HOUSTON’S
Five lanes of traffic swoosh slowly past as I walk north up Smith Street into Houston’s downtown. Concrete parking garages compete with swaying live oak trees that rise out of empty sidewalks, reaching for the mid-morning sun. In the distance the revolving restaurant of the Hyatt Regency Hotel and the Chevron towers stab into a cloudless sky.
SECOND
STORY COMMUTE Story and Photography by Spike Johnson
It was here, at the intersection of Jefferson Street that the first of Houston’s skywalks was built in 1963, linking the Whitehall Hotel and the Cullen Center’s multi-building complex. The master plan, by Welton Becket, separated circulation within the complex on three levels underground concourses for trucks, street level for cars, skywalks for pedestrians. From 1971 onwards the skywalk network was expanded to connect additional buildings in the Cullen Center complex, then to other buildings around
Downtown, including the Allen Center and the Houston Center. The skywalks, usually glass sided, steel frame structures, span city streets and intersections in a web of second story bridges. In these air conditioned tubes pedestrians can escape summer temperatures that push towards 100°F, navigating high-rise offices, shopping malls, and parking garages without interacting with city traffic. Today more than 50 of downtown Houston’s city blocks are connected by skywalks, with around ten to each complex. And as I explore the city from this elevated perspective my Fitbit clicks over 20,000 steps. In 1978 the Houston Center built its first skywalk connecting two buildings on adjacent city blocks. Designed by William L Pereira Associates of Los Angeles, on behalf of Texas Eastern Transmission Corporation, the
original plan for the Houston Center was a 75 acre office and shopping complex, built above a four level parking garage. The completed project would cover 32 city blocks, leaving only the street intersections open to the sky. The building proposal prompted widespread public outcry, coupled with the recession of the mid-1970s, halted most of the development. One and Two Houston Center were the only buildings to survive the cutbacks, one an imposing black-glass office high rise, the other a red brick complex of shops and restaurants.
Four Houston Center, a 16-story, twoblock shopping mall was built in 1983. And Five Houston Center, a 27-story office tower, designed by HKS and built for $115 million by Crescent Real Estate, opened in 2002. The tower housed the headquarters of Halliburton from 2003 to 2009. The buildings are linked by matching skywalks, each resembling a simplified subway car – a metal tube with rectangular windows, a beveled roof, and rows of orange tungsten bulbs that line the route in a warm light.
MORE THAN 50 OF DOWNTOWN HOUSTON’S CITY BLOCKS ARE CONNECTED BY
SKYWALKS.
Houston’s skywalks are accessed through building lobbies. Although they’re private structures, most have partial public access. The Hyatt Regency Hotel on Louisiana Street is one easy option, the route passing a convenient coffee shop. And the lobby of the Double Tree Hotel on Dallas Street offers a way into the network from the west. Occasionally street level access is available. The easiest example is an air conditioned tunnel that leads from the Chevron intersection at Bell Street and Smith Street, delivering you into the heart of the Cullen Center. Downtown Houston’s western perimeter is dominated by the Chevron complex. Its glass fronted, cylindrical towers shine silver in the midday sun. Central to Chevron’s three high-rises is a circular skywalk that connects the buildings. The torus shaped bridge floats over the intersection of Bell Street and Smith Street. Its full-length windows and curved white floor complement the trim of the surrounding structures. Enron, one of the world’s largest energy companies, originally occupied the buildings in 1990 when they moved into the first office tower at 1400 Smith Street, later commissioning the construction of two more towers. Enron’s move into downtown Houston prompted a surge of other businesses to migrate into the center of the city, pushing up office rent, and catalyzing architectural development. Five Houston Center, and its accompanying skywalk, is a product of this boom.
Two city blocks north, beneath the copper colored cylindrical tower of the Hyatt Regency Hotel’s revolving restaurant is one of the few diagonal skywalks in the city. It was built in conjunction with the 1100 Milam Building (now CenterPoint), and spans the Louisiana-Dallas intersection, to the east of the Hyatt. The original ducting that once carried air conditioning into the CenterPoint building still hangs from the roof of the skywalk, supported by the 45-degree angles of the external steel frame. The Allen Center’s skywalks, at Smith and Dallas, one block west of the Hyatt, were added to the Cullen Center complex after Century Development acquired the buildings from the original developer, Trammell Crow. Similar to the Houston Center, the buildings of Allen Center were planned to rise from a shared platform, designed to encourage street-level pedestrian circulation through gardens between the buildings. As Century Development added buildings to the initial structure at One Allen Center pedestrians were reluctant to spend time outside in the heat. Instead, buildings were connected with skywalks. In 2016 the Allen Center announced a $48.5 million renovation of the complex, again aiming to tempt the public into open spaces. The designs show One Allen Center’s redesigned façade - the removal of the existing glass entryway and brick base, giving the building a more modern exterior.
The popularity of Downtown’s Discovery Green Park provided the motivation for the renovation, which will offer a one-acre landscaped, tree-lined lawn between One and Two Allen Center – the largest privately owned green space in Downtown. At one end of the park a performance stage will offer visual focus and a means of entertainment.
The move away from the use of skywalks in the Allen Center could hint at a change in future architectural and public attitude. The project could signify a growing need for the outdoors despite the heat, for open space, and a promotion of street level, spontaneous human interaction, from which our beloved skywalks have so far kept us isolated.
PEDESTRIANS WERE RELUCTANT TO SPEND TIME OUTSIDE IN THE HEAT. INSTEAD, BUILDINGS WERE CONNECTED BY
SKYWALKS.