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BY BRUCK W K B B

Collage by Polly Ledum and Ffoi i Hrulka

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1 9 10 1 9 2 0 1913 - Symphony organized 19Z5-KTHT, first radio station 1914 • Hermann Park given to city 1926 - First airmail service to Houston 1914 • Opening ol Ship Channel 1928 • National Democratic Convention 1915 -Last No Tsu Oh festival 1929 - Zoning Commission report voted down 1917 • Camp Logan race not

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191V Union Station (now part of Enron Field) 1925 - Hermann Hospital, lirst building in Medical Center 1911 - Southern Pacific Building |now Bayou Lofts) 1926 - (now Julia Ideson Building) 1913 - Rice Hotel 1927 - Niels Esperson Building 1914 - Arthur Comey park plan for Houston published 1928 - Bayou Bend, River Oaks 1915 - Texaco Building 1929-Gulf Building •IB •Ff? • • HI •

1913 - 16th Amendment establishes income tax 1920 - 19th Amendment gives women (he vote 1915 Panama Canal opens 1920 - America's first commercial radio station goes on the air 1915 - Alexander Graham Bell places first transcontinental phone call 1927 - Lindbergh flies across the Atlantic 1917-U.S. enters World War I 1929 - Stock market crash begins Great Depression W i n I 17 1 T I :•'-•

very city as it g r o w s creates its o w n lacing I ioustoti as it enters the new m i l - part of the genius loci. The eight that lol and s w a m p y w o o d s " on the Ciiilt Coast, imths, or. tailing that, .it least a col- lennium laced w i t h the task ol what to low .ire by no means a complete list ol a h o t , steamy region of e x p a n d i n g an E lection of interpretive m e t a p h o r s , call its new N a t i o n a l l-'ootball League the labels that have been slapped on the contracting, clay-botto m land that adjectives, or second names to describe franchise n o w that the old name has been city, but they do show h o w different peo- shares the .Wth parallel w i t h the Sahara itseli In ilsell and to the w o r l d . I [ousron carried off w i t h the team and buried ple at different times have labeled Desert anil is somewhat south of Algiers has plent] "t m y t h s ; some oi t h e m , such somewhere in Tennessee. It's not a small I louston as a w a y ol giving it an identity and Baghdad. as the story ol Judge K o y I l o f h e m / \ matter. Does the team (and hence the that they c o u l d possess. The natural site was never sufficiently building ol the A s t r o d o m e , aspire to the city) w a n t to be identified .is a w o r k i n g romanticized to exclude remaking it into level of c o u n t r y and western allegory in man's t o w n (Steelers, Packers, Oilers, BAYOU C I T Y something more temperate and more personifying the city's entrepreneuria l Cowboys)? An a n i m a l (Lions, Bears, accommodating. To that end, the city spirit. Hut it is the names that have Rams)? A bird (Eagles, Falcons, Ravens)? Like M a g n o l i a City, one of the city's ear- embraced technology, guided by an ethos become attached to the city, w i t h their By its history (Horty-nincrs. Patriots)? Or liest nicknames. Bayou City is a link to thai said no problem loomed so large higher abstraction a n d e c o n o m y of c o n - its machismo (Pirates, Buccaneers, Southern culture in tune w i t h Louisiana, that it couldn't be altered. Displacement cept, that are of greater interest. Gladiators, Titans)? our neighbor to the east. It's an associa- was the n o r m . T h e natural city was swal- Second names, nick names, are often "The pell-mell of nicknames that tion that modern H o u s t o n has attempted lowed by the industrial city. The industri- pure poetry, d i v i n g a second name, a accrues to a city in the course of time is a to d u m p in favor of a more cosmopolitan al city by the post-industrial city. Little label, to something is a way ol shaping its forceful reminder of metropolita n c o m - and progressive sense ol itself, although residential neighborhoods were swal- contents and g i v i n g it an essence. In Italo plexity," cultural geographer Yi-Fu Tuan the name Bayou City remains attached to lowed by big apartment complexes and Caivino'a Invisible Cities metaphorical writes. " I n any large urban center, m u l t i - more than I S'll I louston businesses, and sprawling subdivisions; little d o w n t o w n names — " I s a u r a , city of a thousand farious interests exist and each w i l l push still shows up regularly in the city's news- buildings were hidden by glass towers. wells," ' i . e o n i a , the city that refreshes tin a label that suits it purpose." To put papers as the only identifier editors can The street system was overshadowed by itseli every day," " O c t a v i a , spider web its o w n official spin on the issue, the city think ol that w i l l be easily recognized by high-powered freeways, the outdoors by city" — become surrogates tor geographi- often has its o w n public relations w o n k s the reader. the air-conditioned indoors. H o u s t o n out- cal places, describing cities of pure c o n - come up w i t h slogans tins hope w i l l Houston's n a t u r al site and its grew its roots, emerging in the 20th cen- cept situated in the imagination . stick. Siime of t h e m , such as t w o recent formation recall the surrealist M a r c e l tury as a city Flavored by Texas but not Second names are like the names in a ones for H o u s t o n — " H o u s t o n ' s H o t " Duchamp's d e f i n i t i o n of collage. " W h a t exactly contiguous w i t h it. T h a t may be novel. They are never neutral . " T h e y from the l^SOs and the current is the mechanism of collage?" D u c h a m p why I rarely hear anyone in I louston always signify," novelist D a v i d Lodge "Houston, Expect the Unexpected " — asked. "I t h i n k it a m o u n t s to the chance employ the Bayou I itv sobnouct m o r d i - writes. " T h e n a m i n g of characters is drip w i t h heavy irony. Both are state- meeting on a non-suitable plane, of t w o nary conversation. always .m i m p o r t a n t part of creating ments ol uninspiring fact presented as mutually distant realities." T h e non-suit- I louston is crisscrossed by an i n t r i - them, i n v o l v i n g many considerations and virtues. Both are true, il not authentic. able plane in this case was described by cate t i e t w o r k of sleepy capillaries, but hesitations." T h a t is the k i n d ol problem But other nicknames stand out as a the Allen brothers as a picture o f " j u n g l c anyone w h o has gone l o o k i n g for them fouls out that they are not very much a part ol the city's consciousness. N o t quite rivers, the bayous have been more a problem than an amenity, necessitating hundreds ol perfunctory little bridges to accommodate the expanding n e t w o r k of city streets and highways. They have been Name Game robbed of whatever romantic connota- WHAT'S IN A NAME? FOR HOUSTON, A CHANCE TO EXPLAIN ITSELF TO ITSELF.

