1920
Federal prohibition of alcoholic beverages begins
Houston's population reached 138,276, a jump of 75.5 percent since 1910. The city's black population was 33,960
Bank deposits per capita stood at $617, when the national average was $392
Houston now had 27,000 telephone customers
The Port of Houston recorded 165 ship arrivals and a combined barge and ship freight total of 1,210,204 tons. The latter figure was still well below pre-war levels
The local Houston chapter of the Klu Klux Klan was formed
February
General John J. Pershing is in Houston
March
Humble Oil and Refining Company has received the largest building permit ever issued in Houston. It is for a $1,200,000 building at the corner of Main and Polk
October
The silver service donated by the people by the people of Houston to the steamship "City of Houston" was presented to Capt. George E. White of the steamer by Mayor A. E. Amerman
Congress appropriated the funds to deepen the channel to 30 feet
Building permits passed the $10,000,000 mark, inaugurating an eight-year construction boom that left a new skyline in Houston
January
Houston's first "traffic cops" were deployed to alleviate traffic congestion
April
Oscar F. Holcombe became mayor of Houston
J
une 20Hal Block left Houston on the first all-air trip to New York, which took nineteen hours and forty-five minutes
August 21
State legislature was passed permitting the consolidation of the two administrative boards which had jurisdiction over the ship channel; the City Harbor Board and the Commissioners of the Harris County and Houston Ship Channel Navigation District. The two were consolidated, at their own request, into a five-man Board of Navigation and Canal Commissioners
October
Censors banned the showing of two films in a black theater, because black power boxer Jack Johnson acted in them with whites, and the advertising was "incendiary and inflammatory"
November
Six hundred longshoremen struck, delaying cotton shipments
December
Marshal Ferdinand Foch visits Houston
In a mammoth ceremony, 2,051 Houstonians were inducted into the Klu Klux Klan
1922
Edith E. T. Wilmans is first woman elected to the Texas House of Representatives
Radio station WEV began broadcasting music and impromptu speeches for about 300 receivers
The Port registered 511 ship arrivals with a combined barge and ship freight of 3,365,644 tons
The zoo collection is moved from Sam Houston Park to Hermann Park
Fire horses were replaced by motorized equipment
Voters approved a $4,000,000 bond issue for harbor and channel improvements
March
Street Cars will be removed from Main to Fannin within a month to six weeks
April
W. L Macatee & Sons has received a new dump truck which can dump a load in 30 seconds
May
The new five-man Port Commission took office
Texan Eck Robertson becomes the first country musician on record with the fiddle tune " Sally Goodin"November
Houston has 5 telephone exchanges through which 85,000 customers make approximately 300,000 calls per day
December
There were 1015 vessels which landed at the Port of Houston
Building permits amounted to nearly $20,000,000
Construction began on River Oaks, a thoroughly planned residential area for the city's elite
Houston's Port recorded 707 ship arrivals with a combined barge and ship freight of 4,815,119 tons
For two days, Houstonian Magdeline Williams held the world record for marathon dancing at sixty-five hours and twenty-nine minutes
J
anuary 29The million-dollar Majestic Theatre was opened, and one month later Jan Paderewski performed there
Texas Composers Guild founded
Permian Basin oil and gas field discovered
February
Iganc Paderewski gives a concert at the city auditorium
June
Mayor Oscar Holcombe is banished from the K. K. K. for refusing to bow to their dictates
December
The Capitol Hotel is destroyed by fire
1924
Miriam A. Ferguson elected first woman governor of TexasThe Houston public schools began to operate as an independent system controlled by an elected school board and supported by a separate tax base
January
Houstonians voted to abolish Jitney service
February
The bulk of the $1,000,000 estate of the late Howard R. Hughes, Sr. goes to his son, Howard R. Hughes, Jr. age 18 who is a student at Rice Institute
April 1
The sixteen-story Houston Cotton Exchange building was completed
April 12
The Houston Art League opened the Museum of Fine Arts
September
More than 32,000 children and 1150 teachers were back in school
November
The new Kinkaid School at Richmond and Graustark is opened
December 2
The Jefferson Davis charity hospital for blacks was dedicated
December 19
Houston was temporarily isolated by a sleet storm
1925
The ship channel was now deepened to 30 feet, as the Port recorded 1,193 ship arrivals and a combined barge and ship freight of 9,932,731 tons
