God Save Texas: A Journey Into the Soul of the Lone Star State(19)
Among the dead were Christa McAuliffe, the first teacher in space; Judith Resnik, the Jewish American piano-playing physicist; and Ronald McNair, the saxophonist and physicist. They named the library he integrated in South Carolina after him.
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HOUSTON’S FAMOUS ASTRODOME was for sale, so I hurried over to size up the property, arguably the most historic building in Texas aside from the Alamo. No city in America may aspire to greatness without sports teams, but the tropical heat and torrential rains played havoc with Houston’s mighty ambition. In 1965, Roy Hofheinz, a former mayor who was called the Judge because of his brief tenure as a county official, opened what was then called the Harris County Domed Stadium. The former “Eighth Wonder of the World” has been home at various times to the Houston Astros, the Houston Oilers, the Houston Rockets, and the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, but when I visited it had been sitting empty for eight years, after all the teams ran off to newer venues and the fire department jerked the venue’s certificate of occupancy. It was a little sad, honestly, to see this noble landmark out on the streets, as it were. The city had turned its back on the iconic building that made civilization in Houston—and Texas at large—seem somewhat plausible in the first place.
Judge Hofheinz was an ideal expression of the Texas go-getter. He gained control of the Colt .45s, a National League expansion team, which he renamed the Astros. The team had only agreed to come to Houston because of the Judge’s promise to build a covered stadium. Hofheinz claimed to have been inspired by the Roman Colosseum, which in ancient days was shaded by an awning during matinee gladiatorial contests. If the Romans could do it, why not the Houstonians? But shade wasn’t enough for the Judge. He set out to construct the world’s largest air-conditioned room.
Such a structure had never been built before. Overheated Texans used to cool their churches and restaurants by placing fans over tubs of ice. Then, in 1923, the Second National Bank became the first air-conditioned building in Houston. By the 1950s, Houston laid claim to being “the air-conditioning capital of the world,” which included the PlazAmericas, the first fully air-conditioned mall. But the building of the Astrodome was a civic leap of faith. It still stands imposingly beside the freeway, “like the working end of a gigantic roll-on deodorant,” as Texas author Larry McMurtry noted with his unsparing eye. Hofheinz moved into an apartment inside the dome that occupied seven floors of the right-field bleachers and was equipped with a chapel, a bowling alley, a shooting gallery, and a private bar called the Tipsy Tavern. Bob Hope observed the decor and pronounced it “early King Farouk.” Hofheinz dressed the stadium ushers—attractive young women called Spacettes—in quilted golden outfits suitable for the frigid interior climate. The grounds crew, who wore orange jumpsuits with space helmets, were called Earthmen. “It was like having your own planet,” the Judge’s widow, Mary Frances Hofheinz, later recalled.
Another county judge, Ed Emmett, inherited the Astrodome dilemma when he took office in 2007. Most Houstonians said they’d prefer to have the old stadium torn down and made into green space, and they decisively rejected a bond proposal of $213 million to convert the structure into a multi-use event facility. However, Judge Emmett decided it didn’t make financial sense to raze the Astrodome. “It’s solid,” he told me, as we walked around the vast interior. “When Hurricane Ike came through [in 2008], every other structure in this area was damaged, but not this place. Plus, it’s already paid for.”
Emmett turned to the public for suggestions. About a hundred ideas were submitted, some scribbled on bar napkins: make it a parking garage, a ski slope, a science museum. One suggestion was to flood the arena, which is two stories below ground level, and reenact naval battles. Another group proposed turning it into a gigantic movie studio. “None of these ideas came with any money attached,” Emmett noted, as we stood in what had once been shallow center field, near the spot where Muhammad Ali knocked out Cleveland Williams in 1966. Judy Garland, Elvis Presley, Billie Jean King v. Bobby Riggs—there’s an endless roster of memories here. I have a friend who scattered his father’s ashes on the playing field. Except for a brief birthday party for the stadium on its fiftieth anniversary in 2015, the last time the public was admitted was in 2005, when refugees from Hurricane Katrina took shelter here.
Emmett favored making the Astrodome’s 350,000 square feet of floor space into a giant indoor park, or else simply providing a space for festivals and special events. It’s a minimal plan, he admits. “We could have the state archery contest here,” he said. “The Texas horseshoe tournament. I’ve also got ties to the cricket community.” It seemed a long way from opening day, April 9, 1965, when the Astros beat the Yankees 2?1, and Mickey Mantle hit the stadium’s first home run.
I got a tour in a golf cart with a flashlight through the home team’s old locker room, where the hot tub was still intact. Judge Hofheinz also used to prowl around late at night in his golf cart, exploring his creation. The playing field was now given over to storage, much of it from the larger, sleeker NRG Stadium next door. There were stacks of stadium chairs, turnstiles, and a hut for a parking-lot attendant. Two hundred feet above us was the roof with its geometric plastic tiles. When the stadium opened, there was reasonable concern that outfielders wouldn’t be able to see the ball, so someone stood on the catwalk overhead and dropped baseballs as Joe Morgan and Rusty Staub raced around struggling to catch them. To reduce the glare, the Lucite panels were painted with a translucent coating, but that killed the grass. Hofheinz had the dead grass painted green until he was able to replace it with AstroTurf, a grass-like carpet, which was now lying in massive rolls like haybales on the concrete stadium floor.