The city of Houston is a big hitter – be it for its people, its history, its art or its industry. Lindsay Sutton reports.
There’s an old joke in the US that you can always tell a Texan… but you can’t tell him much. The stereotypical image people have is of big guys in Stetsons and tall ladies with bouffant hair. And neither the male nor the female form is thought to be backward at coming forward – the Texan way is to tell it how it is. To some, this makes them bold and brash; to others, confident and sure. You know where you stand, and that’s usually good for business.
The powerhouse city of Houston – dubbed the energy capital of the US – is Texas to a T. It simply oozes confidence. It may be the country’s fourth-largest city, but its residents like to tell you it’s a city of firsts.
For example, did you know “Houston” was the first word spoken from the moon? Yes, at 4.18pm (EDT) on Monday July 20 in 1969, as the US space capsule made its historic lunar landing, astronaut Neil Armstrong told mission control back home in Texas: “Houston. Tranquility base here. The eagle has landed.” Never mind his somewhat more famous follow-up statement, “That’s one small step for man and one giant leap for mankind” – the one Houston likes to remember is the former.
More recently, the city was in the news because of Hurricane Ike. Weather experts predicted that the city – only an hour’s drive from the Gulf coast in the Deep South – faced widespread devastation last September as Ike approached. A mixture of good planning and good luck helped to avoid a re-run of the Hurricane Katrina story that caused so much misery and heartache along the coast in New Orleans in 2005.
It’s true that thousands were affected by a loss of energy supply, fresh water and services, but the city quickly got to grips with tackling the situation. That’s no surprise – Houston has been used to dealing with external challenges since it came into being. In 1836, General Sam Houston fought the Mexicans 25 miles away in the Battle of San Jacinto to earn Texas its status as an independent republic, before it agreed to join the rest of the United States. Little wonder that the city named itself after the great Texan hero.
Today, Houston is recognised worldwide for its energy industry, particularly oil and natural gas and the construction of oilfield equipment. This great petrochemical and engineering centre owes much to the city’s man-made ship canal, which allowed it to become a sea port linked directly to the Gulf of Mexico. The nearby Port of Houston ranks first in the US in terms of international waterborne commerce. Only 21 countries other than the United States have a gross domestic product bigger than Houston’s regional gross area product – this is big country all right.
Perhaps surprisingly, Houston is also a crucial player in alternative energy trends – a quarter of its total electricity is purchased from wind-energy sources. It certainly has the raw materials – think of the words to Glen Campbell’s song Galveston, about the coastal resort an hour’s drive from Houston: “Galveston, oh Galveston, I still hear your sea winds blowin’.” Texas is well placed in terms of wind power potential. Even so, it’s hard to think of Houston without thinking of oil – or as they call it, “black gold, Texas tea”. About 40 per cent of the United States’ refining capacity is sited in the greater Houston area. The high price of petrol is keeping the smiles on oilmen’s faces.
Just as much of the city’s traditional wealth comes from under the ground, many of its inhabitants choose to stay below surface level because of the climate. The city has no less than 11km of tunnels, and skywalks, linking downtown buildings. These enable citizens to avoid the intense summer temperatures, heavy rain showers and high, energy-sapping humidity.
There are underground car parks, shops and restaurants, and some commuters never step foot on terra firma when they come to work in the city centre. Not surprising, given that for about 100 days a year the temperature is above 32?C and summer mornings average more than 90 per cent humidity.
On the economic front, the traditional reliance on energy is changing. Healthcare and medicine is another major industry. The Houston-based Texas Medical Centre is renowned for its impressive concentration of 47 research and healthcare institutions. According to city information, this includes 13 hospitals, two medical schools and four nursing schools, alongside schools of dentistry, pharmacy and public health, with almost every health-related career opportunity available.
The city’s leaders are also pushing tourism, since there is plenty on offer. On the way to Galveston is NASA’s Johnson Space Centre, the mission control for all the United States’ rocket and satellite projects, set up in the 1960s by then president – and Texan – Lyndon B Johnson. People think back fondly of big-hearted LBJ in these parts – except when it comes to Vietnam, which, they say, “just ate him up”.