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1930 1 9 4 0 l'H'1 III iviiisily nl Mansion founded 1947- 1935 - Houston College lot Negroes, latei Texas Southern Univeisity. founded 1947 -Texas City disaster 1938 - Jesse Jones founds Houston Endowment 1917-KLEE, lirst TV stalitm 1939 - Last street car goes oul of service 1949-Gull Freeway opens

1930 • Merchants & Manufacturers Building (now UH. Downtown) 1935 - River Oaks Shopping Center 1940 - Houston Municipal Airport (Hobby) 1937 • San Jacinto Monument construction begins 1941 - Downtown VMCA 1939 - Sears-Roebuck on Main 1947 - Baylor College ol Medicine 1939- Houston City Hall 1949 - Shamrock Hotel (demolished) 1949 - Foley's Departmenl Store

1933-FDR's New Deal begins 1941 - Ameiica enteis Woild War II 1933 - "Century of Progress" World's Fair in 1944 - G I Bill ol Rights promotes housing boom, suburbs 1937 - Hindenberg explodes al Lakehurst. New Jersey 1945 • Alomic bomb dropped on Japan 1939 - Regularly scheduled commercial TV broadcasts begin 1946 • ENIAC. brsl electronic computet, developed IS foil i M 1 1 1

tions tlicy may have once harbored h\ ilk- is a ile facto, if undesignated, historic space is the background, infill condition that range 111 sv.ile from well protected Army Corps oi Engineers, which lined and nature preserve that attracts the ol the non-place realm. I louston is nor backyard gardens ut 1 den to whole con- them with concrete and made them into a imagination of artists and architecture exactly a garden city; gardens appear as trolled subdivisions and commercial dis- backyard plumbing system. They are also students, who admire il as a grilty figures against an unattended emptiness. tricts. I hey include the authentic charm evidence to the city's abhorrence ol natur- nether land thai stands m contrast to There is enough of that emptiness to cre- of many older neighborhoods unified and al water, a breeding ground tor mosuui- the city's newer development, ate a second city in the interstices without held together over time, themed subdivi- roes, and ,1 reminder of just how low- having to advance another tool into the sions created de novo, and unabashedly lying much ol Houston is. especially dm SPACE CITY prairie. Space as it is understood by Disneyesque backgrounds such as those ing a serious rain storm, when the bayous NASA is a void unmarked by sign posts, found at Uptown Park on the West Loop prove to be inefficient ways of dealing Space City was the name given in unfathomable distances ot vacuum near Post Oak. I he collection of settings with run-ofl and the whole urban enter- Houston during its ride out of its wild between one cosmic destination and is like the back lot of a movie studio. You prise seems fragile and precarious. west past following the coming of the another. Space that must be navigated by go to one place ami it's a little world with 1 lowever, 1 touston's bayous did \ \s \ Manned Space i < nrer to i leat technical coordination. And it is precise!) its own population held together by a inspire writer Mas Apple to "imagine Lake. And for a brief time in the |s*h()s that kind of space, in miniature, that measure ol internal consistencies, lint it is what Houston might be like if we turned nothing captured the imagination like exists in much ol I louston. Navigating is always threatening to come apart by the bayous into canals, and we became venturing to the moon and beyond. The vectoring through space: "Just two exits invasion, or by a nibbling away at the the Venice ot lc\as, moving about to the Space City connection begat the Aslrus, past the Wcsiheimcr interchange on the edges, or from lifting your ga/e and look- slow rhythm of water instead of the slow- the Astrodome (whose site, especially West Loop. Ten minutes if you don't get ing out to whatever is beside it. Internal er than water-torture traffic." Hut with when viewed from the air, looks more into traffic." Space in that sense is a cohesion (abetted by deed restrictions the exception ol occasional special events like a colony in the inhospitable