What to See in Houston - Top Sights and Attractions

Close-up look at the U.S. Space Program. Space Center Houston is a science museum that serves as the official visitor center of NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston. It has earned a place as a Smithsonian Affiliate museum in 2014. The organization is owned by NASA and operated under a contract by the nonprofit Manned Spaceflight Education Foundation, a 501 organization. The Johnson Space Center is the home of Mission Control and astronaut training.

The center opened in 1992 replacing the former Visitor Center in Johnson Space Center Building 2. The museum is 250,000 square feet (23,000 m2) and displays over 400 space artifacts, including the Mercury 9, Gemini 5, and Apollo 17 space capsules. It also has permanent and traveling exhibits and theaters with a focus on the history of the human spaceflight program. The center also hosts STEM programs for all ages.^[1]

Aquarium in Houston, Texas. Downtown Aquarium is a public aquarium and restaurant located in Houston, Texas, United States that was developed from two Houston landmarks: Fire Station No. 1 and the Central Waterworks Building. The aquarium is located on a 6-acre site at 410 Bagby Street in downtown Houston. It houses over 200 species of aquatic animals in 500,000 US gallons of aquariums. The complex includes two restaurants, a bar, and banquet facilities. It offers programs such as Marine Biologist for a Day, Zoologist for a Day, Sea Safari Camp, overnight stays and more. The education department works with school groups and conducts outreach programs.

The Downtown Aquarium in Houston is owned and operated by Landry's, Inc. and accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums.^[2]

Park in Houston, Texas. Discovery Green is an 11.78-acre public urban park in Downtown Houston, Texas, bounded by La Branch Street to the west, McKinney Street to the north, Avenida de las Americas to the east, and Lamar Street to the south. The park is adjacent to the George R. Brown Convention Center and Avenida Houston entertainment district. Discovery Green features a lake, bandstands and venues for public performances, two dog runs, a playground, and multiple recreational lawns.

In the early 2000s, a public–private partnership between the City of Houston and a group of local philanthropic organizations, including the Kinder Foundation, was formed with the goal of constructing a new public green space in Downtown. This partnership financed the purchase of a series of surface parking lots on the east side of Downtown. Following the completion of land purchases in 2004, the Discovery Green Conservancy and the City jointly raised $125 million to construct the park. The design of the park, led by landscape architecture firm Hargreaves Associates, began in 2005. Discovery Green's public opening occurred on April 13, 2008; during the first two months of operation, an estimated 250,000 people visited the park.^[6]

Renowned dinosaur hall and butterfly house. The Houston Museum of Natural Science is a natural history museum located on the northern border of Hermann Park in Houston, Texas, United States. The museum was established in 1909 by the Houston Museum and Scientific Society, an organization whose goals were to provide a free institution for the people of Houston focusing on education and science. Museum attendance totals over two million visitors each year. The museum complex consists of a central facility with four floors of natural science halls and exhibits, the Burke Baker Planetarium, the Cockrell Butterfly Center, and the Wortham Giant Screen Theatre. The museum is one of the most popular in the United States and ranks just below New York City's American Museum of Natural History and Metropolitan Museum of Art and the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco in most attendance amongst non-Smithsonian museums. Much of the museum's popularity is attributed to its large number of special or guest exhibits.^[7]

Veteran vessel open for exploration. USS Texas is a museum ship and former United States Navy New York-class battleship. She was launched on 18 May 1912 and commissioned on 12 March 1914.

Texas saw action in Mexican waters following the "Tampico Incident" and made numerous sorties into the North Sea during World War I. In World War II, Texas escorted war convoys across the Atlantic and later shelled Axis-held beaches for the North African campaign and the Normandy Landings before being transferred to the Pacific Theater late in 1944 to provide naval gunfire support during the Battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Texas was decommissioned in 1948, having earned a total of five battle stars for service in World War II. It is a (presently closed) museum ship near Houston, Texas.

