The Never-Built Ambitions of Houston Center
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Houston center today is an inauspicious and forgettable mix of retail and office. But in the 70s, there were much much bigger plans for it. In 1970, the Texas Eastern Company was planning for their project to take up 33 city blocks downtown, doubling the size of the city’s Central Business District. If you’re building anything in Texas, it needs to be accessible by car, to that end, Houston Center’s entire base was planned to be a 4 story parking garage with 40-50 thousand spaces. Up top, the entire facility was to be pedestrianized. The plans made the most of 70s futurist transportation fantasies, with people movers and moving sidewalks. There was to be glass enclosed retail, which sort of did get built. There was also to be 12 high rise office buildings and as many medium rise office buildings, plus 2 high rise hotels, 4 motels, and plenty of apartments. But sadly, in the 80s, Houston’s economy went south with oil prices and so most of it was cancelled, what we were left with wasn’t very impressive. submitted by /u/kernals12 |
