Daikin Park, the retractable-roof stadium ahead of you, is home to the Houston Astros. Opened in 2000, this is the home ballpark of the Houston Astros of Major League Baseball. You can feel the scale: seating capacity is 41,168, including 5,197 club seats and 63 luxury suites, and the playing surface is natural grass.
The ballpark was built as a replacement for the Astrodome, noted as the first domed baseball/football stadium when it opened in 1965. Names have changed around this site — it was originally Enron Field and has also been called Astros Field and Minute Maid Park — but the place still holds that modern, retractable-roof identity. Before the ballpark, this area’s story reaches back: in 1909, when West End Park was Houston’s premier residential area, the Houston Belt and Terminal Railway Company commissioned Warren and Wetmore to design a new Union Station.
That plan required demolition of prominent local structures, including Horace Baldwin Rice’s residence and the Adath Yeshurun Congregation’s synagogue. Union Station was constructed by the American Construction Company; its exterior walls were built of granite, and an original $1 million estimate grew to five times that amount. Under the retractable roof, 41,168 seats and natural grass now cover ground once cleared for Union Station's granite walls.