Category Archives: History

The Pennsylvania State Capitol

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Pennsylvania has a handsome capitol, no doubt about it. At its dedication in 1906, TR called it “the handsomest building I ever saw.”

That must have been satisfying for the architect, Joseph Huston (d. 1940), to hear, or hear about.

But he didn’t have long to bask in the glory of his design. A few years later, Huston was in prison. Specifically, Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, back when that was a functioning stony lonesome.

“Huston eventually was charged with conspiracy to defraud the State of Pennsylvania by accepting bribes for the work on the Capitol and by charging the State more than was proper for the contracts required to complete the structure,” says Philadelphia Architects and Buildings. “Convicted on 29 April 1910, and after an unsuccessful attempt to mount a new trial… he served six months and 20 days in prison but was paroled on 20 December 1911 and returned to an architectural practice which was significantly affected by his legal difficulties.”

I’ll bet his practice was affected. An unusual tale for an architect, something you’d associate more with a contractor, but I suppose the temptation was too great for Huston and besides, grand buildings throughout the ages all had cost overruns, right? All the way back to the Ziggurat of Ur. That clearly didn’t cut any ice with the jury.

Whatever his side interests, Huston promised a palace of art to the commonwealth, and he delivered.

I arrived in Harrisburg fairly late in the afternoon of April 8, on my second day driving east. Pennsylvania is a long drive across, and I’d started in Cleveland, with the goal of reaching Trenton, New Jersey that evening. I did, but it didn’t leave much time to stop and see things. I was glad to learn that the capitol building was open until 6 pm, so I made time for it.

The grand staircase, flowing down to, or up from, the distinctive tile floor under the rotunda.

Art flourishes not just on the vaulting dome or the ornate walls, but even underfoot.

Henry Chapman Mercer mosaic

Henry Chapman Mercer, a Pennsylvania artist, did the mosaics grouted into the floor – scenes from the history of the commonwealth, from pre-history to the dawn of the 20th century. A good introduction to Mercer, one of the more interesting people I’ve first heard about lately. Among other achievements, he left behind his home, Fonthill; the Mercer Museum; and the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works, all in Doyleville, Pa., which is suburban Philadelphia these days. As if I needed another reason to revisit metro Philly.

A lot of scenes, it turns out, more than I could photography or even see. Including one that might not have made the cut in later times.

The House and Senate chambers weren’t open late that afternoon. I understand they are important parts of the art palace. More can been seen here about the decorative arts of those rooms, and the rest of the capitol.

Not art, but this was good to see. I figure it isn’t literally for newspaper reporters any more, but I like to think when you open the door, you step into the press room of The Front Page.

Statuary out front: two groups consisting of 27 figures. The artist in this case is George Grey Barnard (d. 1938), born in Pennsylvania, but I believe Chicago can claim him. Wouldn’t be a palace-of-art from 100+ years ago without larger-than-life statues in profusion. I’m glad the commonwealth has seen fit to keep them clean.

The upper couple would seem to be Adam and Eve; and wags might call the other couple Adam and Steve.

In the sidewalk in front of the capitol: The Keystone. You can see that in various parts of the state, but I remember it most from the keystone-shaped signs in Pennsylvania that tell you that a garage will do state inspections for your car.

The view down State Street from the entrance. Off in the distance, the Susquehanna.

Couldn’t very well leave Harrisburg without a stroll down that street.

Two monumental churches rise on the street. The Cathedral Parish of Saint Patrick.

Grace United Methodist Church.

I had to be on my way afterward. But any trip that starts off with a grand capitol is going to be a good one.

GTT ’26 Details

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Time for spring break. Back to posting around April 26, when it might actually be spring in northern Illinois. There have been a few days recently when I’ve been able to sit out on my deck comfortably, which is my idea of spring, but not that many.

The recent trip to Texas seems like a while ago now. As usual, though, there were many details. A lot more than I can convey, but here are a few more.

Faces

At the National Funeral Museum in Houston, one display featured, chronologically, 20 photographs of Abraham Lincoln. The third to last one, from February 1865, is one you don’t see much.

On a wall in downtown Nacogdoches, familiar figures from Texas.

I didn’t work out who this was supposed to be, in downtown Houston. Better that way, I think.

Signs

This place in Austin, well known to Tom, serves most delicious tacos.

