So much vacant freewayside selling space, there for the taking! At least temporarily. Alas, no pieces were sold in last weekend’s guerrilla furniture sale — an all-day event staged on the abandoned concrete campus of Landmark Chevrolet at 9111 North Freeway near West Gulf Bank. But wacdesignstudio’s Scott Cartwright and Jenny Lynn Weitz-Amaré Cartwright came prepared for their Sunday digs:
Because the space was not rented, Scott and Jenny brought an envelope full of cash to pay off potential security guards (there were none), as well as food for any wandering homeless people. The crowd was a mix of architecture students, writers, and curious locals from the adjacent Hidden Valley ranch-style development located behind the dealership.
Well, you know those kinda folks are just showing up for the ambience and cheese anyway. Did you really think they’d be buying up the prototypes in your new furniture line? But hey — marketing is marketing! And look at some of the pix you’ve got to show for it:
“What’s sad is that River Oaks is losing the land versus house battle . . . What made River Oaks so elegant, really, was the amount of land on each lot which was probably 1/3 house to 2/3 land in most cases. Now it’s more like 2/3 house to 1/3 land. Many are nothing more than enormous townhouses with front yards.” [Matt Mystery, commenting on Down and Out in River Oaks]
Ready, at last, for the small screen: This lingering aerial tour of Houston’s rich natural and nature-processing landscape, straight from last year’s Center for Land Use Interpretation exhibit on Texas Oil.
Put on your headphones, turn up the volume, and take it all in!
Our journey takes us east from the 610 Loop and ends at the liftoff point for the Fred Hartman Bridge at Highway 146. When they gonna come back and give us some Baytown?
Julia, the chicken who patrolled the parking lot and schmoozed with patio diners for many years at the Raven Grill at 1916 Bissonnet near Hazard St., passed away earlier this month of natural causes, a reader informs us. “We don’t know where she came from,” reads a note posted on the restaurant’s website, “only that she was a sweet bird who liked people and that she simply made us happy each time we saw her.”
Frequent diners of the Southampton-area restaurant have sent in their own website tributes to the “friendly and fearless” bird, who apparently exhibited much social grace in her daily appearances and egg-laying demonstrations for small impromptu gatherings of children, even while patrons devoured the carcasses of distant relatives only a few feet away:
She may have been ‘just a chicken’ but I watched Julia single-handedly form new friendships between diners. She was a tough, little city chicken. RIP Julia.
The trees remaining on the site of the former Wilshire Village Apartments at the corner of West Alabama and Dunlavy are sporting some colorful new tags as of late last week, reports a nearby resident:
All the trees have ribbons around them. Trees along Alabama have green ribbons. All the other trees (on about 3/4 of the property) have white ribbons. Exception: green ribbons for 2 live oak trees that flank the old property entrance at Sul Ross. If white ribbons mean TEAR DOWN, then the property will be virtually denuded.
Of course white ribbons don’t mean TEAR DOWN. They mean SURRENDER.
And then there’s the new rumor our informant just heard and is passing along:
“My neighbor lived in what you would consider a ‘tear down.’ For several years she struggled with selling and moving or rebuilding on the lot. A big factor in the decision was finding a builder that would keep the integrity of the lot and not cut down the gem - a 100 year old tree that is 4′ in diameter. She thought that she found the builder that respected the tree and had the same vision while simultaneous[ly] she found her dream home over in Garden Oaks. . . . Shortly after the transition, a family bought the lot and are ready to build . . . I have 2 neighbors including myself that would take this tree. I have till Friday to find an association that would underwrite this project and be interested in saving this tree.” [Kat Alan Madison + Austin; previously on Swamplot] Photo: HAR
“A neighbor of the Woodcrest demo is seeking help relocating a 100-year old red oak that is scheduled to be part of that demo. If anyone has the resources and/or machinery to do so email me or post here and I will put you in touch with her. mmatt_chew at h0tmail d0t c0m.” [mek ju, commenting on Daily Demolition Report: Memorial Plaza]
Architect and Swamplot reader Jeromy Murphy sends in a construction update on the house he and his wife — also an architect — are building for themselves at 502 Archer St. in Brookesmith, “not too far from the container house.” How’s the family project going?