Building permits were issued with a record value of $35,041,000
Houston's first radio station to endure. KPRC (Houston Post-Dispatch), went on the air
The 4000-speciman animal collection at the Houston Zoo is attracting 10,000 visitors a year
March 1
The Warwick Hotel was opened on South Main Street
April 13
Annexations extended the city's surface area by 25 square miles
July
Hermann Hospital is opened for public inspection
Mrs. Niels Esperson and Harry E. Stuart, newspaper advertising man, are married at her apartment in the Beaconfield
August
The Sam Houston Monument is unveiled in Hermann Park
Forty-two steamship lines made Houston a port of call, and passengers could connect with one of the eighteen rail-lines that serviced the city
The sixteen-story Medical Arts Building, a Gothic structure was completed
January
Houston is linked with San Antonio, Ft. Worth, Dallas, Oklahoma City, and Kansas City by means of the fastest sending and receiving apparatus known--telegraphic typewriters
April
A new 110 acre park is to be opened from Hermann Park to Wayside Drive and to be named McGregor Park
June 19
The Negro Hospital, a gift of J. S. Cullinan, was dedicated
July 1
A 1,000,000,000 bushel-capacity public grain elevator opened
October 18
The Houston Public Library opened its new $500,000 Spanish Renaissance structure
November
Houston became part of an airmail route
Shepps Aces women's basketball team from Texas wins the
national AAU championship-held by Texas teams for the first four years of
the competition
1927
"Alley Ooop" cartoon strip conceived by V. T. Hamlin while working in the oil fields near Iran, Texas
Houston Colored Junior College was organized as part of the city's school system. It was the forerunner of Texas Southern University(1951)
Eight refineries, with a capacity of about 125,000 barrels of crude a day, were operating along the ship channel
The Port of Houston recorded 1,787 ship arrivals with a combined barge and ship freight of 12,000,414 tons
The twenty-two-story Petroleum Building, an office structure which featured a Mayan motif, was opened
February
The $4,000,000, 32 story Niels Esperson building is opened to the public
June
Mrs. Edwin L. Neville has given the Rice Institute $100,000 for a chapel in memory of her brother, Edward Albert Palmer
October
Loews State Theater opens
1928
Mayor Holcombe supplied jobs for the unemployed, paying $1.50 a day on municipal projects
Almost $35,000,000 worth of new construction contracts were signed
Buffalo Stadium, a $400,000 baseball park, was opened
February 6
Air Mail Service is inaugurated when a bi-plane landed, carrying Houston's first airmail delivery
March 2
The municipal airport was officially opened
June
Robert Powell, a twenty-four-old black, was lynched for allegedly murdering a policeman. Two men who were eventually tried for the lynching were acquitted, though they had signed a confession
June 27
With the Democratic National Convention meeting at Sam Houston Hall, Franklin Delano Roosevelt placed Alfred Smith's name in nomination for the presidency
Texas becomes the nation's greatest oil producing state, with a
quarter-billion barrels for the year
1929 King Vidor directs Hallelujah!, starring Victoria Spivey of Houston
Walter E. Monteith became mayor of Houston
Ship arrivals totaled 2,052, while combined barge and ship freight tonnage was 13,917,953
Houston's ratio of wholesale-retail to manufacturing employees was 1:0.7, while the national ratio was 1:1.3. This emphasized the fact that the city was still a commercial-distributive center rather than a manufacturing one
Jesse H. Jones finished the thirty-five -story Gulf Building
City officials rejected the parks and zoning recommendations developed in a two-year study, and the city remained, as it long would, unzoned
The City Planning Commission reported that the transit system had increased passenger numbers by 10 percent in five years, but that the city's population had increased by 60 percent. Houston was already committed to mass transit via the automobile rather than any planned public transit system
Building permits totaling a record $35,320,000 were issued
February
Capt. Frank Hawks of Houston sets a new record of 18 hours, 21 minutes for West-East transcontinental non-stop airplane flight
J
une 1Houston has a serious flood with Buffalo Bayou rising at the rate of 1 inch every 5 minutes, causing millions of dollars in damage
J
une 1The Houston Port Bureau , a solicitation and promotion agency with offices in New York and other major cities, began operations
August
Sears, Roebuck & Company's new $1,000,000 retail department store on the corner of Buffalo Dr. and Lincoln Street is opened
O
ctober 29Black Tuesday: the stock market crashes
1930
