Showing posts with label Houston Texas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Houston Texas. Show all posts

Monday, February 26, 2024

Tuesday, February 26, 1924. The Beer Hall Putsch Trial commences.

Eight Nazis, including Adolf Hitler, went on trial for the Beer Hall Putsch.

And:

Press Conference, February 26, 1924

There was snow on the ground in Washington that day.



Dorthy Day write about the Thrills of 1924.

The Thrills of 1924 (February 26, 1924)

The City of Houston was photographed from the top of the Keystone Building.


The building still stands

Saturday, January 6, 2024

Sunday, January 6, 1924. Frigid weather and Rebel offensives.

A cold wave was causing grief, and rebels were trying to take the offensive in Mexico.


A story that would repeat many times in Casper was playing out, with oil companies moving their headquarters from Casper to Denver.  By 2000 it had pretty much set in that headquarters were no longer in Wyoming, with Marathon being perhaps the last major producer to relocate.  Denver remains a major oil headquarters city, but Houston has eclipsed it.  Presently, all that really remains of the major petroleum headquarters that were once in Casper are three office buildings, The Ohio Building, the Pan American Building and the Consolidated Royalty Building. 

Atatürk survived a bomb attack on his home by an uninvited visitor which did, however, injury his wife Latife Uşşaki. 

The Catholic Church in France was allowed to reoccupy former Church property under the "diocesan associations" system.

On the same day, the flood of the Seine peaked at over 7 meters.

Monday, June 26, 2023

Saturday, June 26, 1943. Mutiny in Norway, Choosing Normandy, and Willie Gillis.

Today in World War II History—June 26, 1943: Allied commanders choose Normandy for invasion of France in 1944 and appoint Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory to prepare air plans for D-day.

Sarah Sundin, on her blog.

The crews of six U-boats based in Norway mutinied, refusing to put out to sea in light of high German submarine losses.  They were arrested and placed in Akershus Prison in Oslo.  The collapse of Imperial Germany began, of course, with sailor revolts in 1918.

Fritz Schmidt, age 39, the German Commissioner-General for Political Affairs and Propaganda in the occupied Netherlands died when he "fell, jumped, or was pushed out of a train".

"USS Newell (DE-322), launches sideways at Houston, Texas, June 26, 1943. The ship was named in honor of Naval Aviator Lieutenant Commander Byron Bruce Newell who was killed while serving onboard USS Hornet (CV-8) during the Battle of Santa Cruz Islands, October 26, 1942. Ship’s Sponsor was the widow. Photographed August 12, 1943. Official U.S. Navy photograph."

A famous Norman Rockwell illustration appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post, depicting his everyman soldier figure, Willie Gillis,  showing the "cat's cradle" string trick to an Indian snake charmer.

Thursday, September 2, 2021

Friday, September 2, 1921. Famine

Houston Texas, September 2, 1921.

On this day in 1921 food aid from Western countries arrived in Riga, Latvia for transport to the Soviet Union as famine relief.  The US was the largest contributor.



The famine was human induced, caused by the incompetence and stupidity of the communist economic system in multiple ways.

On the same day, Federal troops arrived in West Virginia, but President Harding declared they would not be used to impose martial law as long as civil law continued to function.  The threat, of course, was the private warfare between union coal miners and non-union/company forces.

Japanese dignitaries were photographed in Washington, D.C.
 
Baron Kyuro Shideharu

Belle Case LaFollette, wife of Sen. Robert LaFollette, was photographed walking their dog.



Sunday, February 23, 2020

Sunday, February 9, 2020

Churches of the West: Old Catholic Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, Houston Texas

Churches of the West: Old Catholic Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, Hou...:

Old Catholic Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, Houston Texas



This is the old Co Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Houston Texas.  The new Co Cathedral is located one block over and this cathedral, originally a 1912 church that was elevated to the status of Co Cathedral in 1959.  The other cathedral for the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston is located in Galveston, with that church being the Mother Cathedral for Texas.

