Texana Thursday: Mount Rush Hour

Mount Rush Hour (Creative Commons license attribution, photo courtesy M&R Glasgow)

South Dakota has Mount Rushmore. Houston has Mount Rush Hour.

At 1400 Elder Street, along Interstate 10 and north of downtown, stand four 18-foot tall busts that, collectively, are called “A Tribute to American Statesmanship.” Three of the four men represented served as a president (George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Sam Houston, who twice served as president of the Republic of Texas).

Only Stephen F. Austin didn’t serve as a president, but he played such an important role in Texas history it’s hard not to see him represented there.

The artist David Adickes created the statues. He’s the same artist who created the 67-foot-tall statue of Sam Houston south of Huntsville and the 70-foot statue of Stephen F. Austin near Angleton.

The park sits on a one-third acre site of a former church that was destroyed when Tropical Storm Allison came along in 2001. Only the slab and some concrete stairs remain of the church.

Christopher and Quinita LaPorte bought the land. They bought the busts from Adickes in 2012. The LaPortes named the site American Statesmanship Park. Most people call it Mount Rush Hour. Today, the park is part of the Harris County Parks System.

Adickes grew up in Huntsville and served during World War II. After the war, he returned to Texas, attended college at Sam Houston State, and left to pursue his artwork. Eventually he returned to Houston, where he created the statues he’s known for here.

Those statues aren’t the only ones for which he’s known. The Virtuoso, a 36-foot statue of a cellist at play that, stands near the Lyric Center, at the intersection of Smith and Prairie, in downtown Houston. He also created a sculpture, “We Love Houston,” which can be seen along Interstate 10, west of downtown. (Because Adickes substituted a heart symbol for the word “love,” the sculpture is also called the “We Heart Houston” sculpture.)

Like Elisabet Ney, Adickes has used sculpture to share the story of Texas and its heroes. If you’re driving around Houston, his works are all worth a look.