Houston gets some love in America's favorite buildings

Via Austinist, the American Institute of Architects celebrated its 150th birthday last month by surveying 1,800 randomly chosen Americans on what their favorite U.S. works of architecture were. An AIA panel then narrowed those choices down to come up with America's Favorite Architecture, a list of the 150 most popular structures in the country. As you'd expect, at the top of the list are a bunch of national icons: the Empire State Building, the White House, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. But way down toward the end there's a little bit of local flavor: Houston's Pennzoil Place, Astrodome and Williams Tower ranked 132nd, 134th and 139th, respectively. Not bad choices, we'd say — especially considering that two of those three made it into our logo.

Houston had more buildings on the list than any other Texas city: Two, the Texas Capitol (No. 92) and UT's Battle Hall (No. 150) are in Austin, and one, the American Airlines Center (No. 118), is in Dallas. All this started us thinking: What are your favorite buildings in Houston? We've always been partial to the Bank of America Center, the JPMorgan Chase Building, the San Jacinto Monument and Lovett Hall, but there are so many other great buildings around here that it would be hard to pick a favorite.