Iphone photograph from the highway, with the new Co Cathedral also partially visible.

Sunday, February 2, 2020

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Antioch Missionary Baptist Church, Houston Texas

Churches of the West: Antioch Missionary Baptist Church, Houston Texas:

Antioch Missionary Baptist Church, Houston Texas


This is the Antioch Missionary Baptist Church in downtown Houston, Texas.  The church was built in 1875.


This church, located right downtown, has undoubtedly seen a lot of changes in this immediate neigbhorood.

Monday, August 28, 2017

It is a very strange thing . . .

to look at photographs of a disaster and recognize places in it.

Downtown Houston.

I'm not going to second guess anything or anybody on this.  It's simply a shock to see it.

The past several years I've spent a lot of time in Houston.  In terms of large cities, I'm fairly certain that only Denver Colorado has claimed more of my time.  As a result, I've become pretty familiar with parts of the enormous city, although because it is an enormous city I certainly don't know all of it by any means.  Indeed, I'm really only familiar with the downtown, the energy corridor, and various bits and pieces of the town.  Having said that, I've been in it so much that it's one of the large American cities I'm comfortable with to a degree.

Given that, while there are millions of people in Houston, I can't but feel that I have a bit of a personal connection to the city.

Well, God bless those there.

People will post prayers, of course, and they should. For some reason, I always think of the Navy Hymn when things like this occur.  Perhaps because Hurricanes and their aftermath are so closely connected to the sea.  Indeed, they're the sea come on land, really.  So, that being the case, I'll post the text here.  Give some thought to Houston and its residents today.
Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
Who bidd'st the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep;
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!
O Christ! Whose voice the waters heard
And hushed their raging at Thy word,
Who walkedst on the foaming deep,
And calm amidst its rage didst sleep;
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!
Most Holy Spirit! Who didst brood
Upon the chaos dark and rude,
And bid its angry tumult cease,
And give, for wild confusion, peace;
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!
O Trinity of love and power!
Our brethren's shield in danger's hour;
From rock and tempest, fire and foe,
Protect them wheresoe'er they go;
Thus evermore shall rise to Thee
Glad hymns of praise from land and sea.

Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Lex Anteinternet: The Houston Riots of August 23, 1917. The fate of Cpl. Baltimore

I posted this, earlier today:
Lex Anteinternet: The Houston Riots of August 23, 1917: While, once again, we are not doing a "1917 day by day", particularly as the story of the Punitive Expedition can't be run...
I also posted a link on the Reddit 100 Years Ago Today site.

Someone asked what happened to Edwards, the soldier first arrested, and Cpl. Baltimore, the military policeman who was so abused.  I don't know what happened to Edwards, but Baltimore's fate is documented.  As I related there:
In the other post on this here somebody asked what happened to Edwards and Baltimore. I don't know about Edwards, but here's the details on Baltimore:
Baltimore apparently joined the men marching downtown when he returned and was accordingly tried and sentenced to death. His sentence was carried out.
Baltimore was a stoic man and a sterling soldier. He wrote to his brother that he was innocent of shedding any blood but that the execution was "God's will", quoting John 3:16.

The Houston Riots of August 23, 1917



While, once again, we are not doing a "1917 day by day", particularly as the story of the Punitive Expedition can't be run day by day on a centennial basis, we are still in the same era and we do note some things. Today we note a terrible event.

On this day in 1917, in Houston Texas, two policemen arrested a black soldier for interfering with the arrest of a black woman.  In the afternoon a military policeman, or as we should note a black military policeman, Cpl. Charles Baltimore, inquired of a white city policeman of the arrest. The white policeman took offense, there was an exchange of heated words, the white policeman assaulted Cpl. Baltimore who then fled, and was shot, but not killed, while making his retreat.  Baltimore was shot at three more times, took refuge in an unoccupied house, was arrested, and then released.

