Download the full pdf. Vol. 13, No. 2 (Spring 2016) Letter from the Editor by Editor-in-Chief Joseph A. Pratt 2 Home in the Pines: Creating the Woodlands By George T. Morgan, Jr. and John O. King with Joseph A. Pratt 8 Houston: Becoming the Ranch House City By Stephen James 13 The Bryan Museum: History in History A Conversation […]
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Around the Region: Letter from the Editor
At times Houston’s “suburbs” appear destined to reach from San Antonio to New Orleans and from Dallas to Cancun. Our city appears to know no bounds. Yet when I first moved to Houston upon entering Rice University in 1966, our city seemed to stop roughly at the current location of Loop 610. What a difference […]
Home in the Pines: Creating The Woodlands
Since opening in 1974 The Woodlands has grown dramatically as a distant suburb where people can live and work without commuting daily to downtown Houston. It has partially fulfilled its aspiration to be an environmentally friendly place to live for people from all economic strata of life, with housing for the rich, the middle class, […]
Houston: Becoming the Ranch House City
Houston is a vast city that spreads to the horizon in all directions. Gleaming commercial districts punctuate its sprawl, but the landscape is a blanket of residential neighborhoods. They define its architectural character. They tell us how and when the city grew.
The Bryan Museum: History in History
J. P. Bryan discusses his collecting efforts, what inspired his love for history, and his dreams for the new Bryan Museum.
First Providence Then Prosperity
Past the easternmost boundaries of Houston lies the ancient Neches River, where various settlements formed along the banks long before our region’s towns, highways, and industries emerged. This “ideal place for a town” became Tevis Bluff…
A Quest into the World of Rennies
By Taylor Mankin The Texas Renaissance Festival has been a popular form of entertainment for Houstonians since the early 1970s, with thousands making the trek each fall into a world that is part history and part fantasy. Upon entering the fairgrounds, tourists and visitors encounter performers, merchants, and artisans donning medieval-style garb and speaking in […]
Rise, Decline, and Rebirth of the Cullen Rifles
The sound of hands clasping the wooden stocks of 1903 Springfield rifles echoed loudly across the field as a crowd of Houston Cougars football fans watched. Thirty young men, all dressed in their pink and green military dress uniforms, were executing the Queen Anne’s Drill—a complex rifle maneuver that required high levels of discipline and […]
The University of Houston’s Creative Writing Program, 1979-1989
The UH English Department, with John McNamara as chair, shaped its creative writing program in the late 1970s, when such programs were sprouting up across the country, as a way to draw students at a time of “steadily declining graduate enrollment in the Department.” In 1978, the department asked poet Cynthia Macdonald, then at Johns […]
Asian Americans in Houston
The Heritage Society and Houston History have teamed up to present the magazine’s fall issue along with a complementary exhibit in the museum gallery featuring images, documents, artifacts, and personal items related to the articles. The exhibit is on display now at The Heritage Society, 1100 Bagby in downtown Houston. The magazine will be available […]