Bastrop: Cobbling runs in the family.

Belton.

Structures

A re-creation of an ancient Caddo home.

Durst-Taylor Historic House & Garden in Nacogdoches.

The Old Stone Fort Museum in the same town, which is made of stone, but was never a fort. On the campus of Stephen F. Austin State University. Recommendation to the university: if you want people to visit the place, provide just a little unrestricted parking. A little visitor parking anywhere on campus would be good.

Then again, the university seems determined to move the structure anyway — which might mean taking it apart, and then not putting it anywhere where because such a move would cost too much.

A place that has seen better days in Houston.

Downtown Lockhart.

The Southwest Museum of Clocks & Watches is permanently closed, alas.

Items

Cosmic in Austin is a bar and a collection of food trucks that surround an informal plaza with a lot of tables and chairs and shade. It’s a very pleasant place, and within walking distance of Tom’s home.

Houston manhole covers.

An artifact at the Old Stone Fort, but from San Augustine, and a hyperlocal soda bottle.

The New Mexico flag near Carlsbad NP.

Landscapes

Not just any landscapes, but within the Sierra Madera Astrobleme in West Texas. US 385 cuts right through the ancient crater for about eight miles, on the way to Marathon. You’d never know but for signs telling you that you’re entering the astrobleme, and one telling you that you are leaving it.

Memorials

The Houston National Cemetery.

RIP, Richard Allen Wilson. I don’t think that I’d ever seen an infinity symbol on a national cemetery stone. That, of course, made me curious, and I checked: it is one of the 98 various symbols that the National Cemetery Administration allows. The list is here.

I’m familiar with most of them, but not quite all of them, such as the Church of World Messianity, which is a Japanese new religion – it’s hard to keep track of all of those – and the Aaronic Order Church, which may or may not be part of the LDS movement, but in any case is an American sect. Hard to keep track of all those, too.

The NCA says: “No graphics (logos, symbols, etc.) are permitted on Government-furnished headstones or markers other than the available emblems of belief, the Civil War Union Shield, the Civil War Confederate Southern Cross of Honor, and the Medal of Honor insignias… Emblems of belief for inscription on Government headstones and markers do not include social, cultural, ethnic, civic, fraternal, trade, commercial, political, professional or military emblems.”

So (for example) symbols for the Loyal Order of Moose or some odd emoji or maybe a grawlix will not be considered, though as a comment about the Army, the latter would be funny.

Finally, a less formal memorial, but I’m sure just as heartfelt.

A memorial for Francisco Lin Herrera happens to be near the Giant paintings outside of Marfa. He died in an accident along that stretch of US 90. RIP, Francisco.

More Marfa

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Entering Marfa, Texas, from the east on US 90, I spotted this off to the side of the road.

A side road offers a view but not, as far as I could see, access to the site.

Also no signage, which I took to be a bonus. Like the Cadillac Ranch, the thing was just there. It can be looked up later, of course, to reveal that it’s a large bit of sculpture called “Sleeping Figure” by Los Angeles-based artist Matt Johnson and only moved to Marfa in 2024 from its original place in the Coachella Valley.

In town, we took a stroll down Highland Ave. and around the courthouse. The former Marfa Opera House.

Later the Palace Theater. Various sources, which seem to be copying each other, say that the theater closed in the 1970s, which is probably accurate, and that an artist uses it as his studio now, which I’m less certain about, since there place looked wholly vacant. Still, as an art town, you’d think Marfa would use the space for something closer to its original uses – live events, maybe standard theater and movies, but also popup performance art from time to time.

A number of churches ring the courthouse. St. Paul’s Episcopal.

First United Methodist.

First Christian Church.

It’s a coincidence of placement, probably, but it still looks like the church and the pickup truck are a set. An answer to the longstanding theological question, WWJD, What Would Jesus Drive?

Marfa Texas

Elsewhere in Marfa, an example of something you see when doing something else – in this case, buying gas.

West from Marfa on US 90, on the road to Valentine and Van Horn, are characters from the last of James Dean’s three movies, the one in which he implausibly grows old. Some of that movie was filmed in the area – on the ranch behind the barbed wire, in fact.