In spite of Baltimore's release, a rumor rapidly spread through nearby Camp Logan that Baltimore was being held and the soldiers of the all black 24th Infantry began to arm themselves in order to march downtown and secure his release.  Their officers first discounted anything occurring but then took steps to secure arms. A rumor then circulated that a white mob was marching on Camp Logan and the riot was off and running.  Led by Sgt. Vida Henry, who had first alerted his superiors of the planned raid prior to the riot, about 100 soldiers of the 24th Infantry marched on downtown, killing fifteen (white) Houstonians, including four policeman.  Twelve other Houstonians were wounded, including one policeman who later died.  Four soldiers were killed as well, two of whom were friendly fire incidents.  After the mutineers shot Cpt. Joseph Mattes, Illinois National Guard, by mistake their cohesion broke down and Sgt. Henry advised them to slip back into Camp Logan.  He then killed himself.

The Army indicted 118 enlisted men of I Company, 24th Infantry (the only company to participate in the riot) for mutiny and rioting.  110 were found guilty. Nineteen were hanged and sixty-three received life sentences. One was judged incompetent to stand trial. Two of their white officers faced courts-martial but they were released. No Houstonians were tried.

The military court martial was joint in nature and constitutes the largest murder trial, in terms of defendants, in U.S. history.  It was aided by seven soldiers turning states evidence against their fellows early on.

The event left a lasting mark on race relations of the time but it did lead to reforms in military court martials that imposed more executive oversight over them, stemming from a feeling that the Army had reacted too harshly.  It oddly also lead to a smoother transition into integration in Houston years later as one of the city politicians of that era had witnessed the events as a young boy, and privately and effectively urged integration on a private basis.


Saturday, March 19, 2016

Marathon, Peabody and the airlines

This past week the state received the bad news that Marathon Oil Company, formerly Ohio Oil Company, which was once headquartered in Casper Wyoming and then later in Cody Wyoming, and which has had a presence in the state since 1914, is attempting to sell its Wyoming assets.  At least psychologically, and indeed in reality, it's quite a blow to the state.

 The Ohio Oil Company Building in Casper.

The Ohio Oil Company built a major art deco building that it used as its headquarters from 1925 until 1974, when it built a new headquarters in Cody.  The building remains there today as a significant downtown building, with the old Marathon sign off so that the Ohio Oil Company name cast in cement above the main door is visible  The building is one of four buildings, including the ConRoy Building where I work, that were built by oil companies starting during World War One and through the 1920s and which were still standing when I started practicing law in 1990.  The other two were the Pan American Building, built by Pan American Petroleum (founded in 1916 and merged into Standard Oil in 1954) and the Sinclair Building.  The Sinclair building, which was a neat two story building that had garden level basement windows, was torn down in the 1990s, which I thought was a shame, as it was an attractive building with Greek architectural elements.  It apparently was a building that, because of its comparatively low stature, people didn't photograph much as I can't find a photo of it anywhere, and I never took one.  It's the Townsend Justice Center parking lot now.  Oh well.


 Now the Townsend Justice Center, once the Townsend Hotel, when this photograph was taken I was standing pretty much where the Sinclair Building had once been.  Given the nature of the residents of the Townsend in its long declining years, its conversion into a courthouse is either strangely ironic or oddly appropriate.

Anyhow, Marathon's Cody building was also a very nice one, although I remember there being some discontent in 1974 when they moved. That I can remember that at all, as I was eleven years old at the time, must mean that there was some real discontent about it.  Having said that, my moving to Cody they were bucking a trend and moving closer to their production.  By the 2000s, however, it had another office building in Houston Texas and some years ago it closed its Cody office and moved its headquarters operations solely to Houston.  It's sold off some of its assets in Wyoming slowly since the 2000s but it's now looking to completely divest itself of its Wyoming properties, presuming that it can sell them for a reasonable price.  It's not conducting a fire sale.

