Tranquility Park

Tranquility Park? Nope! More like clutch your handbag closely and quicken your pace park.

If I could give this place 0 stars or negative stars I would… First of all it is full of homeless people and shady meth heads talking to themselves… I felt so uncomfortable the whole 2 minutes I was there I just left… Creepy place. Don’t go there alone.

Steer clear of this eyesore. For MORE than a year, the fountains have been dry and is now a homeless park. Smells of urine and covered in bird poop and dead birds.

This park is in desperate need of an urban intervention as it is almost unusable. Go there at any point in the day or week and it is practically vacant. It’s a shame too because it is such a beautiful space.
Something obviously isn’t working in the space; the city needs to redo it and do something similar to what they did to Market Square or Discovery Green. If city officials can apply the same formula they did to those spaces to Tranquility Park, it would be a great space. It’s right next to city hall too so it should be easy enough for city council to see. :P

It’s a park it’s downtown, it’s one of the many along bagby. This one has some relevance to the Apollo Moon Landings. It’s also heavily under construction thanks to a rail line going to nowhere.

It’s basically a big bathroom for people who live on the streets. I don’t really make it a point to come here to see something exciting, but it’s next to City Hall where a lot of events happen.
At least I got a nice IKEA-​like picture out of this place! Can’t smell the pee from photos!

It’s a nice park as long as you look and don’t touch. Just a relaxing natural environment in the middle of sky scarpers, but it’s small and not really made for exercise or other things associated with parks.
After dark, it gets kind of scary though. Unlike the other parts of downtown, there is no night life here and the streets are dark so for rapists and robbers it’s «Dear diary, Jackpot!».

On Wednesdays we wear pink [neckties when we are milling around and looking shady in the park before a hearing/​meeting/​mediation/​other type of fancy high-​falootin’ functions that do not involve eating breakfast tacos while you surf the internets on your laptop.] What? Don’t judge my morning.
Tranquility Park, situs of the epic Bayou City Art Fest which was amazeballs with our awesome Mayor eating five feet away from my face in the VIP tent at the Elite event, and also locale of one of my Unilocal profile photos, is a delicate little flower downtown that if you walk too quickly you will entirely miss. It is not without its charm for sure, but it seems like the Lucky Charm marshmallow (that ugly yellow one) you always pass up in favor of the totally sweet and delicious one (the green one) like in park lingo, you would skip this one and rather go mill around and look shady in Market Square Park instead.
Right near the federal courthouse, lotsa local medium size law firms, oil companies, and city hall: there is never a shortage of people and pigeons around — your decision whether I am talking about birds or not.
This is a good meeting spot, picturesque as I thought and grabbed a photo of myself here, and it is also a place to come think if you can tune out the loud stereos of drivers whizzing by, horns honking, and construction crews jackhammering nearby.
This is a nice park, I like it … like a friend.
If you intend to be outside for long: remember to wear sunscreen.

Tranquility Park holds a special place in my heart for a number of reasons. I was within shouting distance of the park while I was getting married. I kissed my wife while we had our wedding photos snapped. I walked around its edges on cool fall days as I took a break from work. For all of the talk of Houston being a «concrete jungle,» Tranquility Park helps to displace this notion.
The highlight of the Park is two-​fold. The fountain that dominates it is pretty cool. In fact, last winter, it froze over. While not ice-​skating worthy, it was still pretty cool to see. Another cool feature of the fountain: the area around is attracts people who do American Parkour (I like to think of it as freestyle walking). Finally, the cityscape background is dramatic, and one of the reasons my wife and I chose to have our wedding photos taken here.
All in all, Tranquility Park is a good place to visit on the weekends or a good place to enjoy a leisurely walk after lunch if working downtown. Hard to ask for much more in the «jungle» that is downtown.

I dig the towers in the fountain and the pipes that fence the pool. Gives it a cool industrial/​urban feel that I like. I also dig walking by during a swimsuit photo shoot… good timing.
Walking the paths doesn’t give me the tranquil feeling I was hoping for, however. The main culprit: the smell of pee. I’m not sure if this is a more recent development, because I didn’t see this in any reviews. Perhaps the heat of mid-​day Houston was exacerbating the issue, but it smelled like a Philadelphia subway station… and as much as I do love Philly, they have some smelly transit stations. It is definitely a good sight to see and it will for sure be something to check out if you’re in the downtown area.

On my last trip to downtown for the American Heart Association’s Heart Walk I got lost on my way back to my car.
I stumbled through this area and was amazed by the beauty of these columns and the water that surrounded it.
I didn’t know what this area was called until today when I stumbled upon Gretchen’s review.
This area is beautiful. For all those who have forgotten about Houston’s downtown area. Take a weekend and check out the actual City. There are other fine places to visit.
Come on a Saturday morning when there’s no traffic, relax and enjoy the calm and peaceful surroundings.
You wouldn’t even know you are in a chaotic city.

This is a nice park if you want to walk in green grass yet be surrounded by a concrete jungle. It wouldn’t recommend it that much for bringing pets, but the metal columns with flowing water are great to just sit back, watch, and let your stress melt.
Parking is metered, but its free on Sat & Sunday. Just be aware, the last few times I’ve been, numerous homeless people have been sleeping on benches/​grass and are quick to approach you.

not a park for activities, but it has a really interresting fountain.

When I was in high school, I was given an assignment by my art teacher. Research, photograph, and write blurbs about fifteen sculptures in the downtown Houston area. I then was to give a presentation to my art class, along with slides.
That was probably the best assignment I have ever been given. It was right up my alley, as it involved both art and downtown. Plus, I got to learn random facts about our city that most people never notice.
At the time, there was an architecture firm on Timmons, near 59, that published a guide to the sculptures. There was a map, as well as artist’s and sculpture’s names, and date of installation. I drove around downtown, Instamatic Camera in hand. I later went to the library to research the sculptures and artists.
One of the sculptures led to my introduction of a now favorite space downtown, Tranquility Park. The sculpture was installed in the fountain itself. Pretty holographic, digital columns, that oddly added to the already beautiful fountain. There was quite a crowd on that Saturday, and on the subsequent Saturdays that I brought all of my friends to see the amazing park. The many levels, the grassy hills, the metal water columns, the walkways over the water, and the many shade trees.
It is a nice place to walk through, relax in, and also sit and enjoy the International Festival. I sat on one of the many hills and watched Los Skarnales, a local ska band, perform during the International Festival a little over a year ago.
My report in high school only referred to the sculpture, so it was years before I learned anything about the park. It’s named for The Sea of Tranquility.
The park was dedicated in 1979, to mark the ten year anniversary of Apollo 11’s lunar landing. As a tribute to Houston’s mention in the initial landing, «Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed,» is inscribed in fifteen languages at one entrance. In fact, the entire surface of the park with all of the hills, stairs, and carved-​out niches is meant to resemble a lunar landscape.