An estimated 1. The George R. Brown Convention Center opens on 11 blocks on the east end of downtown. The center would be expanded in to 1. More than , evacuees flee to Houston from southern Louisiana in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Hurricane Ike makes landfall Sept. By November, Houston returns to pre-recession employment levels; first major metro to do so. Construction boom helps to offset job losses in energy over the next two years. Nearly 80, energy-related jobs are lost. Ellington Airport receives a commercial spaceport license by the Federal Aviation Administration.
Hurricane Harvey inundates Houston with five days of rain. Total rainfall exceeds 50 inches in many parts of the region. My Account. Houston Data. Why Houston. International Business. UpSkill Houston.
Public Policy. Get involved. Living in Houston. Houston Timeline. Explore the history of Houston by decade in this interactive timeline. Houston's birth coincides with Texas' battle for independence as the new town struggles to create an identity. The Laura is the first steamship to visit Houston. A bucket brigade, Protection Fire Company No.
A replica of one of the original maps for the new city of Houston created by Gail Borden, who was hired by the Allen brothers. The decade ushers in a Chamber of Commerce for Houston, the first sustained media outlet for the region, and statehood for Texas. Old Market Square on what is today the north end of Downtown. Houston's identity as a trading hub emerges with improvements to Buffalo Bayou and the first railroad.
Three competing firefighting companies combined into the Houston Volunteer Fire Department. Main Street between Congress and Preston in Source: University of Houston Digital Library. Commerce continues to grow in the s as Houston introduces the first iteration of public transportation.
Mule drawn trolleys first appear in Houston in the s. The idea of a dedicated ship channel crystallizes, setting the stage for Houston's future as a global trading hub. Houston Board of Trade and Cotton Exchange are organized. First grain elevator is built on the Houston Ship Channel. An engraving depicting Buffalo Bayou at Allen's Landing in the s. Electric power and a dedicated communications grid top infrastructure improvements in the s. Houston's Grand Central Station.
Named after George R. Brown, who founded one of the biggest construction companies in the U. Named after Monroe Dunaway Anderson , who did not work in a medical field. His company Anderson, Clayton and Co. Named after local philanthropists John and Dominique de Menil. Dominque was a Schlumberger heiress. Named after William Lewis Moody Jr. One of the foundations biggest initiatives was the Moody Gardens.
The tourist destination itself was actually conceived by his son, Shearn Moody, who was also convicted in a scheme to defraud the charit y. Named after Massachusetts-born businessman William Marsh Rice who made his fortune in Texas in the s. Named after Mark Rothko , an American abstract artist who painted the giant black murals inside the space. He helped design the chapel but died by suicide a year before it opened in Named after the two brothers, Conrad and Marcel Schlumberger , who founded the company in the early s.
Named after former Houston Astros general manager Tal Smith, and that hill has now been flattened before the season. Named after Thomas C. He led the church from until his death from a heart attack in Named after the Toyoda family. Yes, the family spelled the name with a "D". Named after John Henry Kirby , an oil and timber baron known as who lost his wealth in the Great Depression. Named after Michael Louis Westheimer, a German entrepreneur who came to Houston in and operated a flour mill here, among other businesses.
Named after the Williams Companies , a Tulsa, Okla. The art-deco style tower originally went by the name Transco Tower before the company merged with Williams.
Humble is an oil town named after an original settler, Pleasant Smith Humble, who died in This started Houston on the same bifurcated pathway as other Southern towns, where the Black minority developed a subordinated and separate social structure. The slaves lived scattered through the neighborhoods, were subject to an P.
There were few free Blacks in the city. After the Civil War , separation of the races continued with segregated schools and dissociated churches, clubs, bands, businesses, and sports teams. Segregation by law began with separation on trollies in It continued through the first half of the twentieth century, during which Blacks were excluded from or had only limited access to White parks, depots, schools, drinking fountains, buses, restrooms, and restaurants.
