Taste of Texas

CityCentre is a mixed-use development in the Memorial City district of Houston, Texas, located at the southeastern corner of the intersection of Interstate 10 (Katy Freeway) and Beltway 8. Opened in 2009, CityCentre is a 50-acre (20-hectare) development with 2.1 million square feet (200,000 m2) of gross floor space, including 400,000 square feet (37,000 m2) of retail, restaurants and entertainment, a 149,000-square-foot (13,800 m2) fitness facility, 425,000 square feet (39,500 m2) of office space, and a variety of rental and non-rental residential developments. CityCentre has been recognized by the Urban Land Institute as a successful example of walkable, high-density development and progressive site planning in the United States.CityCentre is located on the former site of Town & Country Mall, a 1-million-square-foot (93,000 m2) shopping center which competed with neighboring Memorial City Mall from 1983 to 2004. Poor accessibility to the site due to the construction of the Sam Houston Tollway, as well as a local recession in the late 1980s, resulted in the gradual decline of Town & Country into a dead mall. In 2004, the site was bought out by Midway Companies and closed to develop CityCentre. CityCentre is immediately north of Town & Country Village, an open-air shopping center which retains the 1960s-era Town & Country moniker.

Town & Country Village is an open-air shopping center in western Houston, Texas, United States, within the Memorial City district. The complex straddles the northbound frontage road of Beltway 8, north of Memorial Drive and south of CityCentre. From 1983 to 2004, Town & Country Village neighbored Town & Country Mall, an enclosed shopping mall which was located on the present-day CityCentre site. The 43-acre (17-hectare) development features over 550,000 square feet (51,000 m2) of retail space and a 10-story, 250,000-square-foot (23,000 m2) office building. Town & Country Village is owned by Houston-area development firm Moody Rambin.

The Memorial Hermann Memorial City Medical Center is a hospital in Memorial City, Houston, Texas. It is a part of the Memorial Hermann Healthcare System and houses the system's headquarters. Pediatric care to the hospital is provided by doctors from Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital which treats infants, children, teens, and young adults age 0-21.

The Memorial area of Houston, Texas is located west of Downtown, northwest of Uptown, and south of Spring Branch. The Memorial Super Neighborhood, as defined by the City of Houston, is bounded by Buffalo Bayou to the south, Barker Reservoir to the west, Westview to the north, and the Memorial Villages (Spring Valley Village, Piney Point Village, Bunker Hill Village, Hedwig Village, Hilshire Village and Hunters Creek Village), a contiguous group of independent municipalities, to the east.A rich variety of residential architectural styles, particularly mid-century modern, can be found in the affluent forested neighborhoods of Memorial along Buffalo Bayou. The area is also home to a number of major office and retail developments, including Memorial City, Town & Country Village, and CityCentre. A large portion of the Energy Corridor, a large business district heavily populated by energy-related firms, overlaps west Memorial along Eldridge Parkway and the Katy Freeway. Memorial takes its name from Memorial Drive, an east–west arterial road which bisects the area.

Memorial City is a commercial district in the Memorial area of Houston, Texas, United States. Located along Interstate 10 (Katy Freeway) between Beltway 8 and Bunker Hill Road, the district is anchored by Memorial City Mall, the nation's 38th-largest shopping mall; Memorial Hermann Memorial City Medical Center; CityCentre, a high-density mixed-use development; and Town & Country Village, a shopping center. Large portions of Memorial City are owned by development firm MetroNational, which has developed 265 acres (107 hectares) in the area, including the entirety of the mall.Memorial City is a significant regional employment center with over 6.1 million square feet (570,000 m2) of retail and 8.3 million square feet (770,000 m2) of office space. The district's businesses employ over 47,000 people. Memorial City Mall attracts approximately 20 million visitors per year. The district's growing residential population houses over 4,400 people, largely concentrated in a series of high-density apartment complexes.A portion of Memorial City is serviced by the Memorial City Management District, a special governmental district which provides branding and infrastructure funding. The management district was created by the Texas Legislature in 1999.

Memorial Hermann Health System is the largest not-for-profit health system in southeast Texas and consists of 17 hospitals, 8 Cancer Centers, 3 Heart & Vascular Institutes, and 27 sports medicine and rehabilitation centers, in addition to other outpatient and rehabilitation centers. It was formed in the late 1990s when the Memorial and Hermann systems joined. Both the Memorial and Hermann health care systems started in the early 1900s. The administration is housed in the new Memorial Hermann Tower, along with the existing System Services Tower (formerly called the North Tower), of the Memorial Hermann Memorial City Medical Center. Memorial Hermann–Texas Medical Center (formerly known as Hermann Hospital before the 1997 merger with Memorial Health Care System) was opened in 1925. It was the first of two hospitals with a Level I trauma center rating to be located in Houston, inside the Texas Medical Center. It (with Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital) is the flagship of a large system of hospitals and clinics located in and around the greater Houston area, in various neighborhoods as well as some suburbs. The different hospitals are distinguished by further designation indicating their location. (Texas Medical Center, Northwest, Southwest, Woodlands, etc.) The hospital system has been headed by some of the most influential leaders in healthcare including Dan Wolterman, Dr. Benjamin K. Chu as well as the current President & CEO David L. Callender, MD

