These twin townhomes look a bit steely-eyed beneath heavy-lidded, cantilevered roofs. They share skyline views of downtown from their double-decker balconies and storefront windows laced with Mondrian-style tracery. However, only 1 of these by-the-bayou units designed by MC2 Architects is for sale. It’s the one just a tad closer to downtown (above, at right). Last month, the asking price on this April listing dropped $30K to $549,000.
Poke along Polk St. in the Woodleigh area of “Greater Eastwood” to find this vintage brick bungalow. Since it’s next to an auto repair service, the home acts as a bookend shoring up one end of a mostly residential block. A convenience store caps the other end; a shopping center is in the next block.
The listing’s location close to Cullen Blvd. means both current and future public transportation options. Metro buses, for example, stop nearby and Polk St. itself has a bike lane. Meanwhile, Metro Rail has 3 stations pending in the area, though each might turn out to be a bit of a hike from the home. It’s about three quarters of a mile to the future Green Line’s York and Lockwood/Eastwood stations. The Purple Line’s Leeland/Third Ward stop is going up just over a half-mile away.
The house boasts classic features of 1929 domicile design: porches, wooden trim, interior archways. Listed earlier this month at $124,900, the property is offered “as is.” Here’s what — at least as the photos show it — that means:
In 2009, the now-10-year-old Betz Art Gallery housed in a 1947 cottage-scale venue on West Gray gained a 3-story appendage to expand its exhibition space. Now the gallery towers over itself. Listed in January at $599,000, the property’s asking price dropped to $549,000 at the end of March. That’s around the time artist Lori Betz opened the Betz Art Foundry at the Summer Street Studios, up in the artsy warehouse district off Houston Ave. Although the Montrose-area gallery remains open, it’s moving later this year, a gallery staff member says.
A mashup of modern and vintage structures, the bi-level gallery-home is listed as ADA compliant and reported to be “very energy efficient.” Maybe it’s the dearth of windows. Glass panes that remain post-redo have light-diffusing panels.
With its breeze-catching front porch, rockers, and kitchen garden, this 1939 cottage evokes old-time country living. Sort of. The home was overhauled in 2006. And it’s located across the street from a cluster of about 30 manufactured homes, some of which date back to the sixties. The home’s woodsy lot, which is more than a acre in Shepherd Park Plaza, is just west of N. Shepherd Dr. south of Pinemont Dr.
A Briargrove listing has dropped its price a third time in as many months. The updated fifties ranch-style home currently seeks $639,000, down from $650,000 in April, $669,000 at the end of March, and $679,000 when it hit the market earlier that month. On the street, near Briargrove Elementary, there’s a mix of original single-story homes and newer ones built with larger proportions. This home is one lot in from the corner of Briargrove Dr. on a nearly quarter-acre lot. (Beyond a drainage ditch across Briargrove is the St. Luke’s Hospital Emergency Center.)
The ranch dressing on the home’s exterior is “traditional.” The interior?
You might well expect a home on street named “Leafy Lane” to sport a woodsy setting. While this new Spring Oaks listing is on a 16,788-sq.-ft. lot more groomed than sylvan, it does back up to a ravine formed by a ribbon of Spring Branch Creek. The 3-2 window pattern beneath the low-slung gable in front is a tip-off that the front room is not one room at all. Rather, the street-facing space contains a family room and a bedroom. Both sides of that great divide at the roof ridge, however, have vaulted ceilings. Elsewhere inside, other unexpected treatments include a dual personality fireplace that features an ornately carved mantle tacked onto a plainer midcentury brick wall; a common room currently re-purposed as a dining room; and in the kitchen, wall paneling that matches the knob-free cabinets.
If the natural world off the many balconies of this River Hollow townhome proves too relentlessly bucolic, just descend into its more urbanized underground garage. The residence-over-parking elevation is a 1980 design by architect Kurt Aichler, whose later work veered into the French countryside with neo-Norman tendencies. Meanwhile, this 30-ish-year-old custom contemporary has been “reconfigured.”
Listed earlier this month at $999,000, the 4,194-sq.ft. home incorporates glass — and lots of it. There are, for example, full-height picture windows in most rooms; curved bays of glass brick, one of which contains a bathroom; and a glass cage elevator linking 4 levels of domain. Now, about those balconies:
Arches. Red tile roofing. Arcades. Timbered ceilings. More arches. It’s a seventies-style revival of a Spanish Colonial Revival model on more than an acre of land in Coward Creek subdivision near Friendswood High School. The home’s footprint is a less-than-lot-filling 4,141 sq. ft. on a street with a little breathing room between residences. The asking price: $675,000. Did we mention the arches?
If this West U mansion on Buffalo Speedway brings to mind a game of Clue, chalk it up to its interior layout — and its inadvertent role in a jewelry pilfering attempt by a house-hunting poseur earlier this year.
As with the classic board game, the listing identifies each room by its function. There’s a Music Room. A Loggia. Even a Billiards Room. It was in a Bedroom back in January, however, that an unassuming early guest at an open house allegedly rummaged through a jewelry drawer. He left quickly and empty-handed, but first “body-slammed” the sales agent who had interrupted him. An account of the incident that appeared in the Village News at the time (no longer online, unfortunately) said the perp, believed to have been working high-end open houses in 2 cities, was quickly ID’d, due in part to a fast-and-furious word-of-mouth campaign among Houston-area Realtors to name him and flush-out his whereabouts — and to remind fellow agents to be careful when showing properties.
The upshot? Don’t be surprised one of these days if you’re asked to show an ID and pose for a cell phone photo at a slightly less open open house. No ID required for this tour, though:
Taken down to its studs: This home’s renovation project is in the works on a quarter-acre corner lot backing up to the feeder road of the North Loop at Yale St. That’s in Garden Oaks, or so says the neighborhood signage on the property’s easement.
Listed last week at $350,000, the future version of this 1950-built cottage will have new siding, windows, plumbing, hardwood and stone floors, custom cabinetry, and granite counter tops. The kitchen is already displaying the bones of its new, barrel-vaulted ceiling:
The all-day buffet line for Filipino dishes and Mongolian stir fry just west of the Med Center could be winding down. This standalone building at 2416 W. Holcombe, home to Gold Ribbon Bake Shop and Restaurant since the mid-nineties, has been listed for lease by Pipeline Realty. Located in the shadows of a recently completed storage facility, the property shares a back parking lot with an adjacent medical office. There are 48 parking spaces by day and another 40 after office hours. Interestingly, a sign on the door says the place is hiring, seeking new hires who speak English and Tagalog.
Photo: Pipeline Realty
