telwink

In Vertigo's defense, I've read articles that the tower of the earlier courthouse (1883, I believe) was damaged in the 1900 hurricane. As a side note, the bell tower of the 1873 City Hall was also damaged in the storm and was being rebuilt when the City Hall burned in 1901.

"Harris County has had 5 courthouses:

1838, 1851, 1883, 1910 and the 1953 courthouse."

http://www.texasescapes.com/Houston/Harris...oustonTexas.htm

And neuman, thanks for posting those photos of the chess piece thingy. I was told that Harris County was testing the structural integrity of the dome while they were having a contractor build a replacement cap for the dome, as the old cap was long lost and hadn't appeared in any photos after 1939. Well, by the time the new cap was finished, the structural integrity of the dome was determined to necessitate repairs before it could withstand this much weight safely. Therefore, the cap in those pictures has been sitting, turning green & deteriorating, in a Harris County storage area off of Navigation.

Aah, a bit higher resolution and I'd have a new wallpaper.

If you're serious, PM me your screen resolution and email address and I'll send you one.

Not to pick nits, but isn't that the 701 N. San Jacinto Jail pictured, as opposed to Baker Street?

Cool pic, BTW.

Yes, you're right! Thanks for the correction! I should know that anyway

The coolest thing in that picture is the TRAIN!!!! It was one of the first thing I noticed.

Yeah, isn't that neat?! I love trains. I actually have a better quality photo of the same area with a train in it, although the train is a bit covered by shadow ...

Hey guys, I came across this magazine with some photos of the 1910 Courthouse with the "chess pawn" on top. I also think I might know where it exists today! Before I post the latter, I'm going to try to confirm it and take photos this Friday, so we'll see. 'Til then, ...

Wow, musicman! That is an awesome photo. Can I ask where you found that?

I often wondered why it looked like it was missing the crown at the very top? or cupola rather.

I could be wrong, but I think at one point in time there was a statue of some kind ontop of it.

Great picture!! Back in the late 60's I used to go to Love Street with my friends. There was a small bar underground where we would see live bands......can't remember the name. Anyone remember that??

Mary

That's pretty cool you actually got to visit Love Street. So was the bar directly underground, in sort of a basement of the Love Street building? Thanks for the info!

ben

That's an interesting article. Are there any photos of the 1910 courthouse?

Here's the 1910 Courthouse as it stands today. The restoration project is very exciting, and is essentially under-way, as the interior of the courthouse has been stripped of its 1950 renovation, down to the bare-bones 1910 condition, using original blueprints, photos, and accounts of the courthouse as it existed between 1910 and 1950. The next phase of the project should be kicked off over the next month or two, which will begin the actual "restoration" of the building, brining it back to its majestic 1910 days. It'll be fascinating to see what the building looks like, both interior and exterior, when this restoration is completed ~ it'll be an enormous difference.

-ben

I don't know if the story was true but my Father sold building materials years ago in Houston and he sold concrete block, bricks and mortar to construction firms. Next door to the AT&T building years ago there was an old two story frame house that an older lady lived in. She had lived there for many years and during every phase of construction at the phone building she would sit on her front porch and delicate flower at the workers to stay off her property. On several occasions some form of building material would fall and hit her house and she would scream and yell and call everyone from the phone company to the contractor, to the police, to city hall. Eventually the construction firm just learned that if it happened they would send someone to apoligize and basiclly offer the lady some small amount of money to "settle" the issue. My Father told my that story many times over the years.

HAHA man that is too funny. I love this forum for stories like this. We all know little bits and pieces of this huge, spraawling city we live in. Thanks for sharing that.

This book is excellent. I had the pleasure of meeting the author, David Welling, at his book signing back on Dec. 20th at Story Sloane's gallery. I highly recommend checking out a copy of this book, if you can get your hands on it, and I'm sure that some local places carry it - including, possibly, Story Sloane's gallery.

