HOUSTON: THE FEAST YEARS
BY
GEORGE FUERMANN
Houston: The Feast Years (1962)
Reluctant Empire (1957)
Houston: Land of the Big Rich (1951)
HOUSTON
The Feast Years
An Illustrated Essay
By
George Fuermann
With Woodcuts by Lowell Collins
Modern Photographs by Owen Johnson
Historic Photographs and Sketches by Various Hands
The first requisite to happiness is thata man be born in a famous city.Euripides
If you would be known, and not know,vegetate in a village; if you would know,and not be known, live in a city.C. C. Colton
Urbes constituit: hora dissolvit.Seneca
1962
Press of Premier
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 62-20819
Copyright © 1962 by George Fuermann
Woodcuts Copyright © 1962 by Lowell Collins
All Rights Reserved
Printed in the United States of America
PREMIER PRINTING COMPANY
First Printing
1
Houston, the reporter for the LondonDaily Mail wrote, “has caused me to lift my ban on the word fabulous.”
The next year, 1956, the London Times speculated that America might “eventuallybe based on a quadrilateral of great cities—New York, Chicago, Los Angeles,and Houston.”
That year, too, the New York Times quoted Lloyd’s of London: “Within 100years Houston will be the largest city in the world.”
Houston: one of “The 12 Most Exciting Cities of North America,” saidHoliday in 1953—one of the dozen, from Quebec in the north to Mexico City inthe south, possessing “that rare combination of qualities which has always spelledgreatness.”
Few Houstonians see their city in such remarkable terms. Few understandwhy their city provokes such estimates by others.
The first known sketch of Houston was made by a British artist,who never saw the place, to illustrate a book written by Matilda CharlotteHoustoun, an Englishwoman who did see Houston in the early 1840s. Theartist apparently took her description of Buffalo Bayou’s big banks to meanhills.
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