Houston

Houston is the fourth largest city in the southern United States in the state of Texas, known to the world as the center of NASA manned space flights, as well as the center of the oil industry. Houston has a very hot and humid climate, but this did not stop it from becoming one of the most prosperous business cities in America. To combat heat and humidity, an underground network of air-conditioned halls has been laid that connects the skyscrapers of the business center.

Concrete superhighways can make you insensitive to the merits of Houston when you first approach this sprawling city. But take a look around. This city is truly a multicultural mix of nations, without zoning, in which you will see both world-class painting and traditional folk art. In one mall, a Vietnamese grocery store, a Venezuelan empanada buffet and an expensive Texas butcher shop can easily coexist. And outside the city, there is the Space Center and the Gulf of Mexico beaches on the Galveston barrier island.

Story

The first settlement in the city, Harrisburg, founded in 1826, was destroyed by the Mexican general Santa Ana in 1836. After the expulsion of the Mexicans in August 1836, brothers Augustus and John Allen from New York bought an area near the destroyed city and began to advertise it as the future "trading gate" of Texas. They managed to persuade the Congress of the Texas Republic to move to a new city named after its first Texas President S. Houston. The government was here for two years - in the years 1837-1839. The city grew mainly through the cotton trade. Houston acquired an important port value during the Civil War. After the end of the war, the city became a railway junction; in 1891, 12 railway lines converged here. The first pier was built in 1840 and the construction of the canal began in 1869.By the end of the 20th century, the port of Houston ranked third in the United States in terms of cargo turnover. In 1901, an oil field was discovered in the vicinity of Houston, and the city became the center of the petrochemical industry.

Houston landmarks

Oil is asserted by the outline of the blue-black wedge-shaped twin towers of Penzoil Place by architect Philip Johnson and the spiky Republic Bank Center of red granite. How black gold is mined from the bowels of the earth can be seen in the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences (1 Hermann Circle Drive, near Hermann Park) . Among the exhibits of drilling and refining equipment there is a model of an offshore oil rig.

The Museum of Fine Arts houses a collection of Native American and Pre-Columbian art, while the contemporary art department brings new surprises with wealthy donors. As for the local color, the most attractive sketches of the cowboy life of the artist and sculptor Frederick Remington. It was his paintings of rearing mustangs and well-aimed shooters that became the image of the Wild West.

The Rothko Chapel (3900 Yupon Street) is a beautiful, albeit modest place of prayer regardless of religion, where purely speculative paintings by Mark Rothko are placed in black and pink tones. The chapel and the adjacent Museum of the de Mesnil collection, mainly of surrealist, primitive and Asian art, were donated to Houston by philanthropists Jean and Dominique de Mesnil.

About 40 kilometers southeast of Houston, taking Interstate 45 and then NASA, is the Manned Space Flight Center. Lyndon Johnson. It trains astronauts and houses the NASA Mission Control Center. The Information Center is a wonderful museum of space equipment, rockets, lunar modules, detachable spacecraft and lunar soil. Organized guided tours of the Mission Control Center are conducted by knowledgeable astronauts-trainees, and in addition, you can visit the Skylab training room, living and working compartments of the NASA space laboratory.

Bars and restaurants

Houstonians eat outside the home far more often than residents of any other US city, and the New York Times called the food-lovers' scene "world class." Search online for reviews and local food blogs to keep up to date on which places are popular and which are not. Montrose Boulevards and Upper Kirby are two of the main culinary enclaves, but in the city center the choices are even better. Check out the restaurants centered around Main St and McKinney St and the 2009 Pavillions complex at Fannin St and Dallas St. The selection of steaks in Houston is huge; almost all high-end national cuisine restaurants, Ruth's Chris, the Palm and others, are located on the Westheimer motorway near the Galleria.

Among very young people, the bar and restaurant section of Washington Ave is considered an important topic in Houston's nightlife (although the city center has not been very popular in this part lately) . On the corner of White Oak and Studemont in the Heights area, there are several traditional small bars including a roadside diner, a Hawaiian bar and a live music club in the old house.