Everyone likes a good comeback story: 2 N. Braeswood houses a few doors down from the West Loop are rising above their floody circumstances with the help of wood-framed columns placed below their foundations. The photos above show 4718 N. Braeswood, just outside the West Loop, lifted on stilts months after Hurricane Harvey showered it with attention. The house’s chimney has been removed, leaving a gap in its street-facing facade.
Two doors down, 4710 N. Braeswood now sits at a similar elevation:
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Photos: Christine Gerbode
Stilted Homes
These are the lots that need to be bought out, those houses are pieces of crap and the lots are worth about $6.
I can’t believe either of these houses are worth this much effort, they’ve flooded so many times.
How high will they have to build their fences to get any privacy for their houses?
Saw this a few weeks ago! Must be raised 8 to 10 feet! @Michelle, great point I never thought about that!
Wow. That will change the scale of the neighborhood.
Gotta just love this ‘city’ sometimes. So much for scale and proportions in architecture, you know the ‘golden mean’ in plan and section?
I am sure there are many a Greek in the great beyond saying ‘Huh!? Well so much for an Enlightened western culture!’
This is just ridiculous, I am all for the new FEMA flood guidelines forthcoming coming and new BFE’s, but please people! Just do it with a little better design and class. You don’t have to raze the existing structure, but at least hire a an Architect, preferably a good and responsible one!
Arkitektura Development did one or both of these homes. They (apparently) do great work.
Yes, these homeowners’ choices will impact the area for a long time… but just like McMansion and blocky, 40-foot-tall townhouse infill impact other established neighborhoods.
Isn’t everyone always hating on ordinances & zoning?
The house immediately to the west of 4718 (to the left in the second photo) was raised decades ago, when the owners had grown tired of the Braeswood street flooding of the 1970’s and 1980’s. The husband was an engineer, and his wife had always wanted to live in a New Orleans-style house with a high, broad front porch. So together they elevated the structure a few feet, added decorative wrought-iron railing, and planted shrubs in front of the new raised foundation. The result was the transformation of a typical 1960 Meyerland ranchburger into a nicely proportioned Southern-style house that was still reasonably sensitive to the scale of the rest of the block. How well it survived the floods of the 2010’s, however, I do not know.
I’ve seen two of these finished, one looked good and the other not so much. It should be required to elevate properties in these areas out of the flood plain.
@Miz Brooke Smith, i remember how extreme that seemed at the time. Now it seems like it was a really good idea. Yeah, i wonder how they’ve made out the last few years.
For one house:
1) How much did it cost to elevate it?
2) How much is the house (and land) worth?
The home mentioned above that was elevated previously has flooded at least once during harvey, its only 4-5 feet up and being on the bayou thats not enough.