environ- region of mystery: a place where you and, more recently. I l l si helps to hold don't want to get lost, where you don't — the rubber ducky races, for example ment of the moon than an earth-bound things in a semblance of order and gives want to run out ol gas. political sanction to the bits and pieces. A — the bayous have remained uncelebrat- building complex I, and the costuming of planned city is like an allegory, but a city ed. Modem buildings have not opined the grounds crew in f lalloween space of settings, a patchwork city, is a place themselves to the bayous as sites, and suits to replace the western-themed ( o h PATCHWORK C I T Y for the novelist. The jigsaw puzzle theme insurance maps help to keep it that way. 45s. It also created the city as mixed permeates down to the smaller scale, The network ol linear parks overlaid on metaphor with the conjunction of cow- University ol Houston architecture pro- where blocks are subdivided into little the bayou ways, envisioned in a 1420s boys and astronauts, frontier heroes of fessor Hurdette Kecland coined the term licldoiiis of residential prototypes that city plan, has been implemented only in different eras, as described by critic- Patchwork (Juili City as an affectionate never get longer than a tew lots before pieces, primarily as hike and bike trails Peter Papademetriou. \\.i\ to describe Houston's fragmented they are interrupted by someone else's that reach a kind of crescendo at I In- implication in the name Space and often incongruous laud use patterns, speculative three-block budget. Sesquicentennial Park, where the flank of City was that I louston was on its way to a crazy mosaic of enclaves, strips, coi- the Worlh.im Theater Center metis up becoming a high-tech town modeled on ners, and mini-districts that represent the with the drab edge of buffalo bayou. NASA, hut while technology has been a city's culture of heterogeneity. C I T Y Hut the bayous do uituse Houston definer ol I touston's modern condition, Programming the city has been left to with lines ot greenery, untamed lor the the city doesn't celebrate the fact, today, chance — or economic opportunity. As following a visit m ilu- 1970s, British most pan and much of the best of it vis- il is hard to find examples of I louston George Trow observed a few years ago in critic Keener lianhain described Houston ible only from a canoe. And they harbor architecture that approach the marvels of the \nr YfH-kcr, "People live all over the as a lull-scale Monopoly game, a training ,m impressive collection of mostly aban- the raw technical constructions on view place in Houston. It's the only American ground lor right wing entrepreneurs. To doned industrial sites and buildings from at local refineries, not to mention the city without /oiling, and almost anything Banham, the condo with a mansardic ,in earlier era that mutely remind us of space-age wonders being engineered close- can happen anywhere." roof (or some other stylistic embellish* the important role they once played in by at NASA. Houston is certainly something less mentsl was the prune game piece "on a the city's life. As testament to the low But if Houston failed DO become the than the sum of its parts. Kver since 11.R. clear site, or backed up against a giant regard with which bayou land is viewed, Space City of science-fiction rales, it is ( ullen went toe to toe with Jesse Jones refinery or the 50-foot wall of greenery these places .ire fro/en 111 time, ollermg nonetheless a Space ( n> of sons. Space is over /.oning, I loustonians have consis- that marks the edge of what remains of a considerable record of how things an elasti( word — outer space, inner tently resisted land-use controls, and the the big Thicket or even buried in re- once were. The section north of down- space, urban space, architectural space, city still lacks comprehensive planning, planted sections ol the big Thicket," town along buffalo bayou in particular personal space, emplv space. In Houston, Wh.it h,is bun put ii)' instead art settings n.mham even uncovered a localized

