Swamplot Archives by Category: Houston History

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Thursday, March 19, 2009

The Astrodome and the Colosseum

March 19, 2009 – 5:02 pm
   

Ken Hoffman returns from Italy with a little perspective: “The Colosseum was originally called Amphitheatrum Flavium, and it was built by the powerful emperors Vespasian, Titus and Domitian. The Astrodome was originally called the Harris County Domed Stadium, and it was governed by former Houston Mayor and Harris County Judge Roy Hofheinz. He just thought he was an emperor. The Colosseum, after several expansions (mostly to honor a new emperor), had a seating capacity of about 65,000. It had 80 entrances and could completely fill and empty in less than five minutes. The Astrodome, after several expansions (mostly to stop Houston Oilers owner Bud Adams’ whining), had a seating capacity of 62,000 for football. It would take an hour to get out of the parking lot because of a lack of exits. Parking was cheaper in ancient times, too.” [Houston Chronicle; previously in Swamplot]

5:02 pm | Add a Comment | Read more about Attractions, Historic Preservation, Houston History, Neighborhoods: Reliant Park, Public Buildings, Quicklink
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Thursday, November 20, 2008

Vintage Houston Comes to Life Archive

November 20, 2008 – 11:34 am

This 1946 Dmitri Kessel photo of some not-long-vacant Houston property is just one of a half-million images from the Life magazine photo archives that are now only a Google search away. Google is announcing that the entire collection of photos taken for Life magazine — about 10 million in all — will be available within the next few months. About 97 percent of these images have never been seen by the general public.

The images are available from a simple Google image search. You can single out the Life images by adding “source:life” to your search or by starting at this gateway.

Houston photophile Robert Kimberly, who’s been poring through the collection, says

There are loads of Houston pictures, but add “TX” or Texas” to narrow a search to the city. Otherwise you’ll be seeing lots of “Whitney.”

Photo of sign advertising opening of Texas Medical Center, 1946: Dmitri Kessel, Life Magazine

11:34 am | Add a Comment | Read more about Houston History, Online Resources
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Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Just When You Thought It Was Already Long Gone: A Second Demolition for the Shamrock Hotel

November 5, 2008 – 2:51 pm

Interior of Edwin Hornberger Conference Center, Former Shamrock Hotel, Houston

The last remaining building associated with Houston’s 1950s-era glam-magnet Shamrock Hotel is slated to be torn down, reports Cynthia Lescalleet in the West U. Examiner. The Shamrock’s former ballroom facility at 2151 W. Holcombe became the Edwin Hornberger Conference Center in 1996, nine years after the Shamrock itself was famously axed.

The Texas Medical Center has more building plans for the site:

TMC will build 250,000 square feet of office space in three floors to be added atop the Bell building, which also houses the existing parking garage, said TMC’s John Kajander. The added space is to support TMC institutions, he said.

The building housing the Hornberger’s foyer and ballroom “is nearing the end of its useful life,” he said, and will be taken down.

A little Hornberger history:

Continue Reading This Story >

2:51 pm | 2 Comments | Read more about Demolitions, Historic Preservation, Houston History, Neighborhoods: Texas Medical Center, Proposed Developments
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Wednesday, October 1, 2008

The Financial Crisis: Kinda Like Flooding in Meyerland

October 1, 2008 – 5:52 pm
   

A rising tide sinks all prices! “When Dr. Mahmoud Amin El-Gamal, chairman of the Rice economics department, is asked — as he has often been in recent days — ‘What’s is going on with our financial institutions?’ he likes to begin his answer with an analogy of local origin. ‘It’s a lot like in the 1980s when the flooding in Meyerland caused the price of all the houses in the area to go down,’ he said, ‘even those houses that did not flood.’ El-Gamal said the same can be said of mortgage securities, many of which were ‘perfectly fine,’ but had been grouped with debts that would likely continue to go unpaid.” [West University Examiner]

5:52 pm | Add a Comment | Read more about Financing, Flooding, Houston History, Neighborhoods: Meyerland, Price Trends, Quicklink
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Thursday, September 18, 2008

Galveston After the Second Great Hurricane

September 18, 2008 – 6:52 pm
   

“My sense is that Galveston will come back as a weekender community and a modest tourist vista, but that commerce not related to the tourism industry will continue to decline at an accelerated rate. My sense is that what we might see in 20 years is a community comprised of a few high-rise condos and resorts along the seawall, the ubiquitous weekender homes on the West Beach and not much else. It will certainly be easier to evacuate such a community.” [Houston's Clear Thinkers]

6:52 pm | 1 Comment | Read more about Galveston, Houston History, Quicklink, Tourism
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Thursday, August 28, 2008

Pictures Plus Telephone Picture

August 28, 2008 – 2:03 pm

Big Alex, Telephone Sculpture by David Adickes, on Roof of Pictures Plus Prints and Framing, 115 Hyde Park Blvd., Montrose, Houston

Having once graced a hotel owned by a legendary real-estate swindler, David Adickes’s telephone sculpture has quite the Houston pedigree:

Adickes first placed it on a friend’s property off SH 4 and FM 1960 before leasing to J.R. McConnell, former owner of the Grand Hotel, now called The Derek, on the corner of Westheimer Road and the West Loop.