With a population of 292,352, Houston was the largest city in Texas and the twenty-sixth most populous city in the nation. Its population had increased 111.4 percent since 1920. Blacks remained the largest minority, numbering 63,337, but their percentage of the city's population had fallen from 39 percent in 1880 to 22 percent in 1930
Houston's Port ranked third nationally in foreign exports. Ship arrivals numbered 2,108, and combined barge and ship freight reached 15,057,360 tons valued at $500,000,000
Industries along the ship channel numbered over forty below the Turning Basin and more than twenty-five above it. They included eight oil refineries capable of processing 194,000 barrels of crude oil daily and representing a $200,000,000 investment
Mayor Monteith's committee to study local unemployment problems set up headquarters at the Hampshaw Building where emergency relief was dispensed
Lyndon Baines Johnson taught school in Houston for two years (1930-1932)
March
Bond issues totaling $13,270,000 are passed
July 4
Balloon races at the Bellaire Speedway draw a crowd of 300,000 people
September 8
"Dad" Joiner brings in the Daisy Bradford # 3, the first producing well in the massive East Texas Oil Field near Henderson
October
The Cruiser Houston ties up at Pier 14
PERIOD OF ACCELERATED GROWTH
By Marvin Hurley
FTER World War I, when the census
bureau counted heads, it found that the population of the United States had increased to
105,710,620, and for the first time in the nation’s history the rural population
accounted for less than 50 percent of the total population. Texas had 4,663,228 people,
but in this state 67.6 percent were still classified as rural. With its corporate limits
expanded to 38.7 square miles, Houston’s population reached 138,276, the
nation’s 45th largest city, with 186,667 in the county, which still left it third in
Texas behind Dallas and Bexar counties. The increased industrialization of Texas was shown
by the census of manufacturers in 1919, reflecting 5,390 plants with 124,110 employees.
For Harris County, this census showed 422 plants, with 11,411 productive employees.
Houston’s bank deposits in 1920 soared to $87,462,936, and building permits to
$8,531,447.
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The Viaduct at the foot of Main Street, circa 1920. |
This was a decade of "boom and bust" in the United States and of revolutionary political developments overseas. Mussolini seized power in Rome; the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was formed; the United States Senate refused to ratify the League of Nations; and although Adolph Hitler was unsuccessful in his Beer Hall "Putsch", he charted his future course in "Mien Kampf". Women’s suffrage was approved in the 19th Amendment, knee-length skirts and the Charleston dance were in vogue, and crossword puzzles became the rage. Charles A. Lindbergh made the first solo flight from New York to Paris in 33.5 hours, and Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly the Atlantic. Home radios became popular, with the first play-by-play broadcast of a world series and the first commercially sponsored program. "Talking movies and then colored motion pictures were introduced. Colonel Billy Mitchell sought to demonstrate the superiority of air power by bombing a captured ship, but was court-marshaled for his insistent advocacy of an independent air arm. Life expectancy reached 54.09 years, railroad mileage reached an all-time high of 253,000, and the Teapot Dome oil scandal broke. A wave of lawlessness was associated with the Ku Klux Klan and Oklahoma was placed under martial law because of Klan activities. Then, on October 29, 1929 the Wall Street stock market crashed to begin the "great depression".
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The construction of a coordinated highway system in Texas began in 1925, and the State Highway Department was given the responsibility for planning, constructing and maintaining highways built with state and federal funds. Earlier road building by counties had given little consideration to the connecting of roads from one county to another for a system of through highways. Motor bus and overland truck operations came with highway improvements. Transportation’s growth encouraged the start of commercial aviation.
The Port of Houston began seeking foreign markets as well as
sources of supply, and the Chamber of Commerce organized the first of its many trade and
goodwill trips into Latin America by chartering a steamship for a Caribbean cruise. By
1926, the Port of Houston ranked 11th in the nation in tonnage, and cotton receipts
reached almost two million bales. By this time, the taxpayers of the county had invested
$11,000,000 in port improvements. New million-dollar freight terminals were being built by
the Southern Pacific and the M-K-T railroads.