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1953 - KUHT/Channel 8 goes on ait as nation's first public broadcasting station 1960 - Integration of Housion's schools begins 1954 • Melinpnhtnn population reaches one million 1961 • NASA moves manned space cenlei to Houston 1954 - Preservation movement siarts with founding of Hams County Heritage Society 1961 - Coll 45s, Houston's hrsi professional baseball franchise 1954 • Gerald Hines develops first buildings on Richmond Avenue 1967 • Cotps of Engineers drops plan 10 channelize Buffalo Bayou

1950 Rice Stadium 1964 - Houston Intercontinental Airport begun 1956 - Gullgale Shopping Center, first mall 1964 - Galleria 1958 - University of St. Thomas Masler Plan 1965 - Astrodome 1958 - fail I111.111 Hall, Museum of Fine Arts 1966 -Jones Hall 1959 - Sakowitz. Posl Oak (demolished) 1969 - Alley Theater

1950 - America enters Korean War 1963 - President John F Kennedy assassinated 1954 - Brown v Board ol Education outlaws segregation 1964 - LBJ declares Wat on Poverty. Great Society programs begin 1956 • Interstate Highway Act funds interstate system 1964 - Tonkin Gulf Resolution, slatt ol Vietnam War buildup 1959 • Alaska Statehood. Texas no longer largest state 1969-First man on the moon tH l (l l) (I I W i n l e i 19 r r

