They have a Malt Liquor theme park...and they let kids in? Wow.
You made me look it up. I couldn't remember the name. I just knew it was next to the baseball stadium.
It was Playland Park.
The ambitious Playland Park was built in the early 1940s and featured two roller coasters. The park was located on South Main Street between Murworth and Westridge, now a Conn’s and strip center west of the NRG Stadium parking lot. With a carnival-like theme, complete with barkers, Playland was billed as an entertainment complex. With 10 rides on 10 acres, the centerpiece of Playland Park was The Rocket, a wooden roller coaster opening in 1947. The Rocket was promoted as being “the largest roller coaster in the world.”
Cheap thrills were paramount. According to an article in the Houston Chronicle from 1969, Madame Kate was a voluptuous self-proclaimed gypsy whose clinging garb and “azure” eyes mesmerized two generations of park-goers. Local advertising executive Lynton Ellisor worked at Playland Park as a teenager in his family’s booth making nametags. “On my off time, I remember riding the roller coaster, which had three huge drops,” he says, “but my favorite part of the park was the arcade and buying stuff with all the tickets I had won.”
A stock-car race track was built as a side attraction, but quickly became quite popular. Unfortunately, memories of the race track involve incidents that most likely contributed to the park’s eventual closing in 1968. In 1959, an out-of-control stock car careened through a steel fence, killing two and injuring three others. In 1962, a passenger on The Rocket turned in his seat to grab a child to make sure he was secure, and subsequently plummeted 60 feet, suffering major injuries but surviving the fall. Mysterious blazes occurred, as did other mishaps. With dwindling popularity and the opening of AstroWorld, Playland Park closed and was sold for redevelopment in 1968 to controversial Houston socialite Candace Mossler.
