The University of Houston-Downtown sits exactly where Houston began, at the meeting of Buffalo and White Oak bayous. Its home base is a massive 1930 Art Deco trade mart that went bust in the Depression and found new life as a college in the late 1960s. This short bayou-side walk pairs that building with the landing where the city's first steamboat tied up in 1837, a Civil War prison site, a coffee warehouse turned bayou hub, and a century-old sewage pump house the university restored.
About this site
University of Houston–Downtown is a public college or university in Houston, Harris County. It is one of 22 degree-granting colleges and universities TexasRoam maps in Harris County.
The site sits at 29.7656, -95.3593 near Houston. The nearest cataloged historic site is Merchants and Manufacturers Building (historical marker), about under a tenth of a mile away. Others within a short drive include Allen's Landing, Site of Confederate Prison Compound, and Willow Street Pump Station.
The University of Houston–Downtown dates to August 6, 1974, the day the University of Houston acquired the private South Texas Junior College, whose home was the Merchants and Manufacturers Building at One Main Street. That building, finished in 1930 as a commercial trade center, rises above Allen's Landing, the bayou-side spot where Houston's founders first set up the town, and it is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. First called University of Houston–Downtown College, the school was established as a separate four-year institution within the UH System in 1975, and state lawmakers gave it its current name in 1983. It launched its first graduate program, a master's in criminal justice, in 2000. Since then the campus has spread along Main Street with the Commerce Street and Shea Street buildings, a Welcome Center opened in 2016 and a sciences and technology building completed in 2020. UHD serves a majority-Hispanic student body and marked its 50th anniversary in 2024.
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