version of the venerable hoard name bile, a d e d i c a t i o n thai is as m u c h an mg network of freeways were Turner's architecture: " C i t y of glass, a place of called H o u s t o n Scene (manufactured lor expression of I louston's c u l t u re of own parents, w h o had a home near 1-45 material dreams/Bestowed in plain sight a time hy ( i r o o v y d a m e s . Inc.), which personal freedom and identity as any- south ot H o u s t o n . | As it spread its spider- and transparently denied." upped the ante and the profits bat thing else. web linkages of concentric and radial Houston owes its prosperity to the retained the same objective: to accumu- I louston's m a d system has marked lines o u t w a r d f r o m ihe city, the freewa) conjunction of t w o liquid conditions, the late wealth. the landscape in p o w e r f u l ways, provid- allowed the city to metastasize in an even Ship Channel and the liquid gold disco\ The name of H o u s t o n began as a ing a determined economic and social density urban s p r a w l . ered nearby at Spindletop. They come business deal w i t h the Allen brothers, the partitioning of the city and spawning Indeed, much of the urban experience together in a l i q u i d atmosphere, a ihick New York sharpies w h o successfull> pro- aggressive commercial development along in I louston occurs in a maladroit space snnp congealing out of the superheated moted the "jungle and swampy sweel air that causes shapes to lose their starch. gum woods that a g o o d p o r t i on of the 1 loiisiomans may he indifferent to city is built u p o n " as the great, interior water, bin (he city thrives on liquidity. It's commercial e m p o r i u m ol Texas, father as the descriptor of convertible capital that a game or a city, m o d e r n I louston is w ide fuels speculative investments and the con open and impenetrable ai the same time, Houston is a city built around version of old land into new develop "Property wheels and deals there w i t h incurs. L i q u i d City describes the changing less restrictions than anywhere else in the rapid change, obsolescence, stare ol ihings: some degree of heat cans Anglo-Saxon w o r l d , " Banham w r o t e , and es H o u s t o n to lose its solid state, its per- as a result, " L o s Angeles in the manence, giving w a y to a m o l t e n , amor- Chinatown epoch seems like a socialist indeterminacy, and a culture of style phous c o n d i t i o n . 1 louston always seems economy by comparison. " to be melting; liquidity is its atmosphere, In M o n o p o l y the game eventually both literally and figuratively. Liquid t i n comes to an end; the hoard is developed, and instant gratification. marks a period of development some someone has all or most of the money, where between the classically abstract and everything is swept up MK\ put away. structure of the m o d e m city and the n o n - But in H o u s t o n there are infinite numbers place realm of the communicatio n city of ol additional phases, and the game its flanks. It is A u t o r a m a f r o m the 1919 between t w o points of view — one, the bytes. Liven the N e t may be only a physi- becomes ever more c o m p l e x , suggesting a World's fair, but w i t h a heavy layer of view f r o m the road l o o k i n g o u t w a r d ; the cal metaphor for the universal f l o w of need for an authenticating sequel, the glitz and neon missing f r o m that N o r m a n other, the view f r o m the fringe l o o k i n g at liquid informatio n in w h i c h money, prop- I'osi M o n o p o l y d a m e , in which the Bel deddes vision of the city of the the road. It's a space mediated by little erty, c o m m u n i t y , organization , and identi- objective w o u l d be to tidy up the b o a r d future. In their sheer vastness, Houston's buildings w i t h big signs. A n d the free- ty are as virtual as they are real. and make it behave like a city. roads have become, like Reyner Banham's ways are its amusement park rides. O u t description ot the Los Angeles freeways, o n the highway, it's d o d burgers, sex EPHEMERAL C I T Y MOBILITY C I T Y "a single comprehensible place, a cohei burgers, hamburgers, as David Green, the cut state of m i n d , a complete way ol lite, poet of the Kuglish design g r o u p I louston is a city built around character New York Times architecture c r i t i c A da a fourth ecology." Archigram, put ir. You just ride along istic features of modern lile: rapid I ouise I I n s t a b l e was not the firsl !<• he Houston was a benefactor of the free- and need. A n d the search goes on for a change, built-in obsolescence, indetermi- a bit awestruck by the degree to w h i c h waj building mania that overtook the building that looks perfect ai any speed. nacy, media orientation, a culture of style the a u t o m o b i l e had invaded the country d u r i n g the Eisenhower adminis- and instant gratification. It is an urban Houston experience w h e n she penned a tration. Francis Turner, chief administra LIQUID CITY scale example of artist d y o r g y Kepes' paean to the city's kinetics in an article live planner ol the interstate h i g h w a y sys- description ot the runaway pace of o u r titled " D e e p in the H e a r t of N o w h e r e , " tem and a produci of Texas A t f c M , was a The title of a fine poem by Lorenzo times, which In- described in a maelstrom describing H o u s t o n as " f r e e w a y city, freeway advocate of the first order whose Thomas in a tittle book of writings by of dynamic images. Lor Kepes and his strip city, m o b i l i t y c i t y . " M o b i l i t y City lines-ol-desire maps became the w o r k Houston writers on H o u s t o n by the same collaborators in the book The Art and does m u c h to capture the H o u s t o n spir- orders for paving contractors' forays into name, the term I iquid City was inspired Science of Motion, the problem of m o t i o n it, t h o u g h it doesn't entirely e x p l a i n the country and city. ( A m o n g the people In the shimmering glass ("< rlass is a shift- had t h o r o u g h ly invaded modern experi- city's d e d i c a t i o n to the p r i v a te a u t o m o - whose lives were disrupted by the spread- ing liquid in disguise") in Houston's new ence, posing a f o r m i d a b l e challenge to

