The superlative of the city’s exuberance is the Texas Medical Center. But for one hospital the area, lying just south of Hermann Park, was a forest within the city in 1946. A decade later, at a cost of more than $50,000,000, most of it paid by Houston oil and cotton philanthropies, one of the nation’s leading medical research, educational, and hospital centers was well on the way to completion.
The Texas Medical Center
Though hospitals and universities and the arts help measure a city’s culture, so do department stores, restaurants, and sports. The last is big business in Houston.
Houston’s years of stars are one reason: Eddie Dyer and Dizzy Dean in baseball, George Blanda and Billy Cannon in professional football, Pete Cawthon, college football player and coach, Jimmy Demaret and Jack Burke in golf, the great hurdler Fred Wolcott, Wilbur Hess in intercollegiate tennis, A. C. Glassell, Jr. in fishing, Grant Ilseng in skeet shooting. But the big reason is the mild climate; Houston sports are a year-round activity.
Golf to yachting, hunting to deep sea fishing, Houstonians can span the calendar as participants. And as spectators they have Southwest Conference and University of Houston sports and the noted track teams of Texas Southern University; they have major league baseball and football—the Houston Colt .45s in the National Baseball League and the Houston Oilers in the American Football League; in tennis they have the nationally famous River Oaks Country Club Tournament and in golf the Houston Classic Invitational Tournament; and they have the annual Pin Oak Charity Horse Show, one of America’s leading horse shows.
On one side of the wall, the Coliseum and the rodeo; on the other side, the Music Hall and Sir John Barbirolli.
The Houston Academy, 1859.