The new Wortham Theater Center, the Old Barn out in the East End and the Shamrock make up just a few of the photos in this month's roundup of Houston as it was in 1987.

* Thirty years ago, the Chronicle's editorial board noted that there were two things residents could depend on: "One was that downtown was deserted after 5 p.m.; the other was that cultural offerings dwindled substantially during the warmer months."

The Wortham Center, which provided a much-needed home for Houston Grand Opera and Houston Ballet, would change that. Opening its doors as the city entered the summer months, the performing arts hall proved to be a testament to how residents step up in good economic times and, as you'll see, in lean times as well.

That idea was not lost as Ann Holmes, Chronicle fine arts editor, noted on May 10:

It may be ironic that just at the moment of their greatest leap into the house of their dreams, both the opera and the ballet, like almost everything else in Houston, are experiencing a historical wallet squeeze. This was the city that went through past depressions and recessions without much of a bobble. Now Houston, as the American petroleum capital, is really feeling a wallop.

Nevertheless, the community's leaders came through with a glowing record of fund raising to pay for their $72 million house, with no government funds. It was a triumphant private-sector performance, done in cooperation with the city, which furnished the land and which in the transaction today will be handed a gorgeous facility, worth twice the estimated value of the land. The excitement about the opening, the success of the fund effort - all in a city that is supposed to be down on its luck - turns into magical public relations.

But the arrival of the new Wortham is more than that. This opening marks a great step for the people who financially support the ballet and the opera. They have not only broken their backs to help raise the funds for this building, but they have also come through again and again, to make their own organizations ready for the big step into a dream house, with lengthened seasons and bigger budgets. Those board members came through repeatedly when asked to find the funds. It was the Harris Mastersons who have several times answered the call for help - once notably when it appeared the ballet would have no dance stage to dance on, and so another $350,000.

[...]

The presence today of this magnificent facility suggests that the future of the arts for this city has every chance to be busy and bold and beautiful. What many people don't seem to realize is that Houston is one of the handful of cities in the nation with the full complement of significant performing and visual arts entities. Houston, New York, Chicago and San Francisco and make up the Fortunate Four cities that have their own top-flight opera, ballet, symphony, resident professional theater, chamber groups and professional choruses.

Among the cities that don't have such a complete arts establishment are: Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Atlanta, and on and on. Had Houston not had Jones Hall as a crucible in which the opera and the ballet could grow (albeit as in a pressure cooker), those two entities would not have been in a position to make the definitive move into their own two-theater house. Had these not been sufficiently developed, there would not have been a reason enough to undertake the vast project of this new Wortham Theater Center. It has been a cycle of need and growth.

For the artists who will work there and for the audiences who will experience their gifts and inspirations, the future has every right to be dazzling. By the end of the century, Houston's performing arts, in their expanded venues in one of the finest theater districts in the country, should be among the top three.

* The late Eagle Pennell's 1983 film "Last Night at the Alamo" captures efforts by patrons to keep their favorite watering hole -- called, yep, the Alamo -- from closing for good.

The Alamo actually was longtime East End watering hole the Old Barn, 4317 Harrisburg.

In 1987, Chronicle reporter Barbara Karkabi dropped in on the Old Barn and its aged proprietors, Nick and Joe Petronella. Did the film put the bar on the map, perhaps similar to what "Cheers" had done for the Bull & Finch Pub in Boston?

From her article:

Five years ago a film maker's hot lights shone on the Old Barn, a down-home neighborhood bar in Houston's East End.

The owners, two brothers who were sure the making of a movie in their very own establishment meant fame and fortune, printed up T-shirts with the bar's logo. They handed out promotional wooden nickels good for one "surprise." Then they sat back and waited for the crowds they fully expected to appear as soon as the movie premiered.

But things didn't quite turn out the way Nick and Joe Petronella had hoped when Texas film maker Eagle Pennell chose their place for the site of "Last Night at the Alamo," a film depicting the final night at an old north Houston watering hole.

The crowds never showed, and the T-shirts went largely unsold.

For the most part, the Old Barn, which recently celebrated its 40th year in business, remained what it had always been - a home away from home for working-class patrons and a slice of Houston the way it used to be. But "Alamo" and the making of it has become part of the Old Barn's legend - like the night a drunken dwarf danced on the shuffleboard table.

Whenever stories are swapped about the bar's life and times, regulars are sure to bring up "The Movie."

"We were all excited a film was being made here - there was some pretty good acting in it, too," said Lois Hollen. She and husband Joe have been patrons of the Old Barn for 25 years.

[...]

Much of the action that takes place during "Alamo" centers on the frantic efforts of the patrons to keep the bar from closing down. When the Alamo dies, so do their dreams. In many ways, the same can be said of The Old Barn. For most of the customers it's the "best place in town, the only place in town," as Shelldrake loves to say.

"I've told Nick that I'd like to keep the bar open in his memory. He just laughed and said: 'Well, we'll see about that.' But when Nick and Joe go, I'm sure it will be boarded up and disposed of," said [bar patron Ray] Conner.

"And then... well, it will be just like the "Last Night at the Alamo," won't it?"

Eventually it was Last Night at the Old Barn. The East End fixture eventually closed and, judging by Google Maps, has been torn down.

* Finally, despite pleas from the community to save the building, demolition began on the Shamrock Hilton. You'll recall the Texas Medical Center purchased the hotel in 1985, by that time a green-tinged shadow of its former self. The building would come down, brick by brick, over the summer.