Houston Street

“ Many New-Yorkers, recognized among our young and active men, can recollect when Houston Street was called North Street because it was practically the northern boundary of the settled district. Middle-aged men remember the swamp of Lispenard's Meadow, which is now the dryest part of Canal Street; some recall how they crossed other parts of the swamp on boards, and how tide-water practically made a separate island of what is now the northern and much the larger portion of the city. ”

“ In happy Houston homes light feet are dancing away the hours ’neath holly and mistletoe, but outside stalk those who inherit want and care and misery, to whom the coming season brings nothing of hope or joy.
Two young men are wending their way up Preston Street. One is holding the other by the arm and guiding his steps. The sidewalk seems to run in laps and curves, twisting itself into hills and hollows and labyrinthine mazes. One of the young men thinks he is dying. ”

“ Here in the Ghetto all the unrestrained child nature asserted itself, and being children they had no thought for the morrow and having been born in America, they were boisterously happy.
My host decided that after all humanity on Houston Street is not so different from that on Fifth Avenue. The women, especially the younger{294} ones, were gowned as fashionably although less extravagantly; pony coats being the style on Fifth Avenue were also found on Houston Street, and most of the women who paraded both streets looked very much as if they belonged to the same herd. ”

“ From Houston Street, which forms the base of the triangle, three streets—Commerce, Main, and Elm—trisect the plaza, converging at the apex of the triangle to form a triple underpass beneath a multiple railroad bridge almost 500 feet from Houston Street.C2-43 Elm Street, the northernmost of the three, after intersecting Houston curves in a southwesterly arc through the underpass and leads into an access road, which branches off to the right and is used by traffic going to the Stemmons Freeway and the Dallas-Fort Worth Turnpike. ”

“ Starting from Bleecker street, and running in a winding manner south-easterly to Houston, it affords with its snug little dwellings, its blossoming gardens in the grass-plat centers before the low, red brick cottages, from which it derives its name, a quiet abode for a few old-time families of moderate means, whose necessities compel them to live and maintain some show of respectability in this most undesirable quarter of New York. ”

“ Below Houston Street the door-bell in our age is as extinct as the dodo. East of Second Avenue, and west of Ninth Avenue as far up as the Park, it is practically an unknown institution. The nearer the river and the great workshops the more numerous the tenements. The kind of work carried on in any locality to a large extent determines their character. ”

“ Looking south on Main Street in 1910, when the street still ended at Buffalo Bayou, from the point where the Main Street bridge now spans the bayou.
One of the best early descriptions of Houston is that of Mary Austin Holley, who saw the town in December, 1837: “The Main street of this city of a year extends from the landing foot of Main Street into the prairie.... On this main street are two large hotels, 2 stories, with galleries (crowded to overflowing) several stores 2 stories—painted white—one block of eleven stores (rent $500 each) —some 2 story dwelling houses—& then the capitol ... ”

“ At the Houston Grand Central Depot when the trains come in there are to be seen laughter and lanterns, smiles and sandwiches, palavering and popcorn, tears and tamales.
To the student of human nature is presented a feast; a conglomerate hash of the lighter passions and eccentricities of man; a small dish whereof, ye Post Man will endeavor to set before you.
The waiting room is bright with electric lights. The line of omnibuses and hacks line the sidewalk on Washington Street, and the drivers are crowding close to the dead line on the south side of the depot. ”

“ The mode of life of the merchant or business man does not bring him in contact with crime or the haunts of criminals. He may pass down Sixth avenue, or Third avenue and the Bowery, on the Elevated railroad; or through Greene, Wooster, and Bleecker streets, the Bowery, Fourth avenue, Forsythe, Canal, Thirty-fourth, Houston, Twenty-third and Chatham streets, and other thoroughfares, in a street car, knowing nothing about the inmates of the houses lining either side of those same streets, or their manner of life, or anything about those inhabiting the basement beneath. ”

