Friday, October 28, 2011

A First for Everything

IMG_1970 by lc_db

The statue honoring Dick Dowling was Houston’s first piece of Public Art, originally dedicated in 1905. At first it was located on Market Square, at the time the city’s hub of commerce. Now the eight-foot tall Italian marble stature stands on top of a twenty-foot tall granite base in the esplanade leading into Hermann Park on near the intersection of Holcombe and North MacGregor.

Dick Dowling was a Civil War commander and is considered to be one of Houston’s first prominent citizens. Already a prominent figure before the war, as he owned several saloons and was instrumental in forming Houston’s first gas light company AND fire department, Dowling was the commander that led the Texas-based artillery unit that thwarted the only Union invasion attempt of Texas at Sabine Pass.

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