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1 9 7 0 1 9 8 0 1980 - Movie Urban Cowboy released, helps define Houston nationally 1970 • Elvis plays the Asirodome 1981 - Orange Show opens 1972 - Fifth Circuit Court rules magnet schools an allowable alternative to forced busing 1982 - Slump in Ihe oil industry slops the boom, starts Ihe bust 1978 - Voters approve creation of Metmpnlilan Tiansit Authority 1987-First Art Car parade

1971 - Rothko Chapel 1971 - 1981 - Texas Commerce Bank 1972 - Contemporary Arts Museum 1983 - Transco Tower (now Williams Tower) 1975 - Best Products Company Showroom (demolished) 1987 - The Menil Collection (Piano) 1976 • 1987 - George H. Brown Convention Center

1973 • Lasl American ground troops leave Vietnam 1980 - Reagan elected, Reaganomics and downsizing follow 1973 • Roe v Wade legalizes abortion 1980 - CNN begins broadcasting 1974 • Nixon impeached, resigns presidency 1986 - Space shuttle Challenger explodes 1977 - Apple inttoduces first personal computer 1989 Berlin Walt comes down 20 fall I >> >> >j I T I-

concepts of order that belonged to an refer him to both a map and a calendar, add certain peculiar elements of geogra- grows ever more elusive. Like all modern earlier, slower scale of existence. and tell him that he missed a great one phy, climate, and history, and you have cities, ils unique qualities are being ills I Eouston's stability is literally attacked last week on the lawn of the design ecu city as conundrum, chameleon. 1 lard to mantled, razed, and marginalized, then by time and motion; it is a city formed in ler, but that if he hurries lie may still be pin down. I lard even to perceive." replaced by universal forms belonging to a series ol conjunctive episodes that hold able to catch something going on in the Every city likes to think of itself as a the heterotopia. As Italo Calvino writes, theit relationships tur relatively brief peri- parking lot ol (in If gate Mall. The festival nu stei v. ,i kind of lain i mth that can "Cities begin to resemble one another in ods, buildings come and go. businesses is a metaphor lor the spirit of Houston, a only be understood existcntially, by liv- a labyrinth of reflections." But until all come and go. Displacements of tradition- city halo Calvino might well have written ing there and getting a feel for it, find- the forms are used up, the age of the city al patterns ot stability and urban rituals about in Invisible Cities: a place that ing your own beats, your own circuits. will continue, The nickname ot Elusive have become the norm. lime has become < in may he an evasion, a tactic to keep a prime variable in determining the I louston in reserve and open to new genius loci. interpretations. Elusive ( m makes a It was in recognition of this truth case for not knowing as a part of the that, in a 199X essay for the Southwest As it enters the 21st century, Houston urban adventure. Review, I characterized I [ouston as the In a modern city there may no longer I uy ol Slmrt lived Phenomena. Today. I be anything like a sense of place as it has would shorten that to I louston as the grows ever more elusive. Its unique been understood in the past, but instead ephemeral City. Houston's public life has only place metaphors that drift across tin- come to resemble the "instant city" con- qualities are being dismantled, razed, city, giving ir names. As Japanese archi- cept that, m the 1960s, Arehigrani pro- tect Assushi Kitagawara put it, "The city posed as .1 wa\ to bring mloi and event is not streets, buildings, crowds, and free- fulness to England's new towns. In and marginalized. ways. It's just that metaphorical condi- I louston, the Ephemeral City appears in tion we call the city." Hut in I louston, the form of parades, art fairs, craft festi- behind the corporate city reaching lor vals, food fairs, international bazaars, seamlessness, there are still lazy bayous and