“A donation to the city of Marfa, the mural by artist John Cerney honors the movie Giant (1956), which was partially filmed in this small west Texas town,” says Texas Time Travel. “The mural is a collaboration with singer/songwriter/musician Michael Nesmith who made possible the addition of an audio element to the mural installation. The sounds of Nesmith and his First National Band Redux play continually on a loop from hidden speakers near the automobile in the scene.”

Further down the same road, in fact close to the hamlet of Valentine, is the Marfa Prada. Not the Valentine Prada, because who has ever heard of Valentine, Texas (pop. 217)?

Texas Time Travel again: “Prada Marfa is a site specific, permanent land art project by artists Elmgreen & Dragset, commissioned by Art Production Fund and Ballroom Marfa. Modeled after a Prada boutique, the sculpture houses luxury goods from the famed brand’s fall 2005 collection of bags and shoes.”

Detail near the road. Not sure if it was added by the artist or someone else.

The fence partly around the locked building is festooned with love locks.

And a love chain? For a more spicy time.

Downtown San Angelo

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I had a fondness for maps as a kid, and few were better than the Texas State Highway Maps produced by the Texas Highway Department, a predecessor agency of the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT). One of the maps’ features was a small stroke of genius – one later dropped, of course – that put the very largest urban areas in yellow, mid-sized ones in green and relatively small cities in brown. At a glance you could size up the size of a place you might be driving, if you didn’t happen to know.

Under that scheme, San Angelo, Texas, came in green, if I remember right. Not in the same league as yellow Houston, Dallas, San Antonio or Austin, or even El Paso and Waco, but bigger than places like Pampa, Killeen or Orange, again if I remember right (the old maps are tucked away in San Antonio). Why was there a mid-sized city in San Angelo’s location, I don’t ever remembering asking.

Easy enough to find out now: a frontier fort at confluence of two sizable rivers whose town grew as nearby cattlemen prospered, and oil services took root. In our time, there are also other usual-suspect major employers, such as schools and hospitals, and the military never left, considering the presence of Goodfellow Air Force Base, which managed to survive the wave of base closures and consolidations in recent decades (unlike some).

On a drive from DFW to West Texas, San Angelo seemed like a good place to stop for a night, and we arrived just before dark. The next morning, we took a look around, especially downtown. First, a handsome train station.

Mostly, San Angelo isn’t a high-rise city.

With some small-city exceptions, such as the Hotel —– building.

Street art.

Chicago has cows, San Angelo sheep. Back the USDA for ag stats: cattle are by far the most common livestock in Tom Green County, with $49.5 million in sales in 2022. But there are a fair number of sheep, with sheep, goats, wool, mohair and milk selling $4.2 million that year. For cattle production, the county comes in at only the 30th highest sales volume in Texas; but for sheep etc., the county ranks fifth statewide.

Again with the overrepresentation of cowboys. If there are art sheep on the streets of San Angelo, why no art shepherds? Then again, a modern shepherd probably looks a lot like a modern cowboy, so maybe that is a shepherd.

I had to look him up. Elmer Kelton (d. 2009), San Angelo resident, wrote a lot of Westerns.

An unassuming exterior, but a fair amount going on inside, at least most evenings. I had to look up FiFi DuBois, too. The association of the San Angelo establishment with New York entertainer isn’t quite clear — is Fifi an owner or part owner, or is there some kind of licensing agreement?

Anyway: “The House of FiFi DuBois in downtown San Angelo is on the market for $1.3 million as its owners seek a new buyer to continue its legacy,” San Angelo Live reported in February.

“The property is located at 123 S. Chadbourne St. and is approximately a 16,250-square-foot building that includes the ground-floor bar and venue, an Airstream trailer feature, plus a massive upstairs loft and additional rentable spaces that offer potential for multiple income streams, such as office use, short-term rentals, or expansion.

“The business remains open, thriving, and operating normally, according to information found online…”

Now I’m repeating information “found online.” But it’s probably reasonable to assume that the House of Fifi DuBois, with a lineup like this, is alive and well. Looks like the joint has both kinds of music, country and western, and plenty of drag shows. Cowboys and drag shows: now that’s West Texas variety, if you asked me.

Airstream feature? Tucked away in the venue is an Airstream that can be rented separately, it seems.

Meeting Chadbourne St. at the perpendicular is Concho Ave., named for the river, which was named for its bounty of shells. Near that intersection is a building that looks a tad underutilized.

