1965
The first enclosed sports stadium in the world, the Harris County Domed Stadium, or the Astrodome, opens 7 miles southwest of downtown and is immediately claimed by Houstonians to be the "Eighth Wonder of the World"
John Mecom contracted to buy the Houston Chronicle from the Houston Endowment and he was listed for a while as the paper's publisher, but the deal never was consummated
Two high-rise apartment buildings were built downtown: Houston House, and 2016 Main; but Houstonians did not display any great eagerness to live downtown
Reapportionment left Houston with a third congressional seat, three new senators, and seven new representatives to the state legislature
Harris County employment stood at 600,000 with wages and salaries totaling $3,300,000,000
February
Houston is going to have to build some new roads out to the new Supersonic Airport because it is virtually isolated due to access road shortage
April 9
The First Major League baseball game was played in the Harris County domed stadium, the Astrodome. Built at a cost of over $45,000,000, it is 710 feet in diameter, 218 feet high, and totally air conditioned
May
85% of the black students boycott five black high schools to protest the slow pace of integration in Houston
May 10
Nine hundred black students, led by the NAACP, boycotted high schools in a bid to speed up integration
May 15
Blacks, led by Rev. W. A. Lawson, pressed for public school integration and rallied to protest a projected bond issue which, in effect, would have financed segregated facilities
May 20
Voters approved a school bond issue which would essentially finance segregated school facilities despite black opposition
June 21
After a Justice Department warning, the school board voted four to three to integrate all grades by 1967 and seek federal aid for Houston's schools
July
The Bureau of Census redefined Houston's metropolitan area to include Brazoria, Fort Bend, Liberty, and Montgomery counties along with Harris County. An area of 359.7 square miles, with a population of 1,695,000 was added to the metropolitan district
September
The first football game played in the Harris County Domed Stadium ends with Tulsa beating U. of H. 14 - 0
November 12
Four hundred students from Texas Southern University rioted on Wheeler Avenue after a pep rally
November 20
After four previous rejections and amidst considerable excitement, voters approved the creation of a hospital district with taxing powers as a means of financing public hospitals
December
The Houston Chronicle, the city's evening paper, was sold by the Houston Endowment, Inc. to John Mecom in an $85,000,000 deal that also involved the Rice Hotel and other downtown properties
1966
After five years, MSC was employing 4,854 people with a payroll of $50,000,000, and 125 companies had established offices in Houston to deal with the center
George Bush won the right to represent the mostly republican 7th District
Developer Gerald Hines and Shell Oil announced plans for a new building for Shell. The original plan called for 47 stories but the builders went on up to 50 and One Shell Plaza was the tallest building in town, briefly
The National football League agreed to absorb the American Football League and call it the American Conference of the NFL. The AFL clubs agreed to pay $18 million for this favor. John Hollis of the Houston Post wrote that it might have been the highest price ever paid for a burial service
The massive Texas Medical Center now represented as investment of almost $125,000,000; it included the Texas Dental School, Baylor Medical School, Arabia Temple Crippled Children's Clinic, Hermann Hospital, Methodist Hospital, Texas Children's Hospital, St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital, Jesse H. Jones Medical Library, Ben Taub Hospital, and the University of Houston College of Nursing
The International Association of Chiefs of Police suggested that a community Houston's size should employ 2,600 policemen. Houston employed 1,342
Will Clayton died at the age of 86
The city's transit system was bought by National City Lines of Florida
Two hundred and four people were murdered in Houston, fifty-eight more than in all England during 1965
A Houston-Harris County Economic Opportunity Organization study of the Settegast slum, housing 7,000 people in 1,545 homes, revealed open sewage ditches, 30 percent of the housing in disrepair, no city water, three times as many rats as people, 25 percent of the houses using outhouses, and one-third of the wells polluted
Chemicals were Houston's fastest growing industry over the previous decade. The industry represented an investment approaching $5,000,000,000, employed 47,000 people, and produced 50 percent of the materials for plastics and synthetic rubber made in the United States
Houston continued to lag as a cultural center, spending $1.27 per capita on its Public Library as compared to $2.79 per capita for Dallas
Allen's Landing Park was created to revitalize and beautify the Bayou area
January 30
