page_title: Architecture of Houston
section_title: Skyscrapers
hierarchical_section_title: Architecture of Houston / Skyscrapers
context_page_description: The architecture of Houston includes a wide variety of award-winning and historic examples located in various areas of the city of Houston, Texas. From early in its history to current times, the city inspired innovative and challenging building design and construction, as it quickly grew into an internationally recognized commercial and industrial hub of Texas and the United States.
  Some of Houston's oldest and most distinctive architecture is found downtown, as the city grew around Allen's Landing and the Market Square historic district. During the middle and late century, Downtown Houston was a modest collection of mid-rise office structures, but has since grown into the third largest skyline in the United States. The Uptown District experienced rapid growth along with Houston during the 1970s and early 1980s. In the late 1990s Uptown Houston saw construction of many mid and high-rise residential buildings. The Uptown District is also home to other structures designed by architects such as I. M. Pei, César Pelli and Philip Johnson.
context_section_description: Some of Houston's oldest and most distinctive architecture are found in the northern sections of downtown, as the city grew around Allen's Landing and the Market Square historic district, where several representations of 19th-century urban architecture still stand.
  The Hilton Houston Post Oak (formerly Warwick Post Oak) Hotel was designed by I. M. Pei. Its twin towers are joined by a spacious lobby with a curved glass ceiling that by day lights up the entire space. The hotel has more than 30,000 sq ft (2,800 m²). of meeting space and 448 guestrooms, including two 3,000 sq ft (280 m²). presidential suites and is only one block from the Galleria. In 2005, the hotel was renovated to reflect a more contemporary style that mirrors the original design.
  The Rice Hotel, built in 1912 on the former site of the old Capitol building of the Republic of Texas, was restored in 1998, after years of standing unused. The original building was razed in 1881 by Colonel A. Groesbeck, who subsequently erected a five-story hotel named the Capitol Hotel. William Marsh Rice, the founder of Rice University, purchased the building in 1883, added a five-story annex, and renamed it the Rice Hotel. Rice University then sold the building in 1911 to Jesse Jones, who demolished it and built a 17-story structure on the site. The new Rice Hotel building opened on May 17, 1913. This historic hotel now serves as an apartment building known as The Rice Lofts, designed by Page Southerland Page.
  The Texas State Hotel was built in 1926 from a design by architect Joseph Finger, who also created the plans for Houston's City Hall. The hotel has Spanish Renaissance detailing and ornate metal canopies, which remain largely intact even though the building had, until recently, been vacant since the mid-1980s. The hotel is a designated City of Houston landmark, and with refurbished ornate terra cotta detailing on the façade, it has been returned to active use.
  The Gulf Building, now called the JPMorgan Chase building, is an Art Deco skyscraper. Completed in 1929, it remained the tallest building in Houston until 1963, when the Exxon Building surpassed it in height. Designed by architects Alfred C. Finn (designer of the San Jacinto Monument), Kenneth Franzheim, and J.E.R. Carpenter, the building is seen as a realization of Eliel Saarinen's acclaimed second-place entry to the Chicago Tribune Tower competition. Restoration of the building was started in 1989, in what is still considered one of the largest privately funded preservation projects in American history.
  The Niels and Mellie Esperson buildings are examples of Italian Renaissance architecture in downtown Houston. Designed by John Eberson, the two buildings were built in 1927 and 1941, respectively. They are detailed with massive columns, great urns, terraces, and a grand tempietto at the top, similar to one built in the courtyard of San Pietro in Rome in 1502. Mellie Esperson had the first building constructed for her husband, Niels, a real estate and oil tycoon. His name is carved on the side of the building in large letters at street level. The name "Mellie Esperson" is carved on the accompanying structure, known as the Mellie Esperson building, although it is really just a 19-story annex to the original building.
  Designed by Fort Worth architect Wyatt C. Hedrick, the Shamrock Hotel was an 18-story building constructed between 1946 and 1949 with a green tile pitched roof and 1,100 rooms. The hotel was conceived by wildcatter Glenn McCarthy as a city-sized hotel scaled for conventions with a resort atmosphere. The Shamrock was located in a suburban area three miles (5 km) southwest of downtown Houston on the fringes of countryside and was meant to be the first phase of a much larger indoor shopping and entertainment complex called McCarthy Center, anchored alongside the planned Texas Medical Center.  At the hotel's north side was a five-story building containing a 1,000-car garage and 25,000-square-foot (2,300 m²) exhibition hall. To the south was the hotel's lavishly landscaped garden designed by Ralph Ellis G
caption: One Shell Plaza
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