Things to Do in Memorial, Houston

Memorial's social and recreational life revolves around one giant green rectangle: the 1,500-acre Memorial Park, supported by an arboretum, a 27-hole golf course, a botanic garden across the bayou, and the CityCentre lifestyle complex on the western edge. That core list has been growing since the Memorial Park Conservancy's Ten-Year Master Plan kicked off in 2015. Here is the current playbook.

Memorial Park and the Eastern Glades

Memorial Park is the country's eighth-largest urban park and one of the few comparable in scale to New York's Central Park. The Seymour Lieberman Exercise Trail is a three-mile crushed-granite loop that draws every fitness routine in the western half of Houston. The Memorial Park Conservancy's Eastern Glades, opened in summer 2020, added a 5.5-acre lake, hammock groves, and the elevated Cyvia and Melvyn Wolff Land Bridge that arches over Memorial Drive.

Houston Arboretum and Nature Center

The 155-acre Houston Arboretum sits at Memorial Park's northwestern corner and feels nothing like the rest of the park. Five miles of unpaved trails wind through pine savannah, prairie restoration, and pond habitat, and the discovery center runs free guided nature walks Saturday mornings at 8 a.m. Admission is free, and the parking lots fill by 10 a.m. on weekends.

Memorial Park Golf Course

The 1936 Memorial Park Golf Course reopened in 2019 after a Tom Doak redesign, and it now hosts the PGA Tour's Texas Children's Houston Open each spring. Public tee times start at $20 for Houston residents on weekdays. The clubhouse and driving range are open year-round, and the course backs up to the Seymour Lieberman trail, so you can golf in the morning and run in the evening on the same property.

CityCentre

CityCentre at I-10 and Beltway 8 is the area's outdoor lifestyle plaza: a Hotel Sorella-anchored complex with a public fountain plaza, free Friday-night summer concerts, and a roster that includes Studio Movie Grill, Life Time Athletic, and roughly 25 restaurants and bars. The plaza programs movie nights on the lawn in fall and an ice rink at Thanksgiving.

Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens

Bayou Bend, the 14-acre estate Ima Hogg deeded to the Museum of Fine Arts Houston in 1957, sits on Memorial Park's southern edge across Buffalo Bayou. The 28-room mansion holds one of the finest American decorative-arts collections in the country, and the gardens (eight themed garden rooms over 14 acres) are open Tuesday through Sunday. A footbridge from the museum side crosses the bayou directly into Memorial Park.

Memorial City Mall

Memorial City Mall reopened in stages through the 2000s as a two-story enclosed retail center anchored by Macy's, Dillard's, and Target. The ice rink in the central court runs daily, and the AMC 16 plays first-run films. The mall connects via skybridge to the Memorial Hermann Memorial City medical campus, which makes this a default rainy-day option for parents.

Edith L. Moore Nature Sanctuary

The Houston Audubon Society's 17.5-acre sanctuary off Memorial Drive is a wooded loop with a creek, a small pond, and a log cabin built by Edith Moore in the 1930s. Free admission, leashed dogs allowed, and the sanctuary runs guided bird walks the second Saturday of every month.

Terry Hershey Park trail

Terry Hershey Park runs west from Beltway 8 along Buffalo Bayou for nearly 10 miles, with a paved hike-and-bike trail that connects under the freeway to the broader Memorial Park system. The shaded sections under the oak canopy stay cool through midday in summer. Eldridge Park near the trail's western end has bouldering walls and an off-leash dog park.

Spring through fall events

The Memorial calendar runs heavy in spring and fall: the Texas Children's Houston Open at Memorial Park in late March, the Bayou Bend Garden Family Day in April, the CityCentre Wine Festival in October, and the Memorial Park Conservancy's Trees for Houston run in November. Summer slows to dawn-only outdoor activity because of the heat.

Getting here and getting around

Memorial is car-only. Memorial Park has surface lots at five trailheads, all free, but they fill by 7 a.m. on Saturdays. CityCentre has a free parking garage. The closest METRORail station is more than five miles east, and bus service in Memorial is limited. Our METRO guide has the routes that do run. For visitors trying to fit Memorial Park and CityCentre into a Houston weekend, our 2-day itinerary builds a half-day around them, and the best time to visit Houston covers when the weather is on your side.

Memorial's recreation density is part of the reason the surrounding neighborhood holds its real estate values so well. See our full Memorial neighborhood guide for what it is like to live nearby.