Tenneco Building At 1001 Louisiana St.

[torimask]

 

 

 

Can someone help me with this photo in terms of identifying the buildings visible in the photograph and what year this might have been? Are we facing  . . . east?  Guessing from the negatives I was scanning it's in the early 70s?

 

(Dropping the little guy down in front of the El Paso building on Google maps is getting me nowhere.)

 

 

[Ross]

My guesses, Facing Southeast near the McKinney Street ramp into Downtown. City Hall on the left with the Shell building behind it, Tenneco Building, One of the Allen Center buildings, Kellogg Tower, Hyatt Regency on the far right, and what is now Total Plaza to the left of the Hyatt. No clue what's in front of the Tenneco building, but it's whatever was there before the Wells Fargo (Allied Bank) tower was built.

[Montrose1100]

My guesses, Facing Southeast near the McKinney Street ramp into Downtown. City Hall on the left with the Shell building behind it, Tenneco Building, One of the Allen Center buildings, Kellogg Tower, Hyatt Regency on the far right, and what is now Total Plaza to the left of the Hyatt. No clue what's in front of the Tenneco building, but it's whatever was there before the Wells Fargo (Allied Bank) tower was built.

No Allen Center or Kellogg. The taller black building is the Centerpoint Building that was given a top hat in the 90's. The Kellogg looking one is the HPD building.

The signature western skyline before the signature.

Great photo, thank you for sharing! Any more?

[torimask]

Great photo, thank you for sharing! Any more?

 

No, sadly. This was definitely an anomaly from the scads of suburb photos that were being scanned. It was the very last photo on a strip from a Little League baseball game, perhaps just taken to finish the roll before dropping it off at the Fox Photo booth. 

[FilioScotia]

That low white building in front of the Tenneco Bldg was the old Downtown Memorial Hospital. It was at 602 Lamar, across the street from the Houston Public Library. It was closed and demolished in 1977 as the Memorial Hospital system spread out all over the city. Wells Fargo Bank Tower is there now.

 

Here's a photo taken from the roof of the Julia Ideson Library in the early 1950s. The gas station at lower right was on the site that's now the plaza between the Ideson Bldg and the newer library. 

.

[Ross]

No Allen Center or Kellogg. The taller black building is the Centerpoint Building that was given a top hat in the 90's. The Kellogg looking one is the HPD building.

The signature western skyline before the signature.

Great photo, thank you for sharing! Any more?

 

I should have known that was the Centerpoint building. I worked in 1100 Louisiana for a while, and looked out at it every day. The HPD building would have been the Entex building at the time of the picture

 

[mollusk]

OK - front to back, left to right, names then and now...

 

Far left:  City Hall, One Shell, and a tiny sliver of Bank of the Southwest, now 919 Milam

 

Next block:  Memorial Hospital, behind it the Tenneco Building (now Kinder Morgan)

 

Next:  The Memorial Professional Building (replaced by 1100 Louisiana) and 1100 Milam (now Centerpoint)

 

Followed by Federal Land Bank (that now has Heritage built over it), Hyatt Regency (back when Spindletop had a broad view), United Gas (which morphed into Entex) (now Total Plaza), and behind that Houston Natural Gas (later Enron), now HPD headquarters (yes, we used to have two gas utilities in this town, but one light company... my house has two sets of gas lines under it)

 

You are welcome.

 

(Edit:  paragraph spaces added for clarity)

[Tumbleweed_Tx]

1100 Milam was completed in 1974, so I'm guessing it was from that year.

 

quick edit.... and I STILL think they effed up when they got rid of the atrium that used to surround 100 Milam. That was the best part of the building.

[torimask]

That low white building in front of the Tenneco Bldg was the old Downtown Memorial Hospital. It was at 602 Lamar, across the street from the Houston Public Library. It was closed and demolished in 1977 as the Memorial Hospital system spread out all over the city. Wells Fargo Bank Tower is there now.

 

Here's a photo taken from the roof of the Julia Ideson Library in the early 1950s. The gas station at lower right was on the site that's now the plaza between the Ideson Bldg and the newer library. 

.

 

I've been puzzling over this all morning. I think, if I've got my bearings straight that the old hospital, addressed in the 50s as 602 Lamar is now the Hines building, addressed at 1100 Louisiana. 

 

The Wells Fargo Tower would be out of this shot to the left and the gas station would actually be where the Pappa's BBQ and parking garage are now . . . right?

 

The plaza between Ideson and the main HPL would be behind us, to the north, no?

[IronTiger]

What's the highway in the foreground?

[torimask]

What's the highway in the foreground?

I think it's somewhere in the loops off of I-45 circling around to get down to Polk?

 

 

 

[FilioScotia]

Torimask:  The photo is facing generally to the southwest. The plaza between the two library buildings is directly behind the gas station.  602 Lamar is two blocks west of 1100 Louisiana. Check it out on Google Maps. 

 

 

IronTiger: That overpass is the I-45 southbound exit to McKinney St behind the City Hall Annex.

 

[torimask]

Torimask:  The photo is facing generally to the southwest. The plaza between the two library buildings is directly behind the gas station.  602 Lamar is two blocks west of 1100 Louisiana. Check it out on Google Maps. 

 

 

 

I've checked it on Maps and in Google earth present day and historic imagery. 

 

602 Lamar and 1100 Louisiana are the same block as far as I can tell: 

 

 

 

 

 

The red X is where I believe the gas station was situated, now Pappa's BBQ and the parking garage. Standing in the upper levels of Ideson (marked with the tilde on its roof) facing the hospital at 602 Lamar from the photo in the Chronicle files, was the only way the street grid makes sense.

 

The library plaza (marked in the blue square) would then have to be behind the photographer?

[Tumbleweed_Tx]

The slight blur in the rails in the foreground says this was taken on the Piece Elevated at about 30mph, rush hour traffic

[FilioScotia]

The article where I found the photo says it was taken from the roof of the Ideson library in the early 50s. It looks across the corner toward the southwest. Ergo, the gas station at lower right was only a few feet from the Ideson's back doors. It was at the edge of what is now the library plaza. 

 

Why do you think 602 Lamar and 1100 Louisiana are in the same block? 

 

[57Tbird]

Here is the downtown page out of a 1992 Houston Key Map atlas.  Some of the building names have changed in the time since that photo was taken, but it gives a good perspective of the building layouts with block numbers.  Looks like the photo was taken looking to the southeast from the ramp heading to the I-45/Pierce Elevated with the McKinney exit ramp just above, as Ross mentioned.

 

 

[FilioScotia]

Boy do I feel dumb. I now realize that I've been looking at the hospital photo from the wrong orientation. It was taken from the roof of the Ideson Bldg, and I assumed the street running left to right was Lamar. Wrong. I now see that it was Smith St, going north to south left to right, and the street at the far left going out of the picture was Lamar going west to east from right to left. 

 

That means the 602 Lamar address was at the SE corner of Lamar and 1100 Smith. I finally noticed the big awning at the hospital's front door on Lamar. The gas station is directly across Smith and across Lamar from the library, and it's visible in Google Earth's 1944 Historical images. Sorry it took me so long to figure this out.