Voters approved a $136,800,000 combined Houston-Harris County bond issue for capital improvements
February
Albert Thomas died
The city started work on a new convention center to be named for Albert Thomas
March
Mrs. Albert Thomas has been elected to succeed her husband in a special election for the 8th Congressional District
April
Houston's Westbury American All-Stars have won the right to play in the 1966 Little League World Series
June 4
Parents of black children brought suit against the school board charging that it was minimizing integration by expanding overcrowded school facilities in black sections. The Justice Department sent three attorneys to monitor proceedings
October
Andre Previn has been named conductor-in-chief of the Houston Symphony
September 19
After strong pressure from conservative elements and from a lawyer's group, the Houston Legal Foundation, an agency of the Economic Opportunity Office, dropped its efforts to help a black mother enroll her son in a segregated ninth grade undergoing gradual integration
Houston attorney and legislator Bob Exhort won the election to the District 8 seat that had been occupied by Lera Thomas after Albert Thomas' death
October 3
The magnificent Jesse H. Jones Hall for the Performing Arts was opened. Built at a cost of over $7,000,000, it was a gift to the city from the Houston Endowment, Inc., a creation of Jesse H. and Mary Gibbs Jones. It was the new home of the Houston Symphony, the Houston Grand Opera, and the Houston Ballet
November 8
Houstonians (Harris County) elected their first black state senator, Miss Barbara Jordan, and their first Republican state senator, Henry Grover
December 28
In a letter to the school board president, the assistant United States attorney charged that Houston had failed to implement its announced desegregation plan
Longtime Houston doyenne, Miss Ima Hogg, donates her family's mansion, Bayou Bend, to the Museum of Fine Arts
The Astrohall opens
1967
The Civic Center represented the only instances where the municipal government had supported urban renewal on a large scale. It now contained the Public Library, City Hall, the Federal Office Building, Jones Hall, the Coliseum, the Music Hall, and the Convention and Exhibit Center
Air pollution provoked a showdown between the Houston City Hall and the ship channel industries
The Houston Housing Authority operated only 2,500 unites, while 21,000 families lived in substandard housing
WKY Television System of Oklahoma bought Houston's original Ultra High Frequency TV license and put Channel 39 back on the air as KHTV. The name of WKY Television Systems was later changed to Gaylord Broadcasting. Channel 39 was licensed originally to the owners of KNUZ Radio
Major crimes were up 7 percent over 1966, and Houston ranked fourth in the nation in murder rate
Phillip Battlestein's heirs sold the Battlestein stores to the Manhattan shirt people. The new owners bought Frost Brothers of San Antonio in 1969. The two chains later merged under the Frost name and then closed in 1989
January
Dr. Joseph Melnick of the Baylor Medical School discovered that Buffalo Bayou contained a whole range of viruses, including those causing encephalitis and meningitis. He estimated that at the foot of Main Street the Bayou carried sufficient viruses to infect 77,000 people an hour!
Bacon is selling for $.59 per pound and lean ground beef for $.49 per pound
January 27
Tragedy strikes the U.S. moon effort as Apollo astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee perish in a launch-pad fire during a countdown rehearsal
February 21
The city offered the Republican Party $650,000 to hold its 1968 convention in Houston
April 4
Five hundred students, mostly form Texas Southern University, marched on the courthouse to protest the arrest of two student leaders after the ouster from campus of the Friends of SNCC
May 17
Two days of rioting at Texas Southern University left one policeman dead and two others and a student with gunshot wounds. Nearly 500 students were arrested, and five were indicted in connection with the policeman's death
June
A commissioner of the Federal Water Control Administration declared that on any given day the ship channel might be the most badly polluted body of water in the entire world
Star Trek is shown on Thursdays at 7:30 pm on Channel 2
August 16
Gunfire erupted and fire bombs exploded in a black middle class section after police reported that a white service station attendant had shot a black who tried to rob him
November
Lili Milani is chosen Homecoming Queen at Rice University
November 1
Senator McClellan's Permanent Subcommittee opened hearings on the May disorders in Houston, during which Mayor Welch and other officials testified that the disturbances were the work of SNCC
The original Houston International Airport is renamed the William P. Hobby Airport, to honor the former governor, publisher and philanthropist
Construction begins downtown on One Shell Plaza, which at 50 stories, is the tallest building west of the Mississippi River
1968
