Mystery structure in downtown Houston

[Mike G]

So the backstory, our surface parking lot here at the office developed a sinkhole and needed repaired, when they started ripping the lot up, they found a structure. Now for the mystery part, the city has no record of a structure ever existing in that location! Here are a few pictures of what I can see from outside the fence, this weekend a friend and I are gonna try to get inside and see what there is to see. As you can see from some of the shots it had 18"+ thick concrete walls, a brick overlay on top, old school rebar reinforced, massive water heaters of some sort, and is pretty damn large, the hole there are openings leading in both directions they've opened so far, so possibly the other 2 also.

[TxLerman]

Hey..I work 3 blocks from there. Isn't this the place where Jimmy Hoffa is hiding out?

[riteflyt]

wow cool stuff Mike, let us know if you figure out what it was!

[Coelus]

The big metal things look like they may have been a boiler or heat exchanger of some sort; except that it looks like the insides are hollow. Did it look like this stuff was just junk thrown in a hole, or did it look put together?

[LoungeLizard]

It's the Houston Coliseum - built by the Romans.

[ITRacer121]

interesting how you could have no record of a building like that? But I guess you can never underestimate the gov. filing systems.
Wild stuff! Be careful!

[Steelsun]

When Metro tore up main st for the new light rail - they found a few mystery structures that were unknown - including a large concrete and steel structure under an intersection.

Houston's old building records are awful.

Try here: http://www.houstonarchitecture.info/haif/
There's usually an expert or two there on Houston architectural history with access to private records that may be able to help.

[Orogeny]

Mike,

Where is that located? What is the nearest intersection?

Tim

[tommas4]

yea, now we want weekly update
actually, that would be tomorrow . . damn, do I spend really that much time online . .

[kenw]

some of those things ARE (as stated previously) boilers, or boiler carcassses, the tubes have been pulled from the looks of them. They were normally located in basements.

[DEMDeepEllumMusic]

If you get inside of the fence go over to the larger "boiler" pieces and look for name plates/patent #'s/ manufacturing dates which will help you nail when these things were installed-don't just look at one but as many as possible since some could have been insatlled earlier than others.

Don't let all of the rust throw you off as to age since you know down there that things can rust pretty quick in Houston.

I would guess that it was a boiler/heating plant for an older building and many times those were built into locations next to the building and not in the basements of buildings just for safety sake if the damn thing blew up.

Ever run across old pictures of that area of Downtown Houston? May help you figure out the mystery. That heavy duty construction and size indicates that this wasn't built for just a small building. Also talk to any oldtimers from Houston, maybe ask around some area old age homes of who worked in that part of the city back say 50 years ago.

[kachina]

Cool..looks like there are some tunnels to explore.

[Killeenguy]

interesting..i've always enjoyed listening to a mystery.

[Dokk]

Looks to me like either the basement of a long gone building or it could be an underground walkway or a subway segment. Many times, especially in dense urban areas, buildings will be built with sub-sub-basements set up the be subway or rail stations "just in case" the city decides to build one in the future. Another possiblility may be a forgotten service tunnel between buildings that are no longer there.

Head over to www.uer.ca and post this there in the Southern forum to see if anyone there knows anything about it. There are a bunch of urbexxers in Houston and I'm sure someone will get in and explore it if they know about it.

Better yet, I'll do it for ya since I have membership there. We'll see what we can find out. You can still go there if ya want, it's free to join and you might find urbexxing to be pretty cool.

[kachina]

Looks like the old service tunnels that lie under Tarleton State and Balyor. They contained hot water pipes for heating the buildings and communications wiring. However, since they were off limits, I never explored them