“ That’s what Capitalism is, a wampire that sucks your blood ... day ... and ... night.”
It is beginning to snow. The flakes are giltedged where they pass the streetlamp. Through the plate glass the Cosmopolitan Cafè full of blue and green opal rifts of smoke looks like a muddy aquarium; faces blob whitely round the tables like illassorted fishes. Umbrellas begin to bob in clusters up the snowmottled street. The orator turns up his collar and walks briskly east along Houston, holding the muddy soapbox away from his trousers. ”

“ Soon it would be time to test that theory—but the time had not yet come.
"Stand by and wait for orders, Houston," said the speaker in Houston's ear. "We've got men inside the building."
Sir Lewis Huntley opened the sparkling, translucent door of Number 37 Upper Berkeley Mews and went inside.
Arthmore pulled the cab over to the curb a few yards from the entrance and the two men waited in silence. All around them were other men, some in private cars, some walking slowly along the street. All of them were part of the net that had gathered to catch one man. ”

“ At last—the way seemed a long one, and the pony, always slow and measured in his movements, appeared more than usually addicted to his besetting sin of taking his own time upon the road—at last the houses of Gawthorpe came in sight, the High-street was gained, and the Bell Inn, a flat-faced red-bricked building of imposing dimensions, rose up before the elderly pair of anxious and troubled visitors, in all the busy dulness of a county town’s best inn. ”

“ Sir Lewis snapped the light out, drew on the cigarette, and strode on down the street, swinging a blue plastex brief case which contained a thousand pounds in United Nations Bank of England notes.
Houston decided the baronet had not been looking for a tail; he wished he could probe the man's mind to make sure, but he knew that would be fatal. He'd have to play the game and hope for the best.
"He's heading east," Houston whispered. "Doesn't look as if he's going to get a cab." ”

“ It is more than I can bear to live with her. I would rather beg my bread, rather be a servant a hundred thousand times, than go back to Mrs. Beacham and be treated as she has treated me. But,” suddenly letting down the window of the cab, and looking out into the street, “you are not really taking me back to Updown? John,” clasping her hands in wild entreaty, “I implore you not to let me live again at Pear-tree House. I don’t know why it is—I can’t account for it—but besides my being frightened at your mother, I have a fear upon me, a great dread, of that old house. ”

“ Anderson to make such arrangements as would allow of this being the case. As a result, I was informed a little later that the Times people had arranged that Mr. Houston should be the person with whom I should deal, and that to him alone should I be known pending my appearance in the witness-box. This was the first mention I had ever heard of Mr. Houston, and it was with no little curiosity I made my way to No. 3 Cork Street in search of the gentleman to whom I bore a single line of introduction. ”

“ Many “think of Houston as a cluster of mud huts around the Shamrock Hotel, in the cellars of which people hide from the sticky climate, emerging at long intervals to scatter $1000 bills to the four winds,” Gerald Ashford wrote in 1951. Such a fancy formed a dominant theme of Houston appraisals during a brief and a bizarre period. The myth that Houston’s population consisted mainly of the rich was absurd, but the millionaire legend, though arresting to the world, was a liability to Houston. For one thing, it obscured the city’s reality, which was itself exceptional enough. ”

“ With a median age of 27.5 years, Houston’s population is the youngest of America’s big cities. The city itself seems younger than it is, for since the 1920s Houston has given the impression of being always new. Few structures stand long enough to become old. When the lovely patina of age does get a chance to form, it is scrubbed away as though it were an embarrassment, or so it was removed in 1962 from the bronze of Sam Houston’s equestrian statue in Hermann Park. Houstonians have shown little compassion for their city’s past. ”

“ Houston, Promised Land or New Golconda or whatever writers say of it, is a city of great expectations. Ambitious, confident, it moves swiftly, restlessly. Its profile, a transfiguring skyline moored to the flat Gulf plain, vaguely resembles other modern skylines, but Houston resembles nothing in the world except itself. Ever since World War II the city has beguiled observers, who often approach it with preconception, and often leave it with surprise. ”