This reflects in another fashion a really long term trend that's occurred in the oil patch. At one time, there were a lot of oil company headquarters.  Indeed, there were a lot of them in Casper, which at one time had newspaper that claimed it was the "Oil Capitol of the World".  Marathon is unusual in that it moved out of Casper to smaller Cody, which was closer to its assets, but the loss of regional oil companies is pretty pronounced, if not actually complete.  Many moved to Denver starting in the 1960s.  During the bust of the 1970s those that hadn't moved tended to, and many of the Denver based companies moved to Houston.

 
The Consolidated Royalty Building, built in 1917 as the Oil Exchange Building, and which remains in use as a downtown office building.

Now Houston, followed by Tulsa, is the undoubted oil headquarters for the US.  There are still headquarters in Denver, but not as many as there once was.  Notably on that Denver has been booming during this oil bust, unlike the 1970s when it suffered a great deal just like Casper.  There have been layoffs in Denver, but Denver's economy has changed so much it just isn't suffering the way that it did in the 1970s.  Indeed, while individual and individual companies have suffered, the city itself has a robust economy.  Not so much the case for Wyoming.

Marathon's departure is sad for Wyoming.  A lot of Wyomingites who have been here for a long time have a connection with Marathon in one way or another.  One of my cousins worked for Marathon back in the 1980s and I once defended Marathon in a personal injury action.  Even with its headquarters in Houston it seemed like a Wyoming company to many of us.

 Wyoming Oil World, June 15, 1918.  This issue mentions a couple of items that have figured significantly in the news here lately. The Salt Creek field mentioned here is still in production, but it recently sold.  The Ohio Oil Company mentioned in connection with Salt Creek is Marathon, which ceased being an operator in this field long ago.

Peabody, the giant coal company, announced this past week that it will be missing payments to some of its creditors.  It's fighting off going into bankruptcy and that isn't good news.  I know a lot less about Peabody in Wyoming, and while the Peabody Coal Company hates the song, I can't hear the name without thinking of John Prine's song Paradise.  Peabody apparently was counting on Chinese coal imports to keep it afloat and now that the Chinese economy has been in trouble, that isn't working out. Added tot that, for the first time ever, more electricity will be generated in the United States using natural gas as a fuel than coal.

Following these two stories, two others came on the same topic.  A local energy industry related entity announced that it was laying off 50 of its employees.  Fifty men and women isn't enough to cause a big impact in the local economy, but it follows this occurring in a lot of other local businesses, some of which hit the news, and others which did not.  On the same day the local paper reported that Natrona County's unemployment rate is now 7.2%, quite a bit higher than the 5% average for the state, and in second position to energy  heavy Fremont County which is at 8.1%.  Keep in mind, as I pointed out the other day, that 7% reflects the local unemployment rate but not the local exodus rate, so 7% is more like 8%, or perhaps more like 10%, by the time everything is figured into it.

I thought that a sure sign that things are slowing down here is a decrease in air service I thought I was detecting, but in retrospect I think I may have been a bit fooled by a change in the electronic booking programs over the last few weeks and the increased Spring Break travel going on.  I haven't been tracking that, and I sure should have been.

Last year or the year before I did notice when Delta took out the late night flight back to Casper, which I liked.  Next month, we hear, at some point after the big Spring Break rush Delta will be canceling its early morning flight and have a mid morning one only, basically wiping out some travel to Salt Lake for us business travelers.  I had thought that  United Airlines has done the same in regards to its late night flight from Denver to Casper after not being able to book the late night one earlier this week, but it was probably just the case that I booked to late so it didn't give me the option, on my computer, of looking at the flight I couldn't book anyhow, for which I'm grateful.

Over the twenty-six years I've been practicing law my relationship with air travel has been a constantly evolving one.  I really like aircraft and I really hate flying in them.  I know that's odd, but it's quite true.  Anyhow, when I was very first practicing law local air travel was so cheap that chartering aircraft wasn't uncommon for lawyers. We'd charter a flight to Cheyenne or Evanston and convert hours of travel into just a few.  This was cheaper for our clients as we could convert hours of travel down to just a few that way, and everyone came out ahead.  But by the late 1990s that basically died and, while I've experienced a charter flight once within the last five years, that was really exceptional and it only occurred as it converted a three day trip down to one and it involved quite a few people.