At the giant Space Centre you can watch controllers talking to astronauts on current space missions. It seems a long time ago that John F Kennedy said in 1961 that it was his wish to land a man on the moon and bring him back before the end of the decade. He did, of course, achieve that eight years later. It takes just over 91 minutes to orbit the earth, a speed that puts today’s globetrotting into perspective. As the guide says: “This is not a theme park. This is the real McCoy, the real deal.”
There’s no shortage of good hotels in downtown Houston. I was particularly impressed by the Hotel Icon (hotelicon.com), a five-star boutique establishment that used to be a bank. You can still go into the vault behind reception, which is quite a novel experience. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, legendary robbers Bonnie and Clyde considered hitting the bank but decided there were easier pickings down the road.
Dining is no problem either. There is a huge variety of eating establishments in this cosmopolitan hub, which has its fair share of illegal immigrants adding to the mix. Straight-talking Texans, descendents of immigrants themselves, call them “recently arrived future Americans”. With more than 90 languages spoken in the city, there is no shortage of international cuisine.
Houston has a big Far Eastern population, including the largest Vietnamese-American community in Texas, estimated at over 850,000. The city has two Chinatowns, a Little Saigon and a Little India community. If you want to push the boat out, try the Americas Restaurant (cordua.com) – that’s where the high-rollers hang out. The food is great and even the cappuccinos come Texas-style – big.
You can also eat at another of Houston’s intriguing attractions, the Downtown Aquarium (aquariumrestaurants.com), where seafood is the speciality. As you eat a lobster, you watch another one swimming by. Appropriately, the restaurant is sited in the city’s old Waterhouse and Fire Station. A train takes you along a tunnel through the aquarium, with 700 tons of water above you.
For those with a gambling instinct, there’s the Sam Houston Race Park, which hosts year-round live thoroughbred racing or simulcast racing (live/delayed broadcasts from tracks around the world). It also has a choice of turf or dirt tracks.
On the culture scene, Houston is one of only five US cities with its own permanent, professional, resident companies in all the major disciplines of music, opera, ballet and theatre. Big New York shows regularly transfer south to Houston. It’s long established that the wives of Texas tycoons have plenty of money and plenty of time for the arts.
It’s worth checking out the work of Texan sculptor David Adickes, responsible for the six metre-high alabaster presidential busts for the Presidents’ Park in the Black Hills of Dakota, near Mount Rushmore. He also made an 18-metre statue of state hero Stephen F Austin (the “Father of Texas”) on Highway 288, south of Angleton, and an even bigger one of “Big Sam” – General Houston himself – in Huntsville. As all can easily be seen from the comfort of your car, the locals joke: “It’s our very own Mount Rush Hour.”
If retail therapy is more your thing, visit the Galleria, the seventh-largest shopping centre in the US. Beneath its spectacular glass atria are more than 375 stores and restaurants.
To get away from the bustle, Houstonians love old Galveston, and not just for its ambience and fine Victorian architecture. Its sea breezes bring great relief in the hot summers, which is why so many people live there or go down at the weekends.
Hurricane Ike was a problem here but the city is a survivor. After the Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900, the sea walls were built up by another five metres and that has largely done the trick. Oil tycoon George Mitchell made it his mission to restore and revive Galveston during the 1970s, and the variety of characterful houses is something to behold. The old part of the city near the port also has great charm. It’s not so much a case of faded splendour, as comfortably broken in. The 32 miles of beach can easily accommodate the seven million people who visit each year. And for families, there’s no end of seaside fun, although it will take time for all the attractions to recover from the storm damage. Still, it’s a measure of Houstonians’ resilience and defiance that they have renamed Oktoberfest (their tribute to Munich’s famed beer festival of the same name) the Ike’s Over Fest.
It’s best to leave the last word to the locals: “Not quite the west, not quite the south. Texans first, US citizens second.” Houston, with all its upfront confidence, epitomises that sentiment.
Find out more at visithoustontexas.com
