Design
In Houston, an Underground Cistern Is a New Temple for Art
“There were very few people outside the water system who knew this massive space was there.”
It took Houston less than 5 years to forget that the city has its own Mines of Moria. A sprawling underground complex of concrete and columns. A wonder to match the Roman ruins under Istanbul.
Houston built its cistern in 1926 to serve as the city’s underground water reservoir. By 2007, the year that the city decommissioned it, Houston was already sourcing its drinking water from lakes and rivers. The cistern had sprung a leak over the past decade that rendered it unusable. So the city locked it up and promptly forgot all about it.