 
Commercial airliners at the Natrona County International Airport.

Anyhow, one thing that also was the case that air connections to Denver, via the airlines, were so poor that if a person was going to go to Denver or Salt Lake, in the 1990s, they probably drove or, in the case of Salt Lake, flew in and stayed over.  It wasn't possible to fly in and back the same day.  On odd occasion, I'd drive to Denver and back in a day (which I don't mind doing), but more often than not any trip to Denver, either by car or plane, involved a couple of days.

Then, after oil picked up, the airlines started adding flights.  In Casper there was an early morning flight to Denver and another to Salt Lake, followed by morning flights and then even a mid morning flight.  A person could get back with a late afternoon flight, an early evening flight, or a late evening flight.

I took up taking the early morning flight down to Denver and the late evening one back.  The early morning one was always packed with oilfield workers and businessmen going to Denver.  The late night one always had spare seats.  Generally, if a person completed their work early they could get to the airport and catch the early evening one back.

Well, as noted, sometime last year, or maybe the year before, the late night back from Salt Lake was eliminated. So much for that.

Indeed, as I had to go to Denver, I was counting on the late night flight and was surprised when I went to book my flights, which I did rather late, to learn that I couldn't and it looked like it was gone.  It looked like the second flight of the morning was also gone, but I don't think it is.  I booked them anyway but regretted it when I was in Denver as it really put me in a box and I figured I was going to miss it and would end up staying over, which would have really defeated the entire purpose of my flying.  As it happened, I did get back to the airport with thirty minutes left before my flight was to take off, and it ended up being delayed as a crew member was late getting in due to her flight arriving late, and then the plane took off late anyhow as it was snowing like mad and the plane had to be de-iced. We left over an hour late.  Oh well.

 

Anyhow, the morning flight had a few oilfield people on it on their way to Houston, but I only know that as I know them. The usually assortment of men in their FRs carrying hardhats was not there.  

And now that the early morning flight to Salt Lake will soon be gone, I won't be there either.  I can't make that work out very well. Back to driving.

And back to the 1970s, in some ways.

Or maybe even further back.

This all reminds me, in fact, of a conversation between two oilfield people I heard awhile back coming into Casper. One had lived here awhile and the other was just moving in. The new person asked the old one what the town was like.  The person who had lived here longer replied that Casper basically had two populations; one from here that knew it was going to stay here and another that moved in and would be leaving when the boom ended.  The new employee made some comment about the resident population being unfriendly, to which the employee who had lived here replied "no", that wasn't true, it was just that they knew they were staying, and they knew others would be leaving.  I thought then that this was a pretty perceptive analysis.

Indeed, looking back, now that we're experiencing a crash, and so much of it seems so familiar, I'm surprised how resigned to it I myself am.  I feel like I should be more worried. After all, I have two kids not out of high school yet but who will be soon and who will be looking for jobs after college. But that's quite a ways away.

More than that, however, I know that I've lived through this entire cycle before and my parents had lived through it at least twice, maybe three times.  It's part of the economy here and, I think, it's part of the native culture.  Just like we hear about the generation that grew up in the Great Depression having had it impact their characters and personalities, the fact of living in a boom and bust economy does the same.

And we've always had it.  Wyoming was basically built on an cattle boom, but that collapsed in the late 1880s in a massive way.  That was followed by a revival of the cattle economy, and during that period Casper was founded.  In spite of being in the heart of cattle country, and indeed the town was the disembarkation point for the invaders of the Johnson County War, the town looked to oil from the very day of its founding, a pretty remarkable fact given that in the 1890s oil didn't amount to much.