“I said that I am going to make you a deal you cannot resist,” recalled Adickes of their arrangement. McConnell leased it for a penny a day and gave the artist $36.50. “He actually paid 10 years in advance,” Adickes said, laughing at the memory.

“Big Alex” was forced to move from that location, though, when The Grand Hotel became the Derek. It lived on Adickes’ personal lot on the corner of I-45 and Quitman Street for about six months. During that time, Adickes was forced into a back and forth battle with someone who felt the face on the phone needed its mustache painted black.

Robert Kimberly finds Big Alex in its new home at the corner of Mason and Hyde Park in Montrose, on top of Pictures Plus Prints and Framing. (Yeah, you read it here first.)

Photo: Robert Kimberly

2:03 pm | 5 Comments | Read more about Art, Houston History
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Thursday, August 7, 2008

Boomtown Houston Is Back, Though Maybe a Little Dusty

August 7, 2008 – 10:41 am
   

“Boomtown is a strategy game simple in concept but surprisingly difficult to master. The board features several groups of properties – Rice, Montrose, River Oaks, Downtown, Bellaire, West U. and others. Four people can play, as characters Billy Bob, Fast Eddie, Aunt Hattie and Day Bue, charmingly drawn in old-fashioned style by Merriman. Each player starts out with a certain amount of money and bids against the others, trying to build real estate empires.” [Hair Balls, via Swamplot Inbox]

10:41 am | 1 Comment | Read more about Houston History, Quicklink
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Friday, May 23, 2008

No White Tablecloths: Kraftsmen and Textile in the Heights

May 23, 2008 – 12:41 pm

Oriental Textile Mill, Houston Heights, Houston

On June 1st, Scott Tycer will be opening a new wholesale and retail location of his Kraftsmen Bakery in 10,000 long-vacant square feet of the old Oriental Textile Mill on 22nd St. and Lawrence in the Heights. Also opening in the space two months later: a 1,200-square-foot restaurant with a garden patio and bar area, designed by Ferenc Dreef.

Tycer, who was the chef at Aries and then Pic on Montrose, and who runs Gravitas on Taft (which Dreef also designed), will be cooking at the restaurant, which will be called Textile. Tycer described Textile to blogger Cleverley Stone:

We’re going to build out the dining room with textiles, lots of hanging fabrics and different tablecloths on each table. This will not be your typical white-tablecloth restaurant.

Tycer is right: White tablecloths would probably not be appropriate for the space. A history of the Heights written by Sister M. Agatha of the Incarnate Word Academy and published in 1956 describes the operations of the textile mill, which was originally built in 1892 as a mattress factory:

B. J. Platt for years was superintendent of the plant that turned out a product which looked like long rolls of carpeting and which was used for pressing cotton seed oil. The plant’s capacity was about 50 rolls a day, varying in price from $200 to $400 a roll.

The textile was woven from hair. Old residents of the Heights have handed down the story that in the beginning much of the hair was obtained from China when pigtails were being discarded. But certain it is that camel’s hair in time came to be the staple used in production.

Photo of Oriental Textile Mill: Tasty Bits

12:41 pm | 1 Comment | Read more about Historic Preservation, Houston History, Neighborhoods: Houston Heights, Openings and Closings, Renovations, Restaurants
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Monday, April 28, 2008

Cherry Demolition: West U Made Us Do It

April 28, 2008 – 11:46 am

Cherry Demolition Sign on Montague Hotel Before Demolition, Houston

Reluctant rubble maker Cherry Demolition was once exclusively a house-moving company, shuffling quaint little homes in West University. But that was before the late 1980s, when the neighborhood started changing, reports the Houston Business Journal:

Older bungalow-style houses were being torn down and replaced with new multiple-story brick homes.

Instead of watching potential moving business disappear along with the bungalow homes, the Cherry brothers drew up a plan to buy the bungalow-style houses, remove them from the property, find a buyer with a vacant lot, sell the house and then deliver it.

