I will be visiting Houston, Texas in a few weeks. I work on white collar fraud cases, and I thought it would be interesting to go out and visit the Enron corporate headquarters, which I think I understand is 20 miles outside Houston. My question is, is it still around? Is it accessible by bus or car?
Forgive me if I seem insensitive to the great distress Enron caused and continues to cause. However, the fact remains that the implosion of Enron is what stimulated the current interest in keeping corporations in line. Enron, in effect, made prosecuting white collar fraud cases “sexy.” I would love to see the old Enron “E” statue that I have seen depicted in so many news photos.
Funnily enough, the nonprofit organization I worked for after college had its Houston HQ in the Enron building on the fourteenth floor. So as a normal matter of course I visited the building quite a bit. The address, if I remember correctly, is either 1100 or 1400 Smith Street, downtown. There is a little church next to it as well.
I believe Enron built another building a few years back, nearby…
Enron built another building across the street just as it was imploding.
The HQ is in downtown Houston, so it most definitely is accessible by bus. Smith Street is a fairly major street, too, so if that “E” is still there, you’ll see it.
I’ve been by the old Enron headquarters. As others wrote, it’s in the middle of downtown Houston. And there was a giant E outside. But I think the big E is gone - I seem to recall reading that somebody bought it in a bankruptcy auction.
As an aside, when I worked for a Senator I did some stuff on energy issues. In April 2001, during a Congressional recess, some energy trade association was paying for a junket down to Houston to visit Enron HQ and learn about energy trading. I had an invitation to go but instead chose to fly back to my home state and visit a lady friend. Of course, Enron went bankrupt later that year. While I certainly don’t regret my time spent back in the state with my lady friend, I do kind of wish I was able to visit the operation before it imploded. Of course, I’m sure my boss was happy that there was no travel by his staff paid for by Enron.
There seem to have been several “crooked E’s” outside various Enron office buildings. Here is a story about one and here is another. I’m not sure where these ended up, but I suppose you could start by calling the ad agency referenced in the first story. None of them are still in situ, however.
My favorite E was the “Disco E”, bought by some guy who then drove off in one of the nicest new model Ferraris I’ve ever seen.
I worked in the federal courthouse in Houston a couple of blocks away from the Smith street Enron buildings during the whole debacle, when the federal courts in Houston were suddenly swamped in the litigation and criminal charges. It was a very exciting time. The E’s are gone now, but the building(s) remain(s), being prime pieces of downtown real estate and all. Here’s some photos:
The bottoms of the first and second photos show my favorite part of the Enron building complex: the circular skywalk that connected the buildings. This is a really neat thing to drive under, and probably the easiest ground level thing to look for to tell you when you’re at the right place now that the E’s are history.