Misplaced Pages

#951048

25-453: From 1841 to 1939, Houston's municipal government was headquartered at Old Market Square . It was destroyed by fire in the 1870s, and also in 1901, and rebuilt each time. In those days, City Hall was part of the lively commercial atmosphere of the Square. However, by the 1920s, the city leaders decided the site was no longer appropriate for their needs. In 1929, the city's planning commission urged

50-688: A November 1939 article of the Scripps Howard Houston Press and publicized it in 2010. The statue project was dropped by the DRT chapter and the Oran M. Roberts Chapter 440, UDC, stepped in and raised the funds to have the Allen Brothers statues commissioned and cast in bronze. On July 15, 2008, world-renowned surgeon Dr. Michael E. Debakey would lie in state in Houston City Hall after he died

75-407: A combination of nineteenth-century architecture and modern residential towers, with ground leases housing a variety of restaurants and bars. Market Square is a public plaza bounded by Travis and Milam streets, and Congress and Preston avenues. Numbered as Block 34 and named "Congress Square" in the original Borden Survey of Houston, it was renamed Market Square after Augustus Allen chose a site for

100-436: A number of Houston-area landmarks. The exterior of the building features a sculpture by Herring Coe and Raoul Josset, and regional white, pock-market Texas limestone. The front faces Hermann Square, accessible by a series of paved terraces and stairs. The City hired Hare and Hare of Kansas City to design the rectangular pool and its surrounding landscaping, which includes lawns, rows of shrubs, and live oak trees. The design on

125-467: A specially cast aluminum . The lobby is walled with lightly veined marble . The gateways to the Tax Department are inlaid with bronze , nickel and silver . The elevator lobbies are treated with marble base, walls and wainscoting . Above the lobby entrance is a stone sculpture depicting two men taming a wild horse, which is meant to symbolize a community coming together to form a government to tame

150-488: A theater. The project cost the city $ 400,000, but the 1873 building was consumed by a fire on July 8, 1976, leaving Houston with $ 182,500 of outstanding debt in its bond and only $ 82,500 in insurance payments. In 1876, construction on a new city hall and market house began. Edwin J. Duhamel won the architectural design competition sponsored by Mayor Irvin Capers Lord , and the architect hired Britton and Long to construct

175-552: Is made of may be plasterwork , carved wood or other decorative medium. More loosely, "frieze" is sometimes used for any continuous horizontal strip of decoration on a wall, containing figurative or ornamental motifs. In an example of an architectural frieze on the façade of a building, the octagonal Tower of the Winds in the Roman agora at Athens bears relief sculptures of the eight winds on its frieze. A pulvinated frieze (or pulvino )

200-475: The Baker-Meyer Building , at 315 Travis. Market Square Tower at 777 Preston opened in 2017. The 43-floor glass-clad tower houses a combination of residential and guest apartments, a full commercial kitchen, a ballroom, and a top-floor with a bar and a pool. Frieze In classical architecture , the frieze / f r iː z / is the wide central section of an entablature and may be plain in

225-509: The Ionic or Doric order , or decorated with bas-reliefs . Paterae are also usually used to decorate friezes. Even when neither columns nor pilasters are expressed, on an astylar wall it lies upon the architrave ("main beam") and is capped by the moldings of the cornice . A frieze can be found on many Greek and Roman buildings, the Parthenon Frieze being the most famous, and perhaps

250-574: The Museum District is named. Hermann Square contains a simple, but regal elegance and is regularly used for festivals , protests and concerts . To accommodate larger events, the reflecting pool is planked over and tents and kiosks are often erected. Although there is some speculation about whether or not people are allowed to stay in the park overnight, the Parks Department officially says that people are not permitted to sleep there. In 1987,

275-409: The lobby floor depicts the protective role of government. In the grillwork above the main entrances are medallions of "great lawgivers" from ancient times to the founding of America, including Thomas Jefferson , Charlemagne , Julius Caesar and Moses , and an outdated city seal adorns the interior doorknobs. The building is faced with Texas Cordova limestone , and the doors to the building are of

SECTION 10

#1732851758952

300-774: The Congress Street side of the park. Market Square lies within the Main Street Market Square District, so designated by the City of Houston in 1997 and listed by the National Register of Historic Places in 1983. Three nineteenth-century buildings face Market Square: the Kennedy Bakery Building at 813 Congress Avenue, the home of La Carafe; the Fox-Kuhlman Building at 305–307 Travis Street; and