But although this strategy kept the house-moving business going, it was not without problems.

Houses that were too wide, roofs that were too tall or termite damage increased the cost of moving a structure. Three strikes against a house usually meant passing it over. Usually only one in about 20 houses was a suitable candidate for moving and reselling.

Hmmm . . . what to do???

Then inspiration struck. If only one out of 20 homes could be moved, the rest were candidates for demolition, the brothers realized.

Photo of Montagu Hotel by Flickr user ss.yesterday

11:46 am | Add a Comment | Read more about Demolitions, Houston History, Neighborhoods: West University
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Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Entourages and Animal Acts: Airing the Dirty Laundry at Colonial House

April 15, 2008 – 1:09 pm

Lantern Village, 5815 Gulfton, HoustonDavid Kaplan of the Chronicle catches up with Houston-apartment legend Michael Pollack and fills in a few details of the Colonial House story:

According to media reports then, Pollack lived in a super-size Colonial House apartment called “the Dream Suite,” which had a colored water fountain inside and a king-size water bed.

The Dream Suite was real, but Pollack says he never lived there. His home was the Four Leaf Towers and later the Houstonian, he said.

His glamorous stud image was just an act, he maintains, designed to rent apartments.

“I was promoting day and night,” Pollack said. “To me, it was a job.” . . .

According to Houston City magazine, he’d show up at nightclubs in a chauffeured custom Cadillac limousine with a moon roof. He traveled with an entourage, including bodyguards in satin jackets adorned with Pollack’s silhouette.

There are more memorable Pollack TV spots to be dug up:

One commercial featured Pollack in a safari outfit and a tiger. He had a fear of cats, even little cats, and being next to the full-grown beast was terrifying, he recalled.

In 1986, Pollack left Houston because, he said, the local economy and apartment market looked increasingly grim.

Colonial House was foreclosed on in 1988. It was acquired by DRG Funding Corp., the lender that financed the complex’s redevelopment. Pollack moved back to California, working there a few years before settling in Mesa[, Arizona].

In Houston, the Colonial House era is no more. A year after the foreclosure, the mammoth complex changed its name to Lantern Village.

After the jump: Laundry tips from a longtime resident of today’s Lantern Village!

Continue Reading This Story >

1:09 pm | Add a Comment | Read more about Apartments, Houston History, Neighborhoods: Gulfton, Real Estate Marketing
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Monday, March 24, 2008

Goodbye, Felix

March 24, 2008 – 7:53 am

Felix Mexican Restaurant on Westheimer, Houston

The Houston Press’s Food Blog reports that the Felix Mexican Restaurant on Westheimer near Montrose has served its last enchilada. Finding the 60-year-old restaurant closed, patrons have been posting notes on the front door asking for an explanation.

More than three years ago, owner Felix Tijerina Jr., son of the Felix chain’s founder, reported to Marvin Zindler that the restaurant was about to go belly up. From a Houston Business Journal report in February 2005:

But ever since M-a-a-a-rvin broadcast the bombshell, legions of Felix groupies have descended upon the little faux hacienda for what might be a final nostalgic fix of Mexican treats drenched in cheese and chili.

Tijerina says his phone has been ringing off the hook with customers pleading with him to keep the restaurant open, and says he’s also received letters from patrons in San Antonio and as far away as North Carolina.

It worked for a while. This time, there were no media warnings.

After the jump, a look back at Felix’s place in Houston’s history (there used to be 6 locations!), plus a reprise of David Beebe’s Felix restaurant restoration concept!

Continue Reading This Story >

7:53 am | Add a Comment | Read more about Houston History, Neighborhoods: Montrose, Openings and Closings, Restaurants
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Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Southeast Side: A Tour of the Houston Heartland

February 27, 2008 – 1:01 pm

El Torito Lounge, Harrisburg Blvd., Houston

Houston’s lone professional tourists, John Nova Lomax and David Beebe, stop off at the Brady’s Island in the Ship Channel midway into their latest day-long stroll . . . through this city’s southeastern stretches:

The air is foul here, and the eastern view is little more than a forest of tall crackers and satanic fume-belching smokestacks, sending clouds of roasted-cabbage-smelling incense skyward to Mammon, all bisected by the amazingly tall East Loop Ship Channel Bridge, its pillars standing in the toxic bilge where Brays Bayou dumps its effluent into the great pot of greenish-brown petro-gumbo.

While Brady’s Landing today seems to survive as a function room – a sort of Rainbow Lodge for the Ship Channel, with manicured grounds that reminded Beebe of Astroworld — decades ago, people came here to eat and to take in the view. This was progress to them, this horrifically awesome vista showed how we beat the Nazis and Japanese and how we were gonna stave off them godless Commies. As for me, it made me think of Beebe’s maxim: “Chicken and gasoline don’t mix.”