trade shows, not to nu ntion outdoor never repeats itself and is never seen to be your own city. A city has moods, tem- harboring mysteries as they move in a performances of every description. The quite the same. pos, that make it change with amazing different time frame. There is still the liq- architecture is the architecture ol the tem- regularity. Maybe it's the light, maybe uidity and transformative properties of porary: tents, banners, pavilions, inll.it.i ELUSIVE C I T Y the temperature. Perhaps it's the events the city as ir melts, flows, and congeals bles. Festivals are set up on marginal that shift across the city. Maybe it's into new lot uiations. There are still die sites, empty acreage, parking lots, and A trump card of a name. Elusive City was the way you string it all together in an distinct chunks of the patchwork quilt, nondescript grassy spaces between build- the title of writer Doug Milburn's cata- endless sequence. recalling the city eternal — places named and without name, that exist in the ings and the freeway. Liking a cue from logue essay for a 1999 exhibit of pho- With a voracious appetite for annex- cracks and grooves and margins. There is the success of these festivals, I proposed tographs by Cite photographer Paul ing whatever settlement appears on the still a city of profir, a monopoly city in my Southwest Review article that we Hester. In his essay, Milburn illustrated distant horizon, even if the intervening expressing the calculus ot speculation should stop thinking ol our public life in the difficulties of the name game: "From distances seem decidedly 1111-urhan, beyond civit control, there is still a city terms of permanent places. Instead, we my earliest days ot thinking and writing Houston leaves the 20th century at .m of mobility, always restless, always on the should set to work aiming the city into a about 1 louston, I have played a little astounding 620 square miles, large- move, siipstreatiling through space in continually evolving festival, catalyzing game. I ask people to describe the city in enough to absorb several of the nation's pursuit ot a million individual dreams what is .iliv.uK here, Live the local .HUMS one word, with one restriction: the word largest cities. As I louston grew u became and destinations. There is still a city half and architects and sometimes an invited cannot be hot, humid, or flat." Milburn's more and more of an urban anomaly, a empty, part garden, part wilderness, outsider the chance to remake I louston collected responses included "reticulat- puzzle, still struggling to find the differ- where a persistent background technolo- over and over again, to develop projects ed," "fetid," "boring," "festive," and ence between "building a great city or gy makes temperate biotopes in a lunar that reline and reinterpret the functional "demanding." His own conclusion: merely a great population," an admoni- landscape. There is a city where time city. Then when someone asks for the "I lusive. lake the urban complexities tion included in a 1929 report of the City makes a sense- ol place. • locations of our great civic monuments and contradictions, racial and economic, Planning Commission. and publu s p a n s , the torn guides can so Msible in every other American city. As it enters the 2 1 si century, I louston

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1992 - Republican National Convention 1995 - Houston Post folds, Houston becomes one newspaper lown 1997 - Lee Brown elected as Houston's first African-American mayor 1999 - Metro requests funding lor light rail 1999 - Houston passes Los Angeles as ozone capital ot U.S.

1992 - Children's Museum of Houston 1996 - Holocaust Museum 1998 - Rice Hotel reopened as Rice Lofts 2000 - Enron Field

1991-Gulf War 1991 - Soviet Union collapses 1993 - North American Free Trade Agreement 1994 - "Contract with America"; Republicans take control ot Congress