Texas was also a technological testbed: the first US battleship to mount anti-aircraft guns, the first US ship to control gunfire with directors and range-keepers, the first US battleship to launch an aircraft, and one of the first US Navy ships to receive production radar.

Texas was the first US battleship to become a permanent museum ship, the first battleship declared to be a US National Historic Landmark, and is the only remaining World War I era dreadnought battleship. She is also one of the eight remaining ships and the only remaining capital ship to have served in both World Wars.^[13]

Vast assembly of private art and artifacts. The Menil Collection, located in Houston, Texas, refers either to a museum that houses the art collection of founders John de Menil and Dominique de Menil, or to the collection itself of approximately 17,000 paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, photographs and rare books.

While the bulk of the collection is made up of a once-private collection, Menil Foundation, Inc. is a tax-exempt, nonprofit, public charity corporation formed under Section 501(c)3 of the Internal Revenue Code. Additionally the Menil receives public funds granted by the City of Houston, the State of Texas, and the federal government through the National Endowment for the Arts.

The museum's holdings are diverse, including early to mid-twentieth century works of Yves Tanguy, René Magritte, Max Ernst, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Henri Matisse, Jackson Pollock, and Pablo Picasso, among others. The museum also maintains an extensive collection of pop art and contemporary art from Andy Warhol, Mark Rothko, Robert Rauschenberg, Vija Celmins and Cy Twombly, Jr. among others. Also included in the museum's permanent collection are antiquities and works of Byzantine, Medieval and tribal art.^[16]

Chapel in Houston, Texas. The Rothko Chapel is a non-denominational chapel in Houston, Texas, founded by John and Dominique de Menil. The interior serves not only as a chapel, but also as a major work of modern art. On its walls are fourteen black but color-hued paintings by Mark Rothko. The shape of the building, an octagon inscribed in a Greek cross, and the design of the chapel was largely influenced by the artist. The chapel sits two miles southwest of downtown in the Montrose neighborhood, situated between the building housing the Menil Collection and the Chapel of Saint Basil on the campus of the University of Saint Thomas. About 55,000 people visit the chapel each year.

Susan J. Barnes states "The Rothko Chapel...became the world's first broadly ecumenical center, a holy place open to all religions and belonging to none. It became a center for international cultural, religious, and philosophical exchanges, for colloquia and performances. And it became a place of private prayer for individuals of all faiths"

On September 16, 2000, the Rothko Chapel was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.^[18]

Multi-purpose stadium in Houston, Texas. NRG Stadium, formerly Reliant Stadium, is a multi-purpose stadium in Houston, Texas, United States. It was constructed at a cost of $352 million and has a seating capacity of 72,220. It was the first NFL facility to have a retractable roof.

The stadium is the home of the National Football League's Houston Texans, the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, the Texas Bowl, many of the United States men's national soccer team's matches, Mexico national football team friendlies where El Tri serves as the host, and other events. The stadium served as the host facility for Super Bowls XXXVIII (2004) and LI (2017), and WrestleMania 25 (2009).

NRG Stadium is part of a collection of venues (including the Astrodome), which are collectively called NRG Park. The entire complex is named for NRG Energy under a 32-year, US$300 million naming rights deal in 2000.^[19]

Exhibits documenting the Holocaust. The Holocaust Museum Houston is located in Houston's Museum District, in the U.S. state of Texas. The Holocaust memorial museum is the fourth largest in the U.S. and opened in 1996.

A major commitment of the Holocaust Museum Houston is education. The Boniuk Center houses Holocaust Museum Houston’s Education Department, including four classrooms, staff offices, storage rooms, and a library. Holocaust Museum Houston Engines of Change Student Ambassador Program introduces Houston-area high school students to Holocaust history and enables them to better understand current issues and to develop their own informed opinions and voices. The Educator in Motion program is a free school and community outreach program that provides educational programming on the Holocaust, genocide, social justice, and active citizenship in school and community settings. The Museum, working with colleagues from the Anti-Defamation League Southwest Region and the Houston Police Department, offers training for recruits, in-service and command-level law enforcement officers in this day-long session. Another educational resource the Museum offers are the Digital Curriculum Trunks.^[22]