More from the duo’s march through “Deep Harrisburg”: Flag-waving Gulf Freeway auto dealerships, an early-morning ice house near the Almeda Mall, a razorwire-fenced artist compound in Garden Villas, Harold Farb’s last stand, colorful Broadway muffler joints, the hidden gardens of Thai Xuan, and — yes, gas-station chicken.

“There is nothing else like the Southeast side,” Lomax adds in a comment:

I see it as the true heart of Houston. Without the port and the refineries we are nothing. The prosperous West Side could be Anywhere, USA, but the Southeast Side could only be here.

Photo of El Torito Lounge on Harrisburg: John Nova Lomax and David Beebe

1:01 pm | Read more about Air Quality, Houston History, Neighborhoods: Garden Villas, Neighborhoods: Park Place, Restaurants, Tourism, Toxic Sites, Water Quality
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Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Preservation Alert: Save the Historic Salvage Yard!

January 22, 2008 – 2:50 pm

Johnny Franks Auto Parts AdIt’s not just the rice silos that’ll be leaving the First Ward. Next thing you know, they’ll be demolishing . . . the used-auto-parts yard across the street. A source very close to Charles Kuffner reveals that the owner of Johnny Franks Auto Parts at 1225 Sawyer St., across the street from the Mahatma Rice silos, has already sold the land to residential developers.

But wait. Johnny Franks Auto Parts bills itself as “The Nation’s Oldest Salvage Yard.” Is this true? If so, how could Houston let such an important historical site be destroyed? Founded in 1910, the salvage yard for years advertised itself as “the house of a million parts.” Sadly — like so many other historic structures in Houston — that may be its ultimate fate.

After the jump, Kuffner counts the reasons why there’s probably no stopping residential development from taking place on this historic site:

Continue Reading This Story >

2:50 pm | Read more about Buying and Selling, Demolitions, Historic Preservation, Houston History, Industrial Properties, Neighborhoods: First Ward, New Construction: Residential, Openings and Closings
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Monday, January 21, 2008

Free Eighties Furniture at Colonial House!

January 21, 2008 – 11:54 am

You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video

The brave work of Southwest Houston and Houston Apartment Renaissance scholars has been rewarded — a second mid-1980s Colonial House TV commercial is now available on YouTube!

No it’s not quite as iconic and over-the-top as the one with the VCR in the pool, but look at that fabulous indoor-outdoor furniture! Almost a quarter century later, we know Michael Pollack is alive and well, but does anyone know where that living-room mandala and dining-room set ended up?

11:54 am | Read more about Apartments, Furniture, Houston History, Interiors, Neighborhoods: Gulfton, Real Estate Marketing, Renting
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Monday, December 31, 2007

Telephone Road Walking Tour: Not How They Sang It Was

December 31, 2007 – 11:01 am

Smile Lounge, 4348 Telephone Rd., Houston

Telephone Road south of I-45 has changed forever, declares John Nova Lomax:

Gone is the Mexican Catholic blue-collar neighborhood to the north around Queen of Peace church, its place taken by a string of hot sheet motels, clip joints, massage parlors and other such venues of vice. This is what’s left of the Telephone Road Mark May, Steve Earle, Rodney Crowell, Culturcide and others have written songs about.

But it’s all impossibly sadder. The Telephone Road that Earle and Crowell sang about in the rollicking songs of that name is long gone. Crowell’s version is set in the ’50s and early ’60s, and Earle’s in the early ’70s. Today’s Telephone Road far better fits Earle’s “The Other Side of Town.”

There’s more street-level reporting in Lomax and David Beebe’s latest narrated and well-lubricated walking tour, which starts Downtown and heads east along Leeland, through a neighborhood called Edmondson Addition:

Boarded-up hovels line some streets, awaiting inevitable transformation into the (mostly shoddy) condos that are springing up like dandelions here. Other streets reminded us of some of Galveston’s less opulent older districts – one and two-story wood frame houses standing on bricks, interspersed with brick warehouses and workshops.

The story includes Lomax’s encounters with Golfcrest’s underground shopping-cart economy and his retelling of a Telephone Rd. crack-and-hookers tale too uh . . . racy to fit into a song lyric.

After the jump, a very different portrait of Telephone Rd. from an earlier era.

Continue Reading This Story >

11:01 am | Read more about Flooding, Houston History, Neighborhoods: Edmondson Addition, Neighborhoods: Golfcrest, Neighborhoods: Telephone Rd
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