~ 320 pages, hard-bound

The Table of Contents goes something like this:

1 - Stage Origins

2 - The Nickelodeons

3 - Bigger and Better

4 - The Majestics

5 - The Main Three: The Metropolitan, the Kirby, and Loew's State

6 - The Later 1920s: You Ain't Heard Nothing Yet!

7 - Will Horwitz, Philanthropist

8 - The Neighborhood Theatre, 1934-1949

9 - Hoblitzelle's Interstate

10 - Jim Crow and the Ethnic Theatre

11 - The Fifties: The Incredible 3-D Wide-Screen Technicolor Stereophonic-Sound Ballyhoo Parade

12 - The Drive-in: A View from the Car Seat

13 - The Sixties: The Times, They Are A-Changin'

14 - The X-Houses

15 - From Multicinema to Multiplex: Safety in Numbers

16 - Let Them Eat Candy: The Concession Stand

17 - Beyond the Fringe: Midnight Movies and the Alternative Cinema

18 - Rediscovery in the Age of the Megaplex

19 - Perspectives: An Afterword

I can guarantee it is the most comprehensive source for the subject, as David Welling put a tremendous amount of work into this project. Well worth hunting down a copy.

Hey Boris, I just wanted to say, I really enjoy looking through these photo collections you do. Thanks for posting them!

This is actually a thread I've been meaning to start myself, for quite some time. That link in the above post gives me hope that someone might have more pictures of the galleria during the 70s/80s/90s? 'Twold be much appreciated. I wonder if any Houston Photo Archive collections anywhere in the city might have anything, too.

Thank you for posting these. I never knew about this incident. These are excellent photos, too.

Excellent pictures as usual, Boris. I love the ones in the pond, particularly the skeleton with the skeleton umbrella. What an incredible day to be outside, too. Keep up the good work.

Wow. The two at top are courthouses? Those are beautiful.

Yep, the tan colored one (second picture) is the Harris County Criminal Justice Center, which houses the County Criminal Courts and the State District Courts. The first picture is the brand-spanking-new Harris County Civil Courthouse, which houses the County Civil Courts at Law, the State District Civil Courts at Law, and various Probate courts, as well as the County/District clerks' offices. They're both pretty nice buildings.

Wasn't there supposed to be a Plaza developed in the suface parking lot between the new Civil and Criminal Courthouses? It was supposed to have a big Lone Star in the middle of it. Anyone know the status of this?

I don't know the details of reasoning, but I believe this plan is in limbo right now. It was my understanding that the construction for such a plaza was supposed to begin already. From what I hear, I think they may be re-considering the use of that part of land. There are several county-related construction projects going on right now, and future plans change quite a bit, so we'll just have to keep our ears open to see what happens to that surface lot. They definitely will turn this plot of land into something, and it would be wonderful if they turn it into a park, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Thanks for sharing. My wife's new office is in the Cotton Exchange Building. I think it's a great buildling. The old school mail drop in the entry is awesome.

Yes! That is an incredibly nice building. Someone actually explained to me last week that the white section at the top is actually one floor with a double-high ceiling and double-high windows. The reason for this was that when the building was constructed, and there would be cotton-show-offs at the beginning of the cotton season, they used this huge room to do-so. Now, from what I understand, it is used for special County functions and conferences, but I'm going to have to go check it out now that I've got this new-found information. Or perhaps you can send your wife on some reconnaissance ? Hehe.

Lots of buildings on the northern 1/3 ~ 1/4 of downtown have some kind of "Justice System" affiliation. That is to say, the majority of them are either County-owned facilities, or else they're privately owned with some kind of legal affiliation. I work in this section of downtown, and I think the north-side of downtown has quite a bit of culture. I think most people come into downtown on the West side (Skyline District), south side (45) and east side (59), so the north side of downtown can be easily overlooked, despite a nice skyline, baseball stadium, allen's landing, the criminal justice system, buffalo bayou, etc. Anyways, here are a few photos I've taken around my stomping grounds over the past several weeks; these are areas I see on a daily basis, so I thought I'd share:

New Civil Courthouse

Criminal Courthouse

Criminal Courthouse from Allen's Landing

Criminal Courthouse from the North (facing south)

1910 Courthouse - this building is in the process of being restored back to its 1910 condition

1910 Courthouse

A shot of the legal district, the corner of the Juvenile Justice Center, & the Cotton Exchange building

Juvenile buildnig, Federal Jail, and Cotton Exchange Building

Minute Maid Park

Really nice shots, Boris.

