Houston is the fourth-largest city in the United States and you cannot get above it. Not for money, not for a ticket, not at all.
It wasn't always this way, which is why so many listings still tell you otherwise.
Two decks, both gone
The 60th-floor sky lobby of the JPMorgan Chase Tower was the good one: free, the highest public view in Texas, reached by express lifts that covered a thousand feet a minute. Building management closed it in June 2016 in the interest of the tenants, which is a polite way of saying tourists and office workers were sharing lifts and the office workers won. A decade later there's been no reopening.
Williams Tower's 51st-floor deck went earlier and more permanently. It closed on security grounds after September 2001 and the floor was absorbed into leasable office space — so there is no deck to reopen, only offices. The rooftop beacon still sweeps the sky every night, which somehow makes it worse.
Where to actually go
For genuine height, drive 22 miles east to La Porte and the San Jacinto Monument: 489ft up the tallest masonry column on earth, $14, and a view over the Ship Channel's tanker traffic rather than a skyline. Set expectations and it's a strong half-day.
For the skyline itself, the free rooftop lawn at POST Houston is the closest living substitute downtown. And the Williams Tower Water Wall — the sunken 64ft horseshoe of falling water at the tower's foot — is still free, still open, and now comfortably outlives the deck above it.