Houston's independent School District relented after almost twenty years and began participating in the federal-aid-for-lunches program
The Navigation District proposed to deepen the channel to 50 feet
April 4
A store in the black section was firebombed
March
Mayor Louie Welch orders an audit of the 100 top personal property taxpayers in the city and the Houston Independent School District
June
Roy Hofheinz opened the 116-acre Astroworld Park and also the hotels in what Hofheinz was by this time calling the Astrodomain, near the Astrodome
September
Presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey stump in Houston
October 13
The new Alley Theatre was dedicated, providing a new home for the city's most significant theatrical enterprise
December 21
Americans Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders head for a Christmas Eve orbit of the moon in their Apollo capsule
December 21
A Houston Chronicle survey of public school integration revealed that 37,493 of 81,481 black students were attending classes integrated to some extent
1969
For the first time, the National Association of Homebuilders held its convention in the Astrodome complex. It was the biggest convention yet for Houston and another triumph for Roy Hofheinz
Shell announced that it would move a substantial part of its headquarters operation from New York to new Shell buildings in Houston
February
Agnes Jean Harmon took an ice pack and for the 2nd time in a year sliced a Frederick Remington painting valued at $30,000 in the Museum of Fine Arts
February 11
The Justice Department filed a motion in Federal District Court charging the Houston Independent School District with maintaining segregated school facilities. The court was asked to vote the freedom-of-choice plan before September 1969
March 17
Black and white University of Houston students clashed briefly after a representative of the Afro-Americans for Black Liberation charged that three white students attacked him
March 20
University of Houston officials announced they would file charges against former Columbia University student leader Mark Rudd for speaking on campus without permission
April
Judge Roy Hofheinz and his longtime executive secretary, Mary Frances Gougenheim are married
June
Houston's Intercontinental Airport was opened
June 21
A group, including Senator Yarbrough, visited a barrio to investigate living conditions for Mexican-Americans. Despite a last-minute cleanup by the city, the poor conditions of the area were evident
July 20
Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin land on the moon
July 23
The Federal District Court ruled that Houston could keep its freedom-of-choice desegregation program for the 1969-1970 school year, but that it would have to develop either a zoning or pairing program for the 1970-1971 year
October
Socialite Joan Robinson Hill dies of meningitis according to a second autopsy by a group of pathologists headed by Dr. Milton Helpern
November 15
Mayor Welch was reelected with 52 percent of the vote. His major opposition was supplied by Representative Graves, a black, who won 32 percent of the vote
A hotly contested election produced a new and more liberal majority on the school board
November 16
Mayor Welch announced he would urge the city council to adopt a minimum housing code to improve ghetto housing. The voters had approved a proposition for such a code
1970
Houston's population stood at 1,213,064, which was an increase of 29.3 percent over 1960. The population figure for the five-county metropolitan area was 1,958,491, an increase of 38.1 percent over 1960
Houston recorded 287 murders
Over 8,500,000 square feet of floor space was either under construction or projected, not including two announced redevelopment projects
Rothko Chapel was opened as an ecumenical chapel to house the last great works of Mark Rothko
January
Arman Yramategui, conservationist and head of the Burke Baker Planetarium, is shot to death
January 18
After a federal pollution panel inspected the ship channel, one of its members termed the waters "too thick to drink and too thin to plow"
February 28
The school board voted four to three to institute voluntary integration measures which would meet federal court recommendations. Angry parents formed two organizations to oppose the board's action, and economic reprisals were taken against board members Drs. Robbins and Oser
April 17
Apollo 13 astronauts Jim Lovell, John Swigert and Fred Haise return safely days after an explosion 200,000 miles from Earth crippled their spacecraft and nearly cost them their lives
April 25
The Texas Eastern Transmission Corporation announced the purchase of the major portion of thirty-two city blocks in the downtown area for over $55,000,000. The corporation planned to spend about $1.5 billion to develop the area
June 1
The Federal District Court ordered Houston to drop its freedom-of-choice integration plan and adopt a zoning system. Complete faculty integration was ordered as well
July
One Shell Plaza, the tallest building in Houston, is opened.
