Brunner, Houston

West End is a neighborhood in Houston, Texas, United States located along the Washington Avenue Corridor. The West End was traditionally a working-class neighborhood that was established in the early 1920s in Houston Texas. Recent gentrification has increased the population density and the development of numerous townhome communities has grown and businesses that cater to the demographic have increased. For many residents, the area known as the West End was the land north of Memorial Drive, south of I-10, east of Westcott and west of Studemont. The area had a variety of mainly wood based residential architecture. The West End Park vicinity originally had an array of 1920s shotgun-style bungalows. The driveways there were paved with crushed seashells. The entire West End area had mainly European American working-class people, although the area surrounding West End Park had mainly African Americans and a few Mexican Americans in the late 1970s. By the mid-1980s the crack epidemic ravaged the African American area particularly around Patterson St. and Eli St. The crack houses in the area were well known throughout the city, and rivaled those of the 5th Ward. Latino Americans started moving into the area by the 1980s. Crime and prostitution were rampant especially in and around Washington area bars and liquor stores. By the 1990s, industries in the area were already in decline. A large metal company along with other businesses closed. By the 2000s, redevelopers transformed the area and renamed areas in the West End. The main street that runs east to west until it breaks off towards and over interstate 10, is Washington Avenue. The area nearer to the beautiful Memorial Park had larger wood-framed houses with expansive yards until it was gentrified, beginning in the 1990s. The park is a neighborhood fixture, and was at one point an army base named Camp Logan where a mutiny raged at one point. Buffalo Bayou serves as a natural southern border for the West End. White Oak Bayou also meanders through a portion of it. The Houston Heights is a natural buffer to the north. The official boundaries of West End are Durham Drive to the west, Washington Avenue to the south, I-10 to the north and Yale St. to the east.The parts of this area that were the worst affected by neglect, poverty, and the Houston crack epidemic have been completely redeveloped. West End is also a part of Super Neighborhood 22, an organized collection of neighborhood civic clubs along the Washington Corridor that voices their neighborhoods' interests to various local issues/situations.

Rice Military is a neighborhood in Houston, Texas, United States. The Beer Can House is located in Rice Military.

St. Thomas High School is an all-boys, Catholic college preparatory school in Houston, Texas. Founded in 1900, St. Thomas is the second oldest continuously operating private high school in Houston behind Incarnate Word Academy, which was founded in 1873. The school is operated by the Basilian Fathers in the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston.

Rockefeller's is a live music venue located in Houston, Texas.

The Isbell House, located at 639 Heights Boulevard in Houston, Texas, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 22, 1983. It is one of 104 structures nominated to the Register in 1983 as part of the Houston Heights Multiple Resource Area in the Houston Heights neighborhood.

The Beer Can House is a folk art house in Rice Military, Houston, Texas, covered with beer cans, bottles, and other beer paraphernalia. Houstonian John Milkovisch worked through the late 1960s to transform his Houston home at 222 Malone Street into the Beer Can House. The Beer Can House is now one of Houston's most recognizable folk art icons. It is covered with flattened beer cans, bottle caps, bottles, and other beer ephemera. The house is estimated to include over 50,000 beer cans.Milkovisch started his project in 1968 inlaying thousands of marbles, rocks, brass figures and metal pieces in concrete blocks and redwood, all of which were used to make patios, fences, flower boxes, and an array of other items. The result was a yard with no grass, as the entire front and back yards were covered with cement. When asked why he did it, John simply answered, "I got sick of mowing the grass." Today, the Beer Can House is owned and operated by The Orange Show Center for Visionary Art, a non-profit organization founded in 1980 to preserve and present works of extraordinary imagination and provide people the opportunity to express personal artistic vision. In March 2004, John Milkovisch was named Man of the Week on Spike TV. In 2010 comedy news site Cracked.com said, "if there's ever a vote on who the awesomest guy ever was, John Milkovisch ought to at least be on the ballot."

The Star Engraving Company Building is a building at 3201 Allen Parkway in Houston, Texas, built in 1930 in the Spanish Colonial Revival style by the Star Engraving company to house its engraving factory. The building is currently (as of 2013) owned by the city of Houston and serves as the Houston Center for the Arts, housing the Stages Repertory Theatre, the Houston Arts Alliance, and the Bayou Preservation Alliance.

The Morton Brothers Grocery, located at 401 West Ninth in Houston, Texas, is a historic building located in the Houston Heights neighborhood. Built in 1929, it was a neighborhood grocery store run by Curtis Ira Morton (born 22 Jan 1866 in Tippecanoe, Indiana, USA) and his brother, William J. Morton until 1949. During a break-in and robbery, Curtis Morton was mortally wounded and died in 1949. His three daughters, Sue Morton Jenkins, Catherine Morton, and Bonnie Morton Gillis, survived him. His wife, Zora Price Chissom Morton predeceased him. It is a one-story brick veneer commercial building, one of the few such remaining in the Heights. Its most recent use has been as a private home. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on January 15, 1988.

Guava Lamp was a gay bar and nightclub in Neartown, Houston, in the U.S. state of Texas. It closed in 2020 after 22 years of operation. The Pride Superstar, in which contestants sang for a prize, began at Guava Lamp.

Olivewood Cemetery, in Houston, Texas, lies near a bend in White Oak Bayou, along the rail line to Chaney Junction, where the First and Sixth wards meet just northwest of downtown. The 6-acre (24,000 m2) cemetery is an historic resting place for many freed slaves and some of Houston's earliest black residents.

The American General Center is a complex of several office buildings in Neartown Houston, Texas located along Allen Parkway. It is the global headquarters for Corebridge Financial, formerly American General. The America Tower is a 590 ft (180m) tall skyscraper. It was completed in 1983 and has 43 floors. It is the 21st tallest building in the city. It serves as the headquarters of Baker Hughes. It served as the former headquarters of Continental Airlines; it now houses AIG American General and BDO USA, LLP. The other buildings include the Life Building, the Wortham Tower, the Woodson Tower (a.k.a. the Liberty Tower), and the Riviana Building.

The Consulate-General of Norway in Houston is Norway's diplomatic mission in Houston, Texas, United States. It is located in the Neartown area.Petroleum-related business ties form major connections between Norway and Houston. Lasse Sigurd Seim, the consul general of Norway to Houston, described the estimated 5,000–6,000 Norwegians in the Houston area around 2008 as the largest concentration of Norwegians outside of Scandinavia. About 100 Norwegian companies had business operations in Houston during that year. In 2007 Houston had $1.5 billion United States dollars in trade with Norway.