Journeys›Photograph

Late May Looking Up in Houston

·#spring#urban photography#skyscrapers#cityscape#architecture
Water cascades down tall gray pillars and terraced brick walls into pale green pools, with a building behind.

Downtown Houston on foot, most of it spent with my neck bent back. Started at Tranquility Park, where the fountain columns pour water down their own sides and the Hobby Center shows through the trees behind them. From there it was skyscraper canyons the rest of the way.

The glass here does strange things. Wells Fargo Plaza carries a full green reflection of the tower across the street, and the curved Enron buildings reflect everything around them in rings. Walked under the circular skybridge that connects them — a whole loop of glass and steel hanging over the street. Five months after the collapse, hard not to wonder how many people are still on the other side of all those windows.

Pennzoil Place next, two black slabs with a sliver of daylight between them, then Philip Johnson's pink granite bank tower with its spikes against the sky like a cartoon castle. Finished under a glass atrium roof somewhere in the tunnels-and-skybridges maze, the Chase Tower rising through the grid overhead, tallest thing in Texas and still not the strangest building on the walk.

Two skyscrapers, one white with many windows and one blue glass, stand against a cloudy sky above green trees.Tall modern skyscrapers with reflective glass facades stand under a cloudy sky, with three flags in the foreground.Several contemporary buildings with reflective glass and a curved skywalk under an overcast sky.Several modern skyscrapers, including a tall curved glass building reflecting others, stand under a cloudy sky.Two dark, vertically textured buildings frame a bright gap, with a geometric glass structure and a white pyramidal finial.A brown brick building with multiple light-colored spires against a light blue sky.Brown stone building exterior with an arched detail, framing a distant modern building with a large circular opening.Two tall skyscrapers are seen through a geometric metal framework against a blue sky with scattered clouds.

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