I’ve interviewed too many real estate developers not to think, man, if that building could only be teleported to Brooklyn – or even Scott’s Addition…

The nearby block is mostly occupied, however. With local shops.

Also, it sports a stretch of raised, plank sidewalk.

The plates are flush enough with the boards not to be a trip hazard, fortunately.

A stuff shop: J. Wilde’s.

San Angelo Texas

Is Miss Hattie’s a serious museum about underrepresented local history or a commercial venture romanticizing 19th-century prostitution? I don’t know. Miss Hattie’s, like Fifi’s, was closed at that moment.

One more detail from Concho Ave.

The only reason I know what that is, is that St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in San Antonio, a place I knew well, was founded before the advent of the motor-car. As such, a few iron rings were mounted in the curb in front of the sanctuary – exactly like the ring pictured above. A place to tie up your horse. I might have asked about the feature, or my mother might have pointed it out, but anyway I learned about the iron rings. Does it matter to us auto-mobile drivers that we know this? No. But it adds just a touch of hyperlocal color.

Stephenville & Ballinger, Texas

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Regards for Easter. And Maundy Thursday and Good Friday and Easter Saturday. Back posting on Easter Monday.

This seemed like a fitting set of images for the occasion.

A 100-foot steel cross rises on a small hill a few miles south of Ballinger, Texas, seat of Runnels County. Couldn’t very well pass that up, considering that we were passing through Ballinger (pop. about 3,600) anyway, toward the end of our drive that day from metro DFW to San Angelo, Texas.

“The Ballinger cross was built by a local construction company and commissioned by Jim and Doris Studer, owners of Buddy’s Plant Plus,” notes the Austin Chronicle. “The company is the only U.S. factory making water-soluble fertilizer for Miracle-Gro. After 20 years of making fertilizers in Florida, the Studers went looking for a drier climate. In 1988, they moved the company to Ballinger, where it quickly became one of the largest employers in the county.”

Jim Studer reportedly had been considering the construction of a cross about half that height, as a token of gratitude for a successful business. Then, during a visit to Florida, he was nearly electrocuted in what could easily have been a fatal accident – and decided to roughly double the size of the structure. A thanks to the Lord for not being offed at that moment, perhaps, but no doubt sincere gratitude regardless, for his thriving business. The cross went up in 1993.

We’d left Dallas that morning in mid-February, skirting the cities on I-20 West, except for a brief stop in the Fort Worth museum district. Specifically, at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Yuriko had heard about my visit in 2019 and been slightly miffed, since she too wanted to see the Tadao Ando-designed structure. So we shoehorned a visit for a look at the structure on the day’s itinerary, though not the museum collection. It loses nothing on a second viewing. Gets better.

Go southwest from Fort Worth on US 377 and soon enough you’ll arrive in Stephenville (pop. 20,800 or so), seat of Erath County.

A dairy industry in Erath County? Yes, indeed: sales of $350.9 million in 2022, according to the USDA, by far the largest ag product in the county, and third highest for milk sales among all the 254 counties in Texas, and 24th in the nation. Meat cattle in Erath County are a distant second at $82.7 million that year, so a milk cow standing in the shadow on the Erath County courthouse is just about right.

I had to look it up: number one county in nation for milk production by dollar volume is not in Wisconsin, but rather Tulare County, California, at more than $2.8 billion in 2022. First out of 1,770 counties nationwide producing milk. Now there’s a Jeopardy answer to stump everyone.

We ate lunch in Stephenville at Greer’s, which served a chicken-fried steak to beat all, then took a constitutional around the Erath County courthouse. Starting with one hefty former bank building, vintage 1889.

For Texas county courthouses, James Riely Gordon (d. 1937) is a starchitect, but of course that wasn’t all he did. When he designed this bank, he was 26.

Every town worth its late 19th-century salt has to have an opera house.

Also, a musical favorite son: Milton Brown.

Wiki: “Brown began his musical career in 1930, when he met Bob Wills and guitarist Herman Arnspiger. They were performing at a local Fort Worth dance and Brown joined the duo on a chorus of ‘St. Louis Blues.’ The trio decided to team up to play medicine shows around Texas and Brown landed a regular radio spot on WBAP for the group, where they played a show sponsored by Aladdin Lamp Company, which had the band change its name to the Aladdin Laddies.”

