During the 1950s Houston’s Shamrock Hotel was the place to be. It was one of the most extravagant and over-the-top social centers for many Houstonians and visitors from around the country.

The Shamrock Hotel, unlike any hotel of its day, opened on St. Patrick's Day of 1949 to the most star-studded party Houston had ever seen. Owner Glenn McCarthy was nothing if not a showman.

1. THE SHAMROCK HOTEL "No list of Houston's treasured and lost historic landmarks is complete that fails to mention the magnificent and incomparable Shamrock Hotel.

Houston’s Shamrock Hotel in the process of being demolished in 1987. While the hotel and its glitz are long gone, its loss may have helped save many other significant structures in our city's ...

Big, brash and more than a little ostentatious, Houston oilman Glenn McCarthy's Shamrock Hotel was the brick-and-mortar embodiment of the Texas spirit. Opening in 1949 with 1,100 rooms, it was the ...

The Shamrock Hotel, AstroWorld, Gilley’s Nightclub) or merely boarded up and abandoned so to speak (e.g. The Astrodome), some of Houston’s most iconic attractions just aren’t around anymore.

The Shamrock Hotel opening at night with spotlights, Houston, Texas, March 1949. Click through to see more photos of the hotel in its heyday... Exterior view of the Shamrock Hotel (left) and it's ...

June 1, 1987 - The landmark Shamrock Hotel is demolished. The hotel opened in 1949 and was one of the most extravagantly mythologized symbols of Texas in the 1950's.

Demolition work begins on the Shamrock Hilton, May 31, 1987.Dave Einsel/Houston Chronicle John Horn, his two daughters - Jenny, 14 and Jessica, 8 - and their friend, Rayne Ryan, 14 view the ...

Current owner Debi James took over the Shamrock Inn Pub in January 2002, a few years before Houston's non-smoking ordinance came into effect. By then, decades of smoking had carved its place into ...

Late on a Saturday night, Cece Buchanan runs out to the pool of Houston's Shamrock Hotel. There on the diving board, 30 feet above the water, her best friend, Joan, holds a champagne glass in one ...