Here’s the site plan from the folks running the Day for Night festival, showing how the art installations and music stages will be laid out in the decommissioned post office at 401 Franklin St. this weekend. The Downtown building was sold last year to Lovett Commercial, which will be redeveloping the building over the next 8-ish years into a mixed-use complex called Post HTX. The circle sketched onto the gray-shaded area marked above as The Courtyard appears to match up with the circular garden feature visible in this aerial shot (looking northwest across Franklin St.) — here’s a closer view:
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The ground floor of the building appears to hold only 1 of the festival’s 4 stages, plus a giant installation exhibit by Björk (and a few smaller ones by other artists). Of the 3 outdoor stages, 2 look to be planned for the parking lots on either side of the building’s midrise entrance on Franklin St.; the last stage will be tucked into the former loading dock area, next to the the strip of Southern Pacific-owned land where the company’s decommissioned railroad tracks left behind after Houston’s Grand Central Station was knocked down to make way for the post office in the early 1960s.
The second floor of the complex appears to be getting set up for more art installations:
The complete who’s-where key is here.
- Site Map [Day for Night]
- Developer has mega mixed-use plans for defunct downtown post office, call it Post HTX [CultureMap]
- Buffalo Bayou [Louis F. Aulbach]
- Previously on Swamplot: Inside the Downtown Post Office Stripping Down To Join the Entertainment Biz; Free Press Houston To Ship Day for Night to the Former Downtown Post Office; Downtown Barbara Jordan Post Office on Franklin St. Will Close Forever on May 15th; Replacement for Houston’s Shuttering Downtown Post Office Is Actually Somewhat Close to Downtown; USPS Moving P.O. Boxes to Midtown Ahead of Sale and Demolition of Downtown Post Office; Post Office Sales: Never Mind; For Sale: Downtown Post Office Box
Images: Day for Night (site plans), Post HTX (photo)
The concept of Post HTX is great. Let’s hope they budget for re-doing the exterior…a neon and some sort of iconic lighted exterior with impressive razzle-dazzle would be great, and add to the skyline appearance at night. Get James Turrell to design a fantastic lighted exterior for Post HTX.
It pretty much sucked this year.