Man, there’s another streaming platform limited series for you: the founding of western swing. Add a fictional love triangle between Bob Wills and Milton Brown and a fictional fetching woman, and some fictional tension between Bob and Milton, who nevertheless produce terrific music to enthusiastic audiences early in the Depression, until Milton dies suddenly in the last episode in a car wreck, as the real musician did in 1936 at age 32. Bob is left to carry on.

Milton’s not the only one honored near the Erath County courthouse.

There were a fair number of plaques like this, too many to read, so I picked one.

Chicago had its art cows (that was in 1999?!?) and Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, has its sturgeons, so Stephenville had boots?

You’d think maybe, considering the importance of dairy locally, there would also be — do dairy workers wear special boots? If so, there should be one of those on display too.

More Stephenville.

US 67 joins US 377 for a run southwest of Stephenville, through such burgs as Dublin, Comanche and Brownwood. Then US 377 peels away to the south; but we followed US 67 west to Ballinger. That town was mostly a stop to get our bearings, really, but I also did a short walkabout while Yuriko napped in the car.

I made the acquaintance of Charles H. Noyes (d. 1917).

Charles was a young Runnels County man who died by being thrown from his horse while minding cattle. His parents tasked no less than Pompeo Coppin to do the sculpture honoring his memory. Nice work, Pompeo. RIP, Charles.

Moonward

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I wasn’t persuaded Artemis II would actually launch today, what with its delays so far, but I found out it did a few minutes afterward, and watched a tape of the launch on YouTube. As one can. Then I nicked a NASA picture of the launch. As one can, since it’s public domain.

NASA/Bill Ingalls

All well and good, but the boy I used to be asks, “Why did this take so long? Why no moon base by, say, the actual year 1999?” The man I became answers, “Money, boy.” An entirely unsatisfactory answer for both of us, but so it goes.

Palestine, Texas

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Terrific lightning storm rolled by to the south last night at about 11. Little rain but a prodigious amount of cloud-to-cloud lightning, unlike anything I’ve seen in years. The last time might have been when we were under such a near-rainless storm in North Dakota nearly 20 years ago. After watching in fascination from the back door, I got my phone and recorded about 30 seconds of the spectacle.

As usual, video only conveys a fraction of the visual power of the moment. But, in spite of the channel it’s on, it isn’t AI.

I was curious today which volume of the Encyclopedia Brown books — whose protagonist is a sharp grade-school boy who solves crimes and mysteries — mentioned the town of Palestine, Texas. Even though I grew up in Texas, I’d never heard of the place until I read an EB story in the early ’70s that mentioned a string of places that some international jewel thief was traveling to: Moscow, Odessa, London, Paris, Palestine and Athens. The boy detective determined that the criminal would be in Texas, since those are all places in that state, and especially because “Palestine” is called “Israel” now, as he said.

You might wonder (I do now, anyway) what business an international jewel thief would have in a place like Moscow, Texas (pop. 170) or London, Texas (pop. 180), but never mind. It didn’t take long for me to find a YouTube review of Encyclopedia Brown Keeps the Peace (Book 6, originally published 1969), including the case that mentions the Texas towns. The reviewer takes the book to task, asking “can grade-schoolers be expected to know this information?” No, of course not. They can be expected to learn it, however.

Now I know exactly where I learned about Palestine (Pal-es-TEEN) more than 50 years ago. I didn’t arrive in Palestine in person until this February, on my way to Dallas from Nacogdoches. During my visit, I made the acquaintance of this fellow.

The sculpture is called “Chuggin’ ” (2020), created by Dewane Hughes, a sculpture professor at the University of Texas in Tyler. Railroads are important in the history of Palestine, so much so that one terminus of the Texas State Railroad – a linear state park along a former short line RR – is in the town. The other terminus is in Rusk, about 25 miles away. Not running in February, unfortunately.

“Chuggin’ is near the town’s visitor center, a former RR depot.

Also nearby is “Forging History” (2014) by Dale Montagne, with the base made of three actual rail car wheels.

Parking was easy to find in downtown Palestine, traffic light. Parallel parking was available right across from the splendid Sacred Heart Catholic Church, as it happened, an 1890s creation by Nicholas Clayton, who was most active in Galveston before the hurricane. Originally many of the congregation were workers on the International-Great Northern Railroad Co., which had a major presence in Palestine.