The Edith L. Moore Nature Sanctuary is a 17.5-acre (7.1 ha) nature sanctuary along Rummel Creek, located in Houston, Texas, in the United States. Named after Edith Lotz Moore, who lived on the land with her husband for 43 years, the sanctuary includes a restored log cabin for hosting educational programs and houses administrative offices for the Houston Audubon Society. Since 1975, Houston Audubon has preserved Edith Moore's log cabin in addition to developing trails, creating education programs, constructing an office, and performing outreach from the site. The sanctuary also operates a plant nursery that provides wildflowers and grasses for coastal prairie restoration projects or offered for sale to support the Audubon programs. It specializes in local native prairie grasses and wildflowers with a small selection of understory plants. Moore donated land to the Houston Audubon Society in 1975, to be used as a nature preserve for birds. According to the Houston Audubon Society, the sanctuary's mission is to "provide an urban wildlife sanctuary for native plants and animals and to provide education about the natural environment to Houstonians of all ages." Birding programs and day camps held at the sanctuary serve more than ten thousand children and adults every year. This trail is accessible from 7am-7pm Monday- Friday, 9am-5pm Sunday.

Memorial City Mall is a large shopping mall in Houston, Texas, United States. It is approximately 11 miles (18 km) west of downtown Houston at the intersection of Interstate 10 and Gessner Road. The mall is in the Memorial City Management District, whose official legal name is the "Harris County Municipal Management District No. 1" under Chapter 3810 of the Texas Special District Local Laws Code. The mall is adjacent to the large Memorial Hermann Memorial City Medical Center. Constructed in the mid-1960s, the mall was renovated extensively in the early 2000s. It has since become one of the city's most popular malls. The mall features Target, JCPenney, Macy's, and Dillard's in addition to Cinemark.

Sherwood Oaks is a middle class subdivision in the Spring Branch super neighborhood in Houston, Texas. The neighborhood is zoned to Stratford High School, Spring Forest Middle School, and Sherwood Elementary School, all operated by the Spring Branch Independent School District. Sherwood Oaks has roughly 300 Houses.

The William L. Thaxton Jr. House is a large single-story Usonian house, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1954 and built in Houston, Texas in 1955. The Thaxton House is Wright's only residential project in Houston. Thaxton was a successful insurance executive and commissioned Wright to design a work of art that would also be suitable for living and entertaining. This Usonian is one of Wright's smaller designs at 1,800 square feet and is designed as a parallelogram and constructed of concrete block. Wright designed the house around a "diamond module" with 60- and 120-degree angles. The red cement floors had a diamond pattern in the same shape. The skylights were equilateral triangles, each corner 60 degrees. The pool, nestled into the wide corner of the L-shaped house, was a parallelogram with a notch out of one corner. Other interesting facets of the house include a long screened in patio (the roof of the patio is a screen as well, not a roof), a swimming pool only a few feet from the master bedroom door, an unusually shaped built-in bed in the master bedroom and triangle-shaped recessed lighting bays. As he often did, Wright designed all the furniture himself, with most of it anchored to the walls, so the homeowners couldn't even rearrange it. He drew parallelogram bunk beds and a bed for the tiny, prow-shaped master bedroom, and a fabulous, funny little mini-bar. He drew a half-octagon dining room table that attached to a wall, with rolling stools so low to the ground that they seem built for children. For the long wall of the living room, he designed a long built-in couch as the only seating. Wright was quoted in the August 1958 issue of House and Home magazine as saying `We will have a good garden.` The house is planned to wrap around two sides of this garden. We must have as big a living room with as much vista and garden coming in as we can afford, with a fireplace in it, and open bookshelves, a dining table in the alcove, benches, and living room tables built in. When the property was put up for sale in 1991, developers expressed interest in demolishing the home, which is in a desirable location and had been heavily modified since Wright's original design. Custom furniture had been removed, and finials and Ionic columns added, in contrast to Wright's Usonian style.The home was purchased by two architecture enthusiasts who restored the home to Wright's plans and built a large addition, designed by Bob Inaba of Kirksey-Meyers, to make the house more liveable.

Rainard School for Gifted Students is a private school located in Houston, Texas. Since its founding in 1986, Rainard has provided unique intellectual and creative opportunities to gifted students which it defines as those who "typically possess exceptional abilities and potential in one or more areas." The school currently offers enrollment from preschool through 8th grade. The Rainard School for Gifted Students is located outside Beltway 8 and north of Interstate 10 in an outlying portion of western Houston, in an area known as Spring Branch.

The Japanese Language Supplementary School of Houston (ヒューストン日本語補習校, Hyūsuton Nihongo Hoshūkō, JLSSH) is a supplementary Japanese school in Houston, Texas. Its classes are held at the Westchester Academy for International Studies. and the school office is located in the Memorial Ashford Place office building. The school, operated by the Japanese Educational Institute (JEI, ヒューストン日本語教育振興会 Hyūsuton Nihongo Kyōiku Shinkō Kai), is for children between ages 5 and 18 who are Japanese speakers. Many of the students are temporarily residing in the United States.As of 2020 the principal is Tōshiaki? Ide (井手 登士昭, Ide Tōshiaki?).