Esperson Buildings
The Niels and Mellie Esperson Buildings are a building complex in downtown Houston, Texas. Mary Ann Azevedo of the Houston Business Journal said that they were "among the most recognizable" buildings in Downtown.
The Niels Esperson Building is the only complete examples of Italian Renaissance architecture in Downtown Houston. Designed by theater architect John Eberson, the Esperson buildings were built in 1927 and 1941, respectively. They are elaborately detailed with massive columns, great urns, terraces, and a grand tempietto at the top, similar to one built in the courtyard of San Pietro in Rome in 1502.
Mellie Esperson had the first of the two buildings constructed for her husband, Niels, a real estate and oil tycoon, and his name is carved on the side of the building, above the entrance, in large letters. The name "Mellie Esperson" is carved on the accompanying structure, known as the Mellie Esperson building, although it is really just a nineteen-story annex to the original Esperson building.
Sherry Thomas of USA Today said that rumors of the buildings being haunted existed. The ghost of Mellie Esperson is said to have haunted the building. In 2007 Cameron Management Inc. sold the Esperson buildings to Seligman Western Enterprises Ltd.
Read more about Esperson Buildings: Popular Culture, Gallery
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“Now, since our condition accommodates things to itself, and transforms them according to itself, we no longer know things in their reality; for nothing comes to us that is not altered and falsified by our Senses. When the compass, the square, and the rule are untrue, all the calculations drawn from them, all the buildings erected by their measure, are of necessity also defective and out of plumb. The uncertainty of our senses renders uncertain everything that they produce.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)