Palestine still has a sizable rail yard south of downtown.

Took a walk around downtown. Like most large towns, or small cities, there is a mixture of ongoing businesses –

— with vacancies.

Got some buildings with really good bones, as it’s been said in the real estate biz.

The Palestine City Cemetery is to the east of downtown, but not very far. Nowhere is that far in town.

City Cemetery, Palestine Texas

The crumble is on.

Something you don’t see that often. Not just the Stars and Bars, but the very first version with seven stars. In the fullness of not much time, six more stars were added.

Unknown CSA soldiers.

I assume United Confederate Veterans, the Southern equivalent of the GAR, placed this stone and those like it.

The cemetery has an impressive number of worn, broken stones, soldiering on through the elements.

Victorian sentiment in stone, said with due respect.

Would that kind of soft decay, the romanticism of stones worn by time and the elements, have appealed to Victorian sensibilities? Could be.

Caddo Mounds State Historic Site

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Underfoot, ants went about their business in the red soil.

Fire ants? An expert might know, not me. Could be, considering these ant colonies tunnel under the the grounds of Caddo Mounds State Historic Site in Cherokee County, Texas, not far from Nacogdoches.

People, being proportionally bigger, make larger mounds, but for what we assume are entirely human reasons.

“The Caddo selected this site for a permanent settlement about A.D. 800,” says the Texas Historical Commision. “The alluvial prairie possessed ideal qualities for the establishment of a village and ceremonial center: good sandy loam soil for agriculture, abundant natural food resources in the surrounding forest, and a permanent water source of springs that flowed into the nearby Neches River. From here, the Caddo influenced life in the region for approximately 500 years.”

The historic site is large enough to include a winding trail. On a warm, dry day, a most enjoyable walk.

I can’t say I wasn’t warned, but I blithely ignored the warnings and took my walk. Nothing bad happened. A fair amount of life is like that.

Yarn bombing? Here? Why? It might as well have been done by the ancient Caddos, for all I’m going to get an answer to that.

Of course, that tree is gnarly, literally and in the way Jeff Spicoli used the word. So maybe a good candidate for some yarn.

My drive from the historic site to Palestine, Texas, took me on some ill-marked back roads, but we’re not talking the Sahara, so signed roads eventually appear to alleviate any navigational uncertainty. Near the site on Farm to Market 2907 – walking distance, really – is Weeping Mary, Texas, a hamlet that has gotten more attention that one would think, at least considering its small size (pop. 40). “The community was probably first settled soon after the Civil War by freed slaves from neighboring plantations,” the Texas State Historical Association says.

In our time, Weeping Mary is a small agglomeration of standard and manufactured houses and satellite dishes and cars scattered among tall pines, with the church in there somewhere, and it takes all of half a minute to drive through.

San Augustine & Mission Dolores State Historic Site

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From Nacogdoches east to San Augustine, there in the thick of East Texas, is about 20 miles along the highway Texas 21. An excellent drive.

Gary the Builder

Approach San Augustine (pop. 1,920) from the west on the Texas 21, as I did, and you’re certain to notice an unusual wooden structure, as I did.

Roadside America calls it “Major Fun,” and I will say it was a major surprise, since I went to San Augustine knowing very little about the place. RA says: “Gary Brewer, a carpenter, has been adding multi-story decks and spiky wooden things to the outside of his house since 2006. The town has tried to stop him, but the woodwork is all code-compliant. Gary views his house an attraction, and wants people to visit it.”

The tower is at one corner of the county courthouse square. So maybe Mr. Brewer could file the paperwork for his construction by walking across the street. Do you suppose Mr. Brewer the carpenter has a friend named Carpenter who’s a brewer? Possibly.

The rest of the town square shows that many town squares aren’t what they used to be — sporting more than a few vacant storefronts — for all the usual reasons, such as big box retail elsewhere in the county. But businesses cling to life in the courthouse square even so.

Not pictured is the San Augustine Drug Co., a pharmacy near the square, a sizable place that’s more clothes and gift shop than drug store. You can buy ice cream at a counter near one wall. Not quite a classic drug store lunch counter, but distinctive. As I was looking around the store, one of the employees asked if this was my first visit. I told her it was, and she said that first-time visitors receive a cold drink from the counter, no charge. So I sat at the counter and drank a complementary lemon squash, as lemony and delightful as could be.