“ What is Houston compared with such whole or complete cities as Amsterdam and San Francisco? Only a prophet could say, for this hopelessly vigorous city is incomplete, unfinished; it cannot yet be judged as a whole city. Until then, Houstonians possess the rare excitement of living in a city during the springtime of what may become greatness, a city budding and shooting with the extravagance of nature’s annual renewal, a city in its feast years. ”

“ George Henry Hermann, an eccentric who was born in Houston in 1843 and later gave the city a great hospital, Hermann Park, and Hermann Square downtown; and M. D. Anderson and Hugh Roy Cullen, the philanthropists.
Houston’s good fortune during its first century and its extraordinary rise afterward have tempted some to call it a city of destiny. But the cliché signifies an irrevocable fate in spite of man’s successes or failures. And man, not fate, decisively controls the fortunes of cities.
How is one city more or less than another? ”

“ But the occupants of both carriages appeared to be great favorites with the populace who thronged the Plaza, the windows, the flat roofs of the houses, and every available place for hearing and seeing.
The blue flag of Texas fluttered gayly over the lovely city; and there was a salvo of cannon; then, into the sunshine and into the sight of all stepped the man of his generation. Nature has her royal line, and she makes no mistakes in the kings she crowns. The physical charm of Houston was at this time very great. ”

“ An old Chicago lawyer named Hait or Haut or something like that had business with the same company. . . It was the time Houston was celebrating the fact they had come to be the second city in size in the South—a gain of over 100% in ten years. Parades. Newspaper head lines. Everybody talking "Houston, Houston." We outsiders got a bit tired and bored with all the talk. One of the vice presidents of the company took us riding and to see his country home, all the way out talking up Houston, and occasionally giving the old man a little peck about Chicago lawlessness, racketeers and gunmen. ”

“ In spite of the lingering legend, Houston is in fact a city of working people. They came en masse during World War II, more than forty thousand to the shipyards alone, and most remained. Unlike the state, whose population has grown mainly from the excess of births over deaths, Houston has grown also from people moving in from the rest of Texas and other states.
The city’s population differs widely from that of most other American urban areas, having proportionately fewer industrial workers and more professional, technical, and white-collar workers. ”

“ Birds and beasts almost always know beforehand; often man can tell. Then, suddenly, the temperature falls and sounds break the stillness, first a low soughing of the wind, then bedlam as the fury commands the city.
Arriving in Houston in 1873, Edward King instantly experienced his first norther, “which came raving and tearing over the town.... It was glorious, exhilarating, and—icy.” The infrequent northers are confined, like the oyster, to months with an “r,” but mostly to November, December, and January.
Nothing about Houston is harder to pin down than its weather. ”

“ To those who really understand them, every one of the great, vital streets of the world has a soul as well as a body. The social invader from the West, the merchant whose establishment still found profit in Grand Street, the banker from Broad Street, or the ship's chandler from South, the club awakening to the fact that its quarters on Broadway or in one of the side streets near Irving Place was too far downtown, or in size inadequate to its growing membership—those were the agencies that wrought the Avenue's material development. ”

“ During the 1950s Houston was a leading example of the new urban America caused by the economic impetus of World War II and the increased post-war migration of rural people to cities. No period in the city’s history approaches the importance of World War II and the years after. Before the war Houston was an ambitious small city. ”

“ There came but one clash beneath my notice, and that would feed my humor. Houston was just come into town, as rude and tangled a gentleman in every politer technicality as the bears of his native woods. With him for his table-mate he bore away the wife of Ingham of the Treasury. ”

“ The largest of twenty-one places named Houston in the United States, not counting Houston City and Houston Junction, both in Pennsylvania, Houston is the seventh American city in population and the second, after Los Angeles, in land area. But to call Houston the seventh city in population, though correct, is unrealistic. The true population of a modern city is shown not by the number of people living within its legal limits but by the number living within its metropolitan area, which for Houston is Harris County. ”