This Day in History: Houston Awarded National League Expansion Team
On this day in 1960, Houston was awarded a National League expansion team. That team, first called the Colt .45s, played its first game nearly two years later, on April 10, 1962. In 1965, with the opening of the Astrodome, the team became the Astros.
A major factor in bringing major league baseball to Houston was the work of the Houston Sports Association, whose detailed plans included a scale model of the Astrodome. The association was formed in 1957 by a group of men that included sportswriter, traveler, and baseball promoter George Kirksey. Kirksey held the position of Vice President of the Houston Sports Association until 1966. During that time he was instrumental in the promotion of the team and the Astrodome.
Special Collections holds the George Kirksey Papers, which include a variety of materials dealing with Kirksey’s work as part of the Houston Sports Association. These materials include press kits, correspondence, newspaper clippings, and photographs.
Union Station at Minute Maid Park
Today marks the last day of the Houston Astros‘ season, one that will go down as the team’s worst season to date regardless of the outcome of tonight’s game. It was a season that was historic in a way that teams don’t like to brag about, and as a relatively new team — they played their first season as the Houston Colt .45s in 1962 — the Astros don’t have a lot of history to look back on.
A postcard of Union Station in Houston long before the Astros started playing baseball on the grounds.
One aspect of the team that is worth talking about is the history that lives on in its 11-year-old ballpark. That’s right, history in a ball park that hasn’t even reached its adolescence. Most fans outside of Houston know the stadium as Minute Maid Park (or, in it’s former life, Enron Field), but the locals also know it as the Ballpark at Union Station. That’s because the stadium was built on the site of Union Station, a railway station located at Crawford Street between Texas Avenue and Congress Avenue that was dedicated on March 2, 1911. The railroad was vital to Houston’s growth and development, and Union Station was a key factor. Today, what was the station’s main concourse is now both the main entrance to the stadium and home to a conference center and executive offices. Astros team officials say that approximately 60 percent of fans enter the stadium through the Union Station lobby.
An aerial view of Union Station looking west over the city.
UH Special Collections holds photographs and illustrations of the original Union Station in the George Fuermann “Texas and Houston” Collection, which you see in this post, and which are also a part of the UH Digital Library. For a view of what Union Station looks like today, check out this picture from Wikimedia Commons.
If you’d like to know more about the renovation of Union Station as part of the building of the stadium, take a look at this article from the Houston Railroad Museum.
Hurricanes of the Past
Wrecked houses submerged in sand on the east of Galveston on Seawall Boulevard after the 1915 hurricane.
The Texas Gulf Coast could use the rain that a small tropical system would bring, but the threat of a hurricane hitting the Houston-Galveston area has likely — most would say, thankfully — passed for this year. Mid-September sees the peak activity of the Atlantic hurricane season, which officially ends on November 30.
Many people know about the famous Hurricane of 1900, which hit Galveston on September 8, 1900. This large, powerful storm was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people and holds the record as the deadliest natural disaster to ever strike the United States.
After the 1915 hurricane, pedestrians walk along the Seawall with wreckage from Murdoch's Bathhouse in the background.
Following the storm, in 1902 construction started on the Galveston Seawall, meant to protect the city from future storm surges. Additionally, the elevation of the island was raised by up to 17 feet. These protective measures were tested in 1915, when on August 16 a devastating hurricane hit the island. In contrast to the 1900 storm, only 275 deaths were attributed to the 1915 hurricane. This low death toll, especially in contrast to the Hurricane of 1900, was attributed in large part to the protection given by the Seawall.
Damage from the 1915 hurricane is visible in this view down Q Street.
UH Special Collections has a collection of photographs of the 1915 storm’s damage. The photographs were taken by Rex Dunbar Frazier, an engineering representative called in to collect storm damage data and photographs. These photographs document the damage to streets, railroads and buildings and repairs in progress. The photographs can be viewed in the Special Collections Reading Room, or take a look at them in the UH Digital Library.
Houston Negro Hospital Digitization Project Covered in Archivists’ Newsletter
The Archives and Archivists of Color Roundtable, a group within the Society of American Archivists, recently featured an article written by Special Collections’ Valerie Prilop and Digital Services’ Nicci Westbrook about an ongoing project to digitize papers covering the founding and early operation of the Houston Negro Hospital.
The hospital, located near the University of Houston campus, was dedicated on Juneteenth in 1926 and opened to patients the following year. It allowed African American doctors to admit their patients and gave community members the opportunity to buy “insurance” which entitled them to treatment in the hospital. The papers being digitized, which come from Special Collections’ Joseph S. Cullinan Papers, provide information about the initial founding and early operation of the hospital and about a number of problems, including conflict between the African American and white boards.
For more information about the hospital and the project, take a look at the article on page 4 of the AAC newsletter.
New Historic Maps Digital Collection
Check out Special Collections’ newest project in the UH Digital Library!
The Historic Maps digital collection contains 30 maps from Houston and Texas, dating from 1840 to 1956. Included are maps of Camp Logan, the World War I-era Army training camp that was the site of a 1917 race riot. A map from 1904 shows cross sections of the Galveston sea wall, and an 1890s map of the Houston Heights features illustrations of residential and public buildings.
Not all the maps are focused on the Houston area. A Texas map from 1876 shows the boundaries of Indian Territory and has insets of Austin and Galveston, and a 1881 map of the Southwest shows the major railroads and gives information about land area and crops. “Reynolds’s Political Map of the United States” from 1856 depicts all the free and slave states and territories of the Union at the time of the second Missouri Compromise.
But that’s not all! Take a look at this great collection in the Digital Library, or visit Special Collections to see them in person.