A Stripling Might Say My Name is the Alternate

A number of the vacant spaces had been recently used as Christmas stores. Even in February, seasonal décor lingered, because why not?

This space wasn’t vacant, exactly, but it was unmarked and its use a little hard to sus. Art space perhaps. The view reminded me of “Texas Sun” for obvious reasons.

There were ghost signs, which isn’t unusual. More unusual is Stripling’s on a building. I have to take an interest in that, an alternate of my name.

“The original town well was dug by slaves on this site in 1860, and a saloon was built over it in 1891,”says the Society of Architectural Historians. “The First National Bank acquired the property, filled in the well, and commissioned this building. Raif Stripling purchased the building several years later and reopened the well as a tourist attraction. In 2003, the San Augustine Historical Foundation bought the property, which is now operated as a gift shop. The entrance canopy’s curious pediment with miniature triglyphs was added to his father’s building by Raiford Stripling.”

You never know what a building has to say.

The Spanish Brought Horses & Frisbee Golf

Not far away from the courthouse, half a mile or so south on US 96, is Mission Delores State Historic Site. Once upon a time, but not for that long, Mission Nuestra Señora De Los Dolores De Los Ais was there.

Mission Dolores has a name that evokes the stone relics of a backwater from the Spanish conquest of the Americas, but I’ve got bad news: the mission seems to have been built of wood, a material not known for durability across the centuries. Modern wooden poles ring part of the site, but otherwise you’ve got to bring a lot of historical imagination to the place.

The actual site wasn’t known until late 20th century archaeology confirmed the location, part of which was destroyed by the building of the highway. The modern state historic site grounds extend far enough to offer a pleasant walk, provided the weather is pleasant, as it was that day.

Gashes in the earth run through the wooded grounds.

They’re something like the ghost signs – ghost trails, you might call them, carved by horses and wagons and Indians and Spaniards and, remarkably, not yet lost to time.

Also part of the park: a Frisbee golf course.

An homage to the fact that the Spanish brought the sport to the Americas as surely as smallpox and horses. If you tell people that with some conviction, wonder how many would believe it?

Downtown Houston

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Who made these skyscrapers possible?

Considering that they are in Houston, Texas, that would be Willis Carrier, father of modern air conditioning.

Heat wasn’t an issue in Houston in February, which was one reason to make my way downtown for a walkabout. Another reason is completely idiosyncratic: I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been downtown. Not 2019, though we could see downtown from Buffalo Bayou and visited Houston’s alt downtown, the Galleria district; or 2015, when we made it to the Menil Collection. Close each time, but no cigar.

A surprising amount of pre-air conditioning Houston remains downtown, though of course even the oldest building has been retrofitted for HVAC.

Nice ironwork on the green one.

Structures surviving from the 1880s.

Imagine those 1880s buildings back in the 1880s. In July, say. Couldn’t have been pleasant. Or any of Houston in 1873, the date of this map.

The 1880 Census counted 16,513 residents of Houston, a near doubling from 1870. Hardy souls who endured the heat and malaria and fetid dung underfoot, among other conditions. Back then, Houston wasn’t quite the port it would be later. The major port then was Indianola, Texas, pop. 5,000 in 1875, before the vicious hurricane that year, that is, the first of two that reduced Indianola to the status of ghost town.

Not all the remnants of an older Houston are buildings, but are underfoot.

There’s a story behind the ghost tiles advertising Loewenstein’s Cigars: an early Texas mercantile family.

Also underfoot.

The splendid former Rice Hotel, designed by John Mauran and completed in 1913, though it only had two towers at the time, becoming triune with a later addition. These days, it’s an apartment building.

The 1910 Harris County courthouse, with enough heft to be a state capitol building.

“An imposing, domed neo-classical edifice, it is a prime example of the civic architecture of Houston of the 1900s and 1910s and is the only example in Houston of the work of Lang & Witchell, a leading Dallas architectural firm of that period,” notes the Texas Historical Commission.

Downtown Houston is also a city of murals. Tall murals.

Even on the parking garage I used.

That one lauds the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, which just ended for this year. “A total of 2.6 million people attended the Houston rodeo this year held across three weeks at NRG Park,” Houston Public Media says.