That is a very beautiful part of Houston.

When I am using my 50 mm lens on my Rebel the quality is much better than the Panasonic and it's actually smaller in this case.

The Rebel is a phenomenal camera; absolutely excellent for the price. I still need to get the 50mm 1.8 for my 40D, as the lens is a must have given its speed and cost. I'm a n00b, so let me ask you this Jax; is the 50mm 1.8 good for scenery photography, like most of what you have on your flickr site, for example? What kind of techniques is the 50mm 1.8 good for?

Ricco67: Are you familiar with GIMP? Back when I was on everything open-source, I used GIMP quite a bit for graphics processing. While I used it as a Swiss-Army knife of sorts in my IT toolkit and not really for straight-up photography, I'm pretty confident you can do most anything in GIMP that you can do in Photoshop, as far as photography is concerned.

If you'z interested, http://www.gimp.org/windows/

As for organizing and whatnot, I used to use iPhoto, which made life very easy. Now that I'm primarily on a PC, I use Picasa to organize my photos, and have been pretty pleased with that, although I have yet to see how Picasa handles huge amounts of photos, which iPhoto did reasonably well. I'll probably know soon though, now that the humidity is going away some and the sky is getting clear

As far as cameras go, I have a good friend who uses a $200 Kodak Easyshare, auto-everything, and he gets stunning photographs. I'm actually probably going to get a p&s Canon Powershot or something of the like, so I can have a camera on my belt for instances that its just not practical to have a honking DSLR and telephoto lens on my person.

It's fun to take pictures, I always have a camera with me just in case. I've literally taken thousands of pictures.

I was in downtown when I saw all the Vehicles heading towards the Metro Accident but I couldn't because I was doing something else. What kinda of camera do you have? I just have a cheapy 7megpix camera.

Yes, having a camera on your person at all times is a great way to get some priceless photographs. As for my gear, I use a Canon 40D, which suits me pretty well. While good photography is all about what's behind the viewfinder etc etc, I'm pretty pleased with the camera thus far.

Hey, thanks for the kind words guys.

Jax, your photography on Flickr is extremely impressive to say the least. In fact, powerful Houston photography like yours is what inspired me to get into the hobby. Keep up the great work.

b

So I'm relatively new at photography, and I had this photo I took from the 20th floor of my work building on the North side of downtown, facing Northwest. The sky was completely bleached out in the original, so I used masking layers in photoshop to select the sky, and re-adjust the Histogram as to fix the lighting. What came out of it is this pretty neat shot (I think), where you can see the curvature of the earth, you can see clouds for miles, and you can see rays of sunlight through the sky. Just thought I'd share on good ol' HAIF. Hope all you guys are doing well; thanks for checking out my photo.

Wow, how cool is that? The light rail is in it also.

When they re-do that green building to add the restaurant and canoe rentals, it'll be even better.

What building are you in?

I'm actually in the Criminal Courthouse:

Sorry I don't have a better shot of that one, I'm too lazy to walk outside and down the street

And yes, the Love Street Light Circus will be cool whey the re-dev Allen's Landing. I think the re-development is a wonderful idea, becuase this is a historically rich part of Houston that is relatively un-tapped. As far as the Love Street Light Circus building itself, I am actually keeping a really close eye on when they pull the ply-wood off the building, so I can run down there with my camera and see if I can't bribe my way into the building to get some interior shots before they tear it up.

In fact, interestingly, the back-side of the Love Street Light Circus building has an arched doorway that is coated in a flower theme tile mosaic. Sort of a nice window to the hippy-past that this building used to have.