 July 15, 1891 edition of Casper's first newspaper, when the town had just been founded.  While cattle dominated the local economy, a discovery of gas in an oil well located just outside of town was noted on the headlines, which was fairly typical for the paper at that time.  Asbestos, which would come to be mined in Natrona County, and Iron, which would note, also are noted.  Alcova would become a town, but the hot springs would not be developed.  Today that location is the site of a Depression era dam which serves to create a major reservoir.  Period papers are full of optimistic boosterism.

The oil industry really took off during World War One, for obvious reasons. Agriculture boomed at the same time, for the same reasons.  Casper and other regional cities took off as a result, although Casper had already seen quite a bit of oil development by that time.  And of course, following the war, there was a crash in both industries.

Oil started taking off again not all that long later, during the 1920s, as the national economy rebounded.  Agriculture not so much.  In the 1930s things went the other way as the country entered the Great Depression, but both industries picked up again during World War Two.  Since the Second World War we had at least to bust cycles in the oil industry, not including the current one.  Agriculture's fortunes have worked a bit differently, reflecting changes in the market over time. Agriculture seems to always be there in the background, which is something that perhaps the state should consider when it considers its economy.

Anyhow, we've been here before.  Perhaps we'll be here again.  The regional economy seems long established and for those who are from here, part of what we're used to.

Saturday, January 9, 2016

Movies in history: Devil In A Blue Dress

There got to be enough movies that are reviewed here, in a historical context, that I began to forget which ones I had done, so I added a new page on Movies In History.  In doing that, I saw a few movies that should be added here that I've failed to include.

One of these movies is the excellent 1995 movie Devil in  Blue Dress.  Based on a novel by Walter Mosley, the film stars Denzel Washington as Ezekiel "Easy" Porterhouse Rawlins. a recently discharged black Army veteran from World War Two.  Out of work and living in Los Angeles, Rawlins takes work as a detective trying to locate a mysterious woman who is connected with two rival politicians.

Excellently done, the story presents a really nice look at the world of African Americans in the late 1940s, a time at which they were following up on a World War Two migration out of the south and into various cities. Rawlins is shown living in a black middle class neighborhood in Los Angeles that is obviously new to him, having relocated after the war to Los Angeles from his native Houston Texas.  Most of the residents of his neighborhood are blacks who are similarly from Texas.

The material and cultural details of this film are superbly done.  Everything is period correct, including the attitudes towards blacks in this less racist, but racist still, region of the country, compared to where the residents of the neighborhood are from.

Explaining the movie in greater details would entail plot spoilers, so I'll leave it at that.  Suffice it to say, this film is excellently done.  For that matter, the story is a very good one and it's a shame that this character hasn't returned to film.

Tuesday, December 22, 2015

New hotels with elements of the old and new.



I've posted here in the past about old hotels, and how small their rooms were.  Here's a twist on that.

Single king bed room at the downtown J. W. Marriot in Houston, Texas.

These are photos of the room interior of the current JW Marriot in downtown Houston, which is a very nice hotel.  It's located in a building built in 1909, at which time the sixteen story structure was the tallest building in Texas.  It wasn't a hotel, however, it was an office building.  The solid steel frame building housed banks and offices in its early history.  It didn't become a hotel until last year, 2014.  It's a nice one, but a careful eye can tell that it wasn't built as a hotel.

Interior (back room) view.  The other views are no doubt much better.

The hotel is a very nice one, but what strikes me is how small the room noted above was.  It was a fine room, but very small, just like the early 20th Century hotels I've stayed in elsewhere are, except that this didn't become a hotel until 2014.

Ipad, taking the place of a hotel services book and phone in some ways.

Which isn't to say that it wasn't updated with modern conveniences.  It certainly was.  Included in these are, of course, the perfunctory television, which I rarely turn on in a hotel room, and an Ipad, which could be used to check the hotel's services, or order that your car be brought around, etc.

Interesting incorporation of the old and new in a renovation.