Park in Houston, Texas. The Gerald D. Hines Waterwall Park, formerly the Williams Waterwall and the Transco Waterwall, is a multi-story sculptural fountain that sits opposite the south face of Williams Tower in the Uptown District of Houston. The fountain and its surrounding park were built as an architectural amenity to the adjacent tower. Both the fountain and tower were designed by John Burgee Architects with Philip Johnson. Originally privately owned in common with the office tower, the waterwall and the surrounding land were purchased by the Uptown Houston Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone, a non-profit local government corporation, in 2008 to ensure the long term preservation of the waterwall and park. The fountain currently operates between 10 am and 9 pm.^[25]

Cemetery in Houston, Texas. Glenwood Cemetery is located in Houston, Texas, United States. Developed in 1871, the first professionally designed cemetery in the city accepted its first burial in 1872. Its location at Washington Avenue overlooking Buffalo Bayou served as an entertainment attraction in the 1880s. The design was based on principles for garden cemeteries, breaking the pattern of the typical gridiron layouts of most Houston cemeteries. Many influential people lay to rest at Glenwood, making it the "River Oaks of the dead." As of 2018, Glenwood includes the annexed property of the adjacent Washington Cemetery, creating a total area of 84 acres with 18 acres still undeveloped.

Notable burials at Glenwood include former residents of the Republic of Texas, some who were re-interred from condemned cemeteries from downtown Houston. Charlotte Allen and William Robinson Baker were early arrivals to Houston, and also long time residents. Baker was one of several interments of former mayors of Houston. The last president of the Republic of Texas, Anson Jones, has a family plot. Former governors of Texas and a former governor of Mississippi lie at rest at the cemetery, as do some high-ranking federal officials. Scions of the oil business include two co-founders of Sharp-Hughes Tools, as well as founders and early investors of Texaco and Humble Oil. The founding president of Rice University, the school's chief architect, and the institute's first trustee are found at Glenwood.^[26]

Museum in Houston, Texas. The Byzantine Fresco Chapel is a part of the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas, near the University of St. Thomas. From February 1997 to February 2012, it displayed the only intact Byzantine frescoes of this size and importance in the entire western hemisphere. The Byzantine frescoes had been taken from the church of St. Evphemianos in Lysi, Cyprus in the 1980s. In September 2011, the collection announced that the frescos would be permanently returned to Cyprus in February 2012, following the conclusion of a long-term loan agreement with the Greek Orthodox Church of Cyprus. The frescoes had been presented at the museum by agreement with the Church of Cyprus, their owners, but the church decided not to extend the loan further. They will not return to their original home as Lysi is now in Northern Cyprus, but will be displayed at the Byzantine Museum in Nicosia. On March 4, 2012, the Byzantine Fresco Chapel closed, but re-opened in 2015 for the first in a series of site-specific projects.^[29]

Arena in Houston, Texas. Toyota Center is an indoor arena located in Houston. It is named after the Japanese automobile manufacturer Toyota. The arena is home to the Houston Rockets of the National Basketball Association, and it was once the home of the Houston Aeros of the American Hockey League, and the Houston Comets of the Women's National Basketball Association.

Rockets owner Leslie Alexander first began to request a new arena in 1995 and attempted to release the Rockets from their lease at The Summit, which ran until 2003. However, he was denied by arena owner Chuck Watson, then-owner of the Aeros, who also wanted control of a new arena. The two sides agreed to equal control over an arena in a deal signed in 1997, but the proposal was rejected by city voters in a 1999 referendum. It was not until the city and the Rockets signed an amended agreement in 2001, excluding the Aeros, that the proposal was accepted.

Construction began in July 2001, and the new arena was officially opened in October 2003. The total costs were $235 million, with the city of Houston paying the majority, and the Rockets paying for enhancements. Toyota paid US$100 million for the naming rights.^[32]