By J. David Goodman, Wall Street Journal – July 29, 2025
There are not many iconic structures in Houston, a city more famous for how it spreads out than what it builds up. The Astrodome is the exception.
Never mind that no baseball or football has been played there in a quarter-century, or that music hasn’t echoed through its cavernous circumference since George Strait’s voice twanged through the upper decks in 2002.
It opened as the nation’s first domed stadium in 1965 with a constellation of astronauts hurling a meteor shower of ceremonial pitches. The landmark still exerts a hold over Houston’s collective memory — a bygone vision of a space-age future in a city not inclined toward nostalgia.
But what to do with the hulking structure has raised uncomfortable questions that many American cities have confronted: What is a place without its best-known building and what is it worth to save?
Other cities have wrestled…