Houston is a city and seat of Harris County in southeastern Texas, in the United States of America.

Located at the head of the Houston Ship Channel, which links the city to the Gulf of Mexico, Houston is an inland seaport and a major financial, distribution, and manufacturing center for the southern United States.

It is the largest city in Texas and the fourth largest in the country, behind New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago.

The terrain is level and drains into a number of bayous and canals.

The city has a humid coastal climate, with hot summers and very mild winters.

Houston was named for Sam Houston, a distinguished military leader and hero of the Texas Revolution (1835-1836).

The city of Houston covers a land area of 1,397.6 sq km (539.6 sq mi). The Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Area includes the counties of Brazoria, Chambers, Fort Bend, Galveston, Harris, Liberty, Montgomery, and Waller.

In addition to Houston, the area includes Pasadena, Texas City, Galveston, Brazoria, and many other cities and communities.

Houston has sprawled into nearby counties, growing primarily to the north and west. The city is the largest in the country without zoning laws, so businesses are allowed to operate within residential neighborhoods.

Despite the lack of zoning laws, the industrial and residential regions are generally separated from one another because the primary industrial section developed and remains along the ship canal, while residential neighborhoods developed mostly outside this area. However, some overlap does occur.

Interstate 610, known as the Loop Freeway, forms a belt around all of central Houston. At its core is the central business area, located just south of Buffalo Bayou, enclosed by Interstate 45 and U.S. Highway 59. The area is known for its distinctive contemporary architecture and includes buildings such as the Chase Tower (1982), designed by the Chinese-American architect I. M. Pei; and the Bank of America Center (1984) and Pennzoil Place (1976), designed by American architect Philip C. Johnson.

The Market Square Historic District on Main Street, the site of the city’s original downtown, contains a number of important buildings and was entered on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.

The Antioch Missionary Baptist Church was built in 1879 for one of the city’s oldest black congregations and marks the Old Fourth Ward, Houston’s first predominantly black neighborhood.

Houston’s lower-income neighborhoods lie to the south and southeast of the downtown, along the railroad lines and the ship channel. The affluent neighborhoods are to the west and southwest, and include Tanglewood, the home of former U.S. President George Bush (1989-1993).

Outside the Loop Freeway is The Galleria, a shopping mall with an ice-skating rink. The focal point of the Galleria area, as it is known, is the Williams Tower (1985), designed by Philip C. Johnson and one of the tallest suburban office buildings in the country.