Reminiscing on his staff service with the Houston Chamber of Commerce since 1914, G. C. Roussel said in 1931 that if he were called upon to select the one most important community service of the Chamber of Commerce over the years, he would name its role in building the Port of Houston. "In every campaign to vote bonds for this work," he said, "the Chamber of Commerce had taken a leading part, shouldering the task of reaching the voters personally, and selling them on the community benefits to be derived from such a waterway. None of us who had a part in this work can travel the channel as it exists today without feeling a sense of personal pride and satisfaction. Yet no one individual has ever been glorified because of his contributions to that cause. The great port stands as a mighty testimonial to the faith of a few men, who transmitted that faith to others."
n 1922, Houston received its first
motorized fire-fighting equipment. By 1923, a skyscraping young skyline had pushed
building permits up to $20,000,000. Among the buildings erected during this decade are the
following: C. & I. Life, West, Bankers Mortgage, Abstract & Title, Cotton Exchange, State National, United
Gas, Bettes, Heights State Bank, Niels Esperson, Shell, South Coast Life, Electric,
Medical Arts, Petroleum, Chamber of Commerce, Gulf, and Federal Land Bank.
Houston railroads organized the Port Terminal Railroad in July, 1924. A bus line began the Houston-Dallas run in 1925, with 30 to 40 hours being required in bad weather for a one-way trip. The Ship Channel was dredged to 30 feet, and the Southern Steamship Company started Houston-Philadelphia service. Natural gas, piped in from Refugio County, was distributed in Houston for the first time in 1926. On February 26, 1928, a Pitcairn biplane with Houston’s first air mail landed at the Houston airport, which did not officially open until March 2
nd. Anticipating the definitive importance of the coming air age, the Chamber of Commerce had organized early civic support for aviation facilities and services. One of the most significant events in the history of Houston came during this period with the hosting of the National Convention of the Democratic Party. As a civic service, the Chamber of Commerce took the main responsibility for organizing facilities and arrangements. The convention, meeting July 26-29, nominated Governor Alfred E. Smith of New York for the presidency on June 28 and Senator Joseph T. Robinson of Arkansas for the vice presidency on June 29th, each on the first ballot.
During
the five years prior to the stock market crash in 1929, Houston experienced
one of its greatest periods of development. Building permits climbed from $22,594,564 in 1924 to more than $40 million in 1929; bank clearings from
$1,560,707,890 to more than two billion dollars; postal receipts from a million and a half
dollars to over two million; water connections from 25,559 to more than 50,000; telephone
connections from 43,157 to almost 70,000; and electric light connections from less than
50,000 to almost 85,000.
This type of development prompted B. D. Sartin, editor of "County Progress", the official publication of the County Judges & Commissioners Association of Texas, to write: "Houston is a city of no mean reputation and in fact is the fastest growing city in the South, and the writer predicts that it is destined to be the greatest city within the entire South within the next ten years.
In 1929, W. N. Blanton came to Houston as executive vice president of the Chamber of Commerce to a new era launch of effective service for the organization. He said: "Houston is growing rapidly and we must keep her abreast of the time. She is already recognized as one of the most progressive cities of the nation. Surely, every citizen wants to feel that he has contributed something to the community in which he lives and prospers; and if he will acquaint himself with the avenues through which these benefits flow to him, we feel that he will find membership in the Chamber of Commerce to be not only a desirable thing, but a civic duty."
After Mr. Blanton’s resignation early in 1951 to go into the oil well drilling contracting business, the "Houston Magazine" expressed the thoughts of the Houston business community, when it said editorially: "Few men, in the history of Chambers of Commerce, have been more honored by colleagues, or have been more universally recognized as a leader in their profession, than has William Neal Blanton, who this month leaves the Houston Chamber of Commerce, of which he has been executive vice president and general manager for twenty-two years. Under his able and energetic leadership the city he has ever served with a sincere devotion has tripled in size and worldly importance, and the Houston Chamber of Commerce has become recognized as one without a peer in efficiency and productivity."
