Seven Wonders

Buffalo Bayou Partnership's public-art listing includes seven stainless-steel towers, etched with children's drawings, beside Buffalo Bayou in downtown Houston, described by the artist as lanterns after dark. Mel Chin's Seven Wonders, also called Pillars of the Community, stands in Sesquicentennial Park, flanking the park's promenade and the Preston Street bridge. Buffalo Bayou Partnership and Central Houston both give the towers as 70 feet tall, with themes of agriculture, energy, manufacturing, medicine, philanthropy, technology and transportation. Each column is built from 150 individual children's drawings etched in stainless steel, which the Partnership says symbolises 150 years since the city's founding.

Houstonia reported in 2021 that Chin conceived the work in 1986 for the 150th anniversary of the city's founding, and that it was installed in 1998, when the park was finally completed. Because of the delay, he invited Houston schoolchildren born in 1986 to illustrate the themes. Houstonia says he took 1,050 designs from thousands of submissions, a figure Chin's own site also gives. Smithsonian magazine reported in 2013 that Chin, with artists Rachael Splinter and Helen Nagge, translated the drawings into a computer image and etched them into the steel with a laser, and that the student artists were 12 when the pillars went up. Houstonia noted that one pillar carries the blueprint for a "butt warmer" with an on-and-off switch.