July 11
President Richard M. Nixon proposed to Congress a sophisticated traffic control system for the ship channel, which had an average of three to four minor collisions a month
July 19
The Justice Department asked the U.S. Appeals Court to order Houston to pair and group 101 schools to achieve greater desegregation
July 26
One white SDS member and three blacks were wounded in a gun battle with police after a rally by People's Party 2, a Black Panther-like organization. Party Chairman C. Hampton died of his wounds the following day
August
Houston received a Model Cities grant of $13 million for the first five years of the Model Cities program
August 7
The Justice Department filed suit against the state education agency, the State Education Commissioner, and twenty-six school districts including Houston's, charging that they were continuing to operate segregated facilities. The suit contended that segregation involved Mexican-Americans as well as blacks
August 8
The Navigation District announced plans to build at Morgan's Point a new container port and turning basin which could accommodate ships of 800 feet or larger
September 5
Mexican-Americans opened a boycott of Houston's public schools and set up all-Mexican-American "hulga" schools. They demanded to be treated as a separate ethnic minority with special problems and not to be grouped with blacks or any other group
September 23
The grand jury cleared the police in the shooting death of C. Hampton, chairman of People's Party 2
October 4
Death of singer Janis Joplin of Port Arthur
November 2
A coalition of twelve liberal and radical groups accused the Houston Police Department of shielding two "night rider" members of the Ku Klux Klan who allegedly committed acts of terrorism and vandalism
The Texas legislature legalizes the sale of liquor by the drink
THE SPACE RACE
By Marvin Hurley
HE
barest essence of what happened to
Houston from 1960 forward can be distilled into one word—aerospace. Boosters probably
would not readily admit that sheer political clout gave the city its future, but it did.
Had it not been for Texas Congressman Albert Thomas, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, and
President John F. Kennedy, who spent the last evening of his life at a Houston testimonial
dinner for Thomas, the final chapter of this sesquicentennial commemorative might be
altogether different.
Houston already had a leg up in the adventure when President Kennedy in 1961 challenged the United States to be the first nation to put men on the moon.
"I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out," said Kennedy, "of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish."
Vice President Johnson, the former public speaking teacher from Sam Houston High School, was chairman of the federal government’s space council. A twenty-five year veteran of Capitol Hill, Thomas was chairman of the House subcommittee controlling the National Aeronautics & Space Administration’s (NASA) purse strings.
When Congressman Thomas learned that NASA was looking for a site to locate a manned spacecraft training and mission center, he exerted his considerable political influence to bring the site selection team to town.
In the meantime, Morgan Davis, then head of Humble Oil, had given Rice Institute—later re-named Rice University—a thousand acres from a 30,000-acre tract the company owned on the north shore of Clear Lake. The land had been part of a ranch owned by "Silver Dollar" Jim West, the colorful and somewhat eccentric oilman who gave generous silver dollar tips.
George R. Brown was chairman of the Rice board of trustees, which subsequently offered the university’s thousand acres to the federal government as the site for the space center.
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"The Original Seven" in 1962, in the Sam Houston Coliseum. |
The announcement of Houston’s selection was made in September 1961. Herman Brown, George’s brother and head of the engineering/construction giant, Brown & Root, Inc., got the contract to build the center. Humble Oil, through its Friendswood Development subsidiary, built an ideal American community. Many would liken the NASA neighborhoods to Beaver Cleaver’s television hometown. A daisy chain of bedroom communities and office complexes soon filled in the grassy ranchlands between Houston and Clear Lake, and Ellington Field became the airfield of the astronauts.
Houston welcomed the original seven astronauts and their families in 1962 with a sweltering July Fourth parade on Main Street and a barbecue in the Sam Houston Coliseum. Somewhat nonplused by the Lone Star hospitality, the astronauts donned Stetsons and went Texan.
The influx of government employees and families, and technical support businesses prompted the chamber of commerce to tout Houston as "Space City, U.S.A." New York’s Times Square had gotten a taste of Texas crowing the year before when several local media bought a huge billboard to brag about the city’s sixth place population ranking. The city had jumped from fourteenth place in 1950, with its 1960 census count of 938,219.
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There would be more crowing in the years to come. With the arrival of the Johnson Space Center, so named after President Lyndon B. Johnson’s death, there were many more proclamations from Houston. "Energy Capital" and "Air Conditioning Capital" soon were joined by "Center of New Knowledge," "Headquarters City," "Corporate City," and "World Class City" as phrase-makers sought the title with the truest ring.
