Joseph S. Cullinan, founder of The Texas Company, commissioned the Great Southwest Building in front of you, at 1314 Texas Avenue, as the Petroleum Building in 1927. Built in 1927 as office space for The Texas Company (now Texaco), this skyscraper was commissioned by Joseph S. Cullinan, founder of The Texas Company, who imagined a single tower to house oil and gas offices under the name American Republics Corporation. On May 25, 1925 he established the Petroleum Building Company, overseen by oil businessman Thomas Peter Lee of the Fidelity Securities Company, and construction was completed in 1927.
For decades the Petroleum Building was more than offices; it became a social hub for oil and business magnates and their families. From 1929 until 1973 the Tejas Club hosted meetings here, a long-running thread in the life of this tower. In recent years the address at 1314 Texas Avenue has been reborn as the Cambria Hotel Houston Downtown Convention Center, and the building’s historical and architectural significance was recognized when it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on August 8, 2019.
Notice that from 1929 to 1973 the Tejas Club gathered oil and business magnates inside these very walls, a thread that still runs up the façade and along Texas Avenue today.