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amightyhouston

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Everything posted by amightyhouston

  1. Back in the 80s when I was a student at Rice, a buddy of mine and I decided to go up as high as we could in Transco.......... We rode up to the top floor and found a stairwell that led even higher...... we climbed and climbed up until we found ourselves right there next to the motor that drove the spotlight around! And the pyramid roof of the very top was right over our heads. We could not have climbed any higher. It was odd because the spotlight itself, whose beam we had seen night after night shining its great arc across the wide, flat expanses of our restless, beloved city, apparently emanated from a smallish beacon only about the size of a TV set. Has anyone else ventured so high in Transco? This all predates 9/11, of course............
  2. Hi, all. This is my first time posting a message here! I love this site, I love Houston and its buildings and am thrilled to find a place where people are debating and talking about my hometown's great archtecture. I LOVE the Federal Building. It's a great building, one that tells something of the time in which it was built. It's our own Cold War relic. Its impregnability in the face of storms and floods should count as proof of its worthiness. Its confectionery cube shape fascinated me as a kid. Its little grid of windows plays like an architectural parable of democratic populism: each window is equal..... My big memory of this building is...... walking up to it with some of my high school friends during one of our "downtown" ventures (I grew up in Spring), and as we approached the entrance, THE BUILDING SPOKE TO US through a speaker and said, "May I Help You?"......... Big Brother was watching!! very KGB..... This building's "ugliness" is akin to the Exxon Building at 800 Bell: it's only "ugly" when viewed outside its historical context. It's from that time period when you can really sense the architects working against the harshness of the hot climate----- devising ways for the buildings to "reflect" or "radiate" the heat........this bldg. seems to be made to just shut it all out. I love how each square window has that kind of thermal green glass of the period........... do the windows open? does anyone know? I love this little building, it's not a perfect building but I think something about its strangeness helped spawn some other weird buildings. Downtown HOU is big enough to keep it.
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