Lori and I designed it together, proving that a husband/wife architecture team can succeed (as long as the husband just agrees to everything his architect wife wants).
One of those design decisions that came so easily: the 8-ft. IsisBig Ass Fan that’ll hang from exposed rafters on a porch overlooking a new retaining wall. The fan isn’t installed yet, but you can see the rafters in this photo:
“I guess it’s a ‘turning lemons into lemonade’ thing. When you live in a swamp, you may as well excavate enough fill to raise the houses above sea level, then turn the excavated surrounding lands into moats around your McCastles.” [J.V., commenting on Favorite Houston Design Cliché: Vote for One of These Official Nominees]
“According to USDA maps, we still have about 3.2 million acres of prime farmland within 100 miles of Houston. We can’t produce everything we like and want to eat. No cacao trees for chocolate here, for example. A more relevant question is whether we could supply most if not all of our basic needs from soils within a hundred miles or so. I think the answer is yes. The amount of land to support one person varies in the scientific literature from less than an acre to 20 or so acres. With 4 million people, we would likely need at least 2-4 million acres of farmland. But we are expecting 3.5 million more people by 2035. So not only will there be more people to feed, there will be less land to feed them from, locally. If current density and development practices continue, we can expect to lose at least 1,000 square miles of prime farmland, prairie, and forest habitat to development.” [OffCite]
Just what was going on at this property just a quarter-mile south of the South Main Super Target over the holiday weekend? A bit of land clearing, reports a reader, who says the machines are gone now — but so are a fair number of trees: There’s now a pile of logs at the back of the lot.
Its the Northernmost never-developed lot on South Main . . . For-Sale signs have been up forever, so its interesting to see bulldozers hard at work. . . . This combined with the demolition of the Speedway Inn at 10000 South Main is starting a trend for new development.
The L-shaped, 3.36-acre lot wraps behind the car wash to the north. Across the street is the westernmost Reliant Park parking lot. Here’s an aerial view from the listing: Continue Reading This Story >
Sprouted in the patio behind the Art League Houston building at 1953 Montrose, home of the Inversion Coffee House: 3 giant mushrooms, built out of rebar, soil, and moss by artists Nicola Parente and Divya Murthy.
And how are they doing? Not so well, reports the Chronicle’s Molly Glentzer:
One is planted with herbs; one is planted with Texas natives; and the third is planted with non-native ornamentals. They’ve pretty much been left to survive or thrive on their own through next year, and the artists are perhaps expecting that only the native-planted mushroom will survive.
Just one catch. When we looked on Saturday, they all needed water.
Nothing lives in a black plastic pot for long without a little help from the gardener. And biodegradable brown pots would’ve been more environmentally friendly — not to mention better-looking.
Inside the Art League building: the second part of the installation, which Parente and Murthy put together from debris they collected from the surrounding eight-block area.
“My grandfather, Milton Brucker - designer of the capsule, passed away in 2007 at the age of 94. He would have been delighted to see your innovative use for it!” [Michael Brucker, commenting on CLUI in Houston: Attack of the Pod People]
Swamplot covers real estate, home design and renovation, architecture, and the landscape of Houston, Texas. Swamplot did not flood during Allison — or Ike! Honest! Read more
“My neighbor lived in what you would consider a ‘tear down.’ For several years she struggled with selling and moving or rebuilding on the lot. A big factor in the decision was finding a builder that would keep the integrity of the lot and not cut down the gem - a 100 year old tree that is 4′ in diameter. She thought that she found the builder that respected the tree and had the same vision while simultaneous[ly] she found her dream home over in Garden Oaks. . . . Shortly after the transition, a family bought the lot and are ready to build . . . I have 2 neighbors including myself that would take this tree. 
Comment of the Day: The River Oaks Middle Age Spread
“What’s sad is that River Oaks is losing the land versus house battle . . . What made River Oaks so elegant, really, was the amount of land on each lot which was probably 1/3 house to 2/3 land in most cases. Now it’s more like 2/3 house to 1/3 land. Many are nothing more than enormous townhouses with front yards.” [Matt Mystery, commenting on Down and Out in River Oaks]