325-424: The briefly used Texas Capitol and White House. In addition, several City Halls rose and fell at Market Square, each destroyed by fire. Mayor Thomas Scanlan toured the east coast in 1871 for an inspection of various city halls in preparation for a new city hall and market house for Houston. The city hired Charles E. Hoare to design the new Italianate civic center, which included city offices, market stalls, and

350-483: The building footprints of the third and fourth city hall/market houses and even retained the restored bell and clocks. Yet the 1904 civic center reflected Victorian eclecticism in style. Former Houston-area resident, Lauren Catuzzi Grandolas, was killed on board United Airlines Flight 93 during the September 11 attacks . A memorial bust figure of her is positioned next to a water feature and plaque created in her honor at

375-457: The capitol at the northwest corner of Main Street and Texas Avenue in 1837. Houston City Council commissioned its first market house and its first city hall on the square in 1840. The contractor for both buildings, Thomas Stansbury and Sons, completed both buildings the following year. The Houston Market House was a single-story rectangular building which faced Milam Street, a more convenient side of

400-560: The chamber. All meetings are open to the public. Beginning in October 2013, 12,000 Square feet of space on the West side of the first floor was renovated for use by HTV Houston Television ( HTV studios ). The renovations were overseen by Balfour Beatty Construction and were completed on March 14, 2014. The architect of the City Hall was Joseph Finger , an Austrian-born Texan architect responsible for

425-587: The city attorney's office stated in the Houston Chronicle that the police are not to arrest anyone sleeping in the park. [REDACTED] Media related to Houston City Hall at Wikimedia Commons Market Square Park Market Square Park is a public park in Downtown Houston , Texas, United States. Originally set aside by the Houston Town Company as "Congress Square," the public square

450-586: The city hall building in a stripped classical style. He wanted to place on the front terrace statues of John Kirby Allen and Augustus Chapman Allen , but the City of Houston lacked the funds needed to add the statues. The statues would have cost $ 8,000 and the city was still suffering from the Great Depression . The Texas Star Chapter of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas (DRT) discovered this fact from reading

475-632: The establishment of a civic center around a downtown park, Herman Square. However, the Great Depression sidetracked the plans for the new center. When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt instituted the Works Progress Administration program, the city applied for a WPA grant to help finance the construction of a new City Hall. The grant was approved, and construction began in March 1938, continuing for 20 months. Joseph Finger had designed

500-401: The most elaborate. In interiors, the frieze of a room is the section of wall above the picture rail and under the crown moldings or cornice. By extension, a frieze is a long stretch of painted , sculpted or even calligraphic decoration in such a position, normally above eye-level. Frieze decorations may depict scenes in a sequence of discrete panels. The material of which the frieze

525-446: The new civic house atop the old foundation. The city paid $ 100,000 for this new building, which was less elaborate in ornamentation and lacked a theater, but was similar in style to the 1873 Italianate City Hall and Market Place, and it was even larger. After a fire claimed the 1876 City Hall and Market House in 1901, the city hired George E. Dickey to design a new civic center, the fourth on Market Square. The Dickey plan adhered to

SECTION 20

#1732851758952

550-559: The previous Friday due to natural causes, the first such honor for any deceased resident of the city. On July 29, 2024, Houston-based U.S. Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee would become the second person to lie in state in Houston City Hall. The Mayor of Houston and City Controller have their offices in this building. Council Members have their offices immediately across the street at the City Hall Annex building. Tuesdays at 1:30pm, and Wednesdays at 9:00am, Houston City Council meets in

575-409: The square for the purveyors of rural produce. The first City Hall was a small cubic building crowned by a cupula, located toward the north side of the square. The square was donated to the city in 1854 by Augustus Allen and used as an open air produce market. Very near Allen's Landing , the original port of Houston, the downtown business district grew around the square. Early city landmarks included

600-413: The world around them. The plaster cast for this sculpture, and twenty-seven casts for friezes around the building, were done by Beaumont artist Herring Coe and co-designer Raoul Josset . The front of the city hall building steps down to a small park, George and Martha Hermann Square, which is dominated by a reflecting pool . That was once the homestead of George H. Hermann for whom Hermann Park in

625-500: Was used as a marketplace and city hall, which assumed the name, "Market Square." The City of Houston constructed four different market house/city halls, the first of which opened in 1840. The fourth was constructed in 1904. Market Square is a central feature of the Main Street/Market Square Historic District , a historic district listed on the National Register of Historic Places . The square is surrounded by

#951048