Destination Mound Town

If you are in Houston, you MUST take the train ride through Hermann Park regardless of your age to discover and enjoy the new commission by Trenton Doyle Hancock, titled Destination Mound Town.

(Paul Hedge, Hales Gallery London, holding Torpedoboy and his Vegan friend, prepares to ride the train for the first time)

Destination Mound Town, commissioned as part of Art in the Park, the Park's Centennial Public Art Project.  Trenton Doyle Hancock has transformed the interior walls and floor of the Hermann Park Railroad Tunnel.  

(Trenton Doyle Hancock, Torpedoboy, and Hancock's mother boarding the train at the Park's Centennial Celebration) 

The Tunnel, previously dull and dark, has been completely changed into a site specific work of art. The Tunnel is now a landscape filled with Hancock's ongoing narrative of the Mounds, a half-animal, half-plant creature.

Train passengers are now transported into a "day in the life of the Mounds." Now when you enter the Tunnel, you experience the Mounds and their friends starting their day, and as you leave the Tunnel, you experience the Mounds preparing for bedtime. 

(One of the many pop-up figures 

resting on the floor of the Tunnel)

Hancock explains, "I just want people to have a sense of wonderment, especially the little ones, small children who may or may not have gone to a museum." 

(Hancock in the conductor's seat at the Centennial Celebration)

About 400,000 people a year ride the Hermann Park train, which has been operating since 1954.  The metal building where the train is stored that used to be a bit dark and scary, has been transformed with Hancock's Destination Mound Town.

(detail, Destination Mound Town)

Trenton Doyle Hancock, Destination Mound Town

When: 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Mondays-Fridays 

10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays

Where: Viewable only from Hermann Park train 

Tickets: $3.25 round trip at Kinder Station. Ride for free from other stops, then pay to return. All-day pass $6.50; 713-524-5876; hermannpark.org