Quirky H Town: A collection of Houston's oddball attractions

By Carol Barrington, Photographs by J. Griffis Smith

Houston always wows with its sleek skyline, world-class sports venues, myriad cultural options, and revitalized downtown—overall, a very “Now” showcase of energetic sophistication.

But it’s the more elusive, quirky stuff that gives the nation’s fourth largest city its true personality.

Only here can one marvel at a house covered in flattened beer cans and a jungle gym-style tribute to the orange that spreads across two residential lots. Only here are funerals fodder for museums. And only here does a 36-foot-tall sculpture of a cellist serenade passers-by with classical music on a downtown sidewalk.

The Orange Show showcases a maze of statues, whirligigs, farm implements and found objects. Today’s Houston thrives as an entrepreneurial heaven, the roots of which go back to the city’s founding in 1836 as part of a 6,600-acre real estate promotion. The come-on ad that developers John K. Allen and Augustus Chapman Allen placed in the Texas Register on August 30 of that year trumpeted Houston’s location “at a point on the river which must ever command the trade of the largest and richest portion of Texas.”

That “river” was sluggish and muddy Buffalo Bayou, and that “richest portion of Texas” was mostly piney thickets and salt grass prairie barely 60 feet higher than the Gulf of Mexico—potential flood territory for sure.

The Art Car Museum features show cars that won prizes in Houston's annual Art Car Parade. Exhibiting a second stroke of marketing genius, the Allen brothers named their pie-in-the-sky settlement after the hero du jour, Sam Houston, and never looked back. Within a year, Houston had become (temporarily) the capital of the Republic of Texas, and (permanently) a mecca to individualists eager to follow their own stars.

That basic civic trait has not changed in the ensuing 174 years. Entrepreneurs and outright characters of all stripes still thrive here, and you’ll both grin and puzzle as you explore their continuing contributions to the city’s zany Zeitgeist.

Quirky Houston

For information on lodging, restaurants, events, and other attractions in Houston, contact the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau at 713/437-5200 or 800/4-HOUSTON.

The following is contact information for sites mentioned in the story. Call ahead for directions, hours and admission prices.

The Art Car Museum, 140 Heights Blvd., 713/861-5526.
Texas Junk Company, 215 Welch (at Taft), 713/524-6257.
Beer Can House, 222 Malone St., 713/926-6368.
The Orange Show, 2401 Munger St., 713/926-6368.
Radio Music Theatre, 2623 Colquitt, 713/522-7722.
Variety Fair 5 & 10, 2415 Rice Blvd., 713/522-0561.
National Museum of Funeral History, 415 Barren Springs Dr., 281/876-3063.
David Adickes Sculpturworx Studio, 2500 Summer St., is not open to the public, but you can drive by/walk around the grounds and view sculptures.

From the January 2010 issue.

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