The Wortham Center was built during the city's worst recession.
Timing is everything.
Especially in theater and in theater-building. The Wortham Center was conceived in the late 1970s, when Houston was in a boom phase and money gushed like Spindletop oil. Instead of demanding tax money like a sports-team owner hungry for a new stadium, the creators of the Wortham passed the hat around the entire city. The tactic worked. Though the Lone Star motif in the light fixtures proclaims the hall's Texas address, Wortham's auditoriums were designed to be as intimate as Broadway theaters or European opera houses.