The 1960s and 1970s belonged to the builders and developers. Up and out, as far as the eye could see, Houston was building, building, building. Kenneth Schnitzer began the master-planned Greenway Plaza that symbolizes what zoning might have done for Houston. George R. Brown announced plans for Texas Eastern Transmission’s thirty—three—block Houston Center, a major renewal in the urban core east of Main Street that now has Cadillac Fairview as a partner. Trammell Crow and Metropolitan Life Insurance Company built the Hyatt Regency Hotel and the 1100 Milam building. Schnitzer took over Trammell Crow’s Allen Center across Smith Street and built it around the Antioch Baptist Church. The black church shares the distinction with Annunciation Catholic Church of being one of the oldest Houston churches in use.
Gerald D. Hines built the Galleria complex, inspired by Milan’s Galleria Vittorio Emmanuele, and the immediate area became known as the "Magic Circle." Hines built a fifty-story office tower downtown that eventually headquartered Shell Oil. He also was responsible for the trapezoidal Pennzoil Place, designed by New York architect Phillip Johnson. In the next decade or so, Hines would develop the Gothic style RepublicBank tower and the lnterfirst Plaza, and I. M. Pei would design the pencil-slim Texas Commerce Bank, rising more than seventy stories in downtown.
Gus
Wortham, the founder of American General Insurance Company, and his wife, Lyndall, were
devoted patrons of Houston’s arts organizations. His American General complex was
begun on Allen Parkway in 1965 with the American General Tower, to be followed over the
next twenty years by four more towers, the fourth being a forty-two-story edifice. The
story goes that Wortham bought a location for his mausoleum in the adjacent Magnolia
Cemetery so he could be buried where he could keep an eye on his company.
By the mid-1970s, New York Times architectural critic, Ada Louise Huxtable, surveyed the skyline and pronounced: "Houston is the city of the second half of the Twentieth Century."
Industries moved in along the Port of Houston. Humble Oil changed its name to Exxon and developed the Bay-port Industrial complex on Morgan’s Point near Clear Lake.
The Port of Houston Authority installed a container crane on the wharves near Long Reach and it was not long before container marshalling yards dotted the landscape up and down the ship channel. The state of Texas built the first high-rise bridge across the channel, completing the last link of the 610 Loop, and in its shadow were gigantic distribution yards filled with foreign automobiles.
Foreign businesses, consulates, trade offices, and banks began arriving weekly. By the early 1980s, there were more than 550 foreign operations, and the city was a melting pot where languages spoken in the home ranged from Urdu to Arabic.
he pivot Houston now turns on
came in 1969. That year, the Eagle landed on the moon and the city was launched in
another orbit. Early in the year, Stanford Research Institute approached the city and
chamber of commerce officials with a request for an in-depth study on Houston. The report
would go to SRI’s anonymous client, which was considering a corporate headquarters
relocation. The SRI team made it plain the competition was tough.
Months of intrigue ensued as the SRI team kept narrowing the field. The culmination was a report that pinned down, for the first time, what Houston had to offer. Through the medical center, the space center, the petrochemicals complex, and the ocean nearby, all the vital sciences converge in this city. Blind ambition, dumb luck, and genius combined to create an interface that is uniquely Houston’s. That discovery in 1969 was the perfect ending to a decade that began with the arrival of the space age. More importantly, it was the perfect opening to Houston’s future as a corporate center.
Occupying the corner office on the third floor in City Hall as the "transitional" mayor was Louie Welch. He had defeated Lewis Cutrer in his third bid in 1964. Welch had promised not to raise water rates. The charmingly spunky mayor picked up the reins on projects Cutrer and Oscar Holcombe had begun—Lake Livingston, Houston Intercontinental Airport, and the civic center complex—and got them done. He initiated numerous other projects in his unprecedented ten consecutive years in office—the first city-owned ambulance service, the new Central Library, Tranquility Park to honor the lunar landing, and the first effort to transform Buffalo Bayou into a scenic asset near downtown. A fiscal conservative, Welch is remembered for building the city’s coffers to give it a safety net admired by bond-rating services.