Though residential segregation never became part of the legal code, it did operate as part of the social code. Separate residential areas developed for African Americans, Mexican Americans , and Whites by the end of the century. Despite occasional outbursts such as the Houston Riot of , when a Black army unit shot up the town and left nineteen people dead, nothing changed the legacy of slavery until the civil-rights movement of the s and s. Although Houston started as a political boomtown in the nineteenth century, its livelihood depended upon cotton and commerce.
The Texas government left Houston for Austin in , and the city settled into the rhythm of agriculture. Bagby , Charles Shearn , William J. Hutchins , Paul Bremond , and A. Ruthven established trade connections. Activity was greatest during harvest and marketing times, while the rest of the year was spent in sending supplies to farmers.
Oceangoing ships brought to Galveston cargoes of cloth, flour, whiskey, gunpowder, iron castings, lead, coffee, sugar, nails, books, and hundreds of little items. Small river steamships took the goods from Galveston to Houston.
The merchants then sent them by ox wagon to the farmers in the hinterland. The Houston Morning Star started on April 8, These early newspapers reflected the local interests in cotton production, roads, railways, and bayou clearance. From the beginning, Buffalo Bayou was difficult to navigate.
Charles Morgan , a Gulf Coast shipowner, eventually took over and in opened a twelve-foot-deep waterway to Clinton, a port town below Houston. The United States government assumed Morgan's work in and after delays dug a ship channel through Galveston Bay and Buffalo Bayou to a turning basin above Harrisburg.
The Houston Ship Channel opened in and has been since widened and deepened. It made Houston a deepwater port variously ranked second or third largest in the United States, with access to the shipping of the world.
Complementing this facility, Houstonians worked to build railroads into the countryside. Paul Bremond, a Houston merchant, began a slow northwestward construction of the Houston and Texas Central Railroad in This line started as the Galveston and Red River, changed its name in , and reached Hempstead in This linked Houston with the sugar plantations of the Brazos valley.
Other roads were started, and by Houston was the rail center of Southeast Texas with five lines stretching fifty to miles south, southeast, west, east, and northwest. The Civil War interrupted construction, but building revived afterwards. When the Houston and Texas Central reached Denison in , Houston joined the national rail network.
The railroads efficiently spanned the muddy bogs of the coastal prairie. Although roads existed from the start, travel was often slow and rough. Roadwork was costly, and significant improvement came only with the construction of all-weather highways in the s. The city's first expressway, the Gulf Freeway, connected Houston and Galveston in and later became a part of the interstate highway system. The various transportation systems, along with the communication systems of mail, telegraph built in —54 and telephone —95 , allowed Houston to develop as a cotton and lumber market in the nineteenth century.
The discovery of oil at the Spindletop oilfield dramatically changed the Houston economy in the twentieth century. Oil companies chose to locate refineries along the Houston Ship Channel, where they were safe from Gulf storms.
By forty oil companies had located offices in the city. Sinclair Oil Company built the first major refinery in World War II brought a demand for synthetic rubber, gasoline, materials for explosives, and ships from the area. Concrete barges, steel merchant vessels, and mid-size warships were built along the ship channel.
Houston Shipbuilding Corporation, a subsidiary of Todd Shipbuilding Corporation, for example, built Liberty Ships and employed 20, workers by July Nearby coastal deposits of salt, sulfur, and natural gas supplied the ingredients for petrochemicals, and the United States government provided the contracts for war materials.
By a complex of some interrelated refineries extended from Corpus Christi along the coast to the Louisiana border. The main exports and imports of the Port of Houston, consequently, were petroleum or petroleum-related products.
Houston thus became a world energy capital in the s, expanded with the rise in oil prices, and suffered with the downturn during the s. As a result, in the mids, Houston lost population for the only time in its history. The developments of the twentieth century, however, made Houston the largest city in Texas in , when the population was , Facilities for urban living had to develop along with the growth.
Merchants and others complained about the city streets from the beginning. Efforts to rise out of the mud and dust featured experiments with cypress blocks, gravel, planks, shell, limestone blocks, and later cement and asphalt.
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