08/30/17 4:45pm

HOW IT LOOKS FROM THE DRY SIDE OF THE BAYOU Chronicle features editor Lisa Gray says her Meadowcreek Village home escaped water damage during the flood, but it was close — and many others weren’t so lucky: “Berry Bayou — the middle of which forms my back property line,” she writes, “received more than 45 in. I’ve seen it in national weather-nerd articles where people are marveling how fast a bayou can rise. My husband says we were half an inch away from the bayou coming out of its bank in our back yard. He sent a graph, showing that on Saturday night, at the monitor I can see from my back yard, it was literally at bank level. But the water broke first on the other bank, into the yard of one of my favorite people in the neighborhood, and up and down the yards on that side. Lots of houses flooded. ‘Dry privilege’: That’s the headline of the essay I ought to write.” [Previously on Swamplot] Graph of Berry Bayou water levels at Forest Oaks Blvd. on August 26th and 27th: Harris County Flood Control District

03/10/17 11:15am

Meadowcreek Park Basketball Pavilion, 5333 Berry Creek Dr., Meadowcreek Village, Houston, 77017

Demolition of Meadowcreek Park Basketball Pavilion, 5333 Berry Creek Dr., Meadowcreek Village, HoustonThe arched pavilion in Meadowcreek Park that was knocked down in 2015 has officially been replaced, after a few years of neighborhood-city back-and-forth to push for the new structure’s design to look a lot more like the old one. The court, pictured up top complete except for the addition of the hoops and backboards to the posts at the opposing ends, got a ceremonial fabric snipping yesterday evening, Lauren Meyers tells Swamplot. This version of the structure appears to lack the thin vertical bars that closed off one side of the original, as visible both in the mid-act demolition portrait above and in this shot from the 1970s: 

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What’s Old is New Again
11/10/16 5:15pm

Meadowcreek Village Park, Houston, TX 77017
Meadowcreek Village Park old pavilion structure

Members of the area civic club send some shots of the now-demolished basketball pavilion and its under-construction replacement at Meadowcreek Village Park, off Forest Oaks Dr. south of Patterson Elementary. The arched structure shown above, designed in 1961 by partial River Oaks Shopping Center architect R.H Brogniez, was originally constructed from wood (which got some repairs and lamination in 1997, but was in pretty bad shape by the court’s closure in 2014).

The city initially planned to replace the structure with something else, but received a string of requests from neighborhood residents to keep and repair the original design. Instead, the replacement pavilion (designed by M2l Architects) will look a lot like the original, but done in steel:

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Mod Sports Court Redo
06/03/15 2:00pm

Demolition of Meadowcreek Park Basketball Pavilion, 5333 Berry Creek Dr., Meadowcreek Village, Houston

Crews tore down the Mod basketball pavilion in Meadowcreek Park on Monday. Its structure had been declared unsafe last August. The pavilion and community center at 5333 Berry Creek Dr. were built in 1961, following a design by Raymond Brogniez — the architect of the River Oaks-Lamar Shopping Center and the Sylvan Beach Pavilion.

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Coming Back in Steel
01/05/15 12:15pm

2042 Forest Oaks Dr., Meadowcreek Village, Houston

2042 Forest Oaks Dr., Meadowcreek Village, Houston

Juxtaposed “before” and “after” pics (recreated above) of the 1963 used-to-be-Mod house at 2042 Forest Oaks Dr. in Meadowcreek Village have garnered a mere 1002 comments (so far) on a Facebook Mid Century Modern fan page. Many of the comments decry the roofing and landscaping changes made to the home, explaining that the renovator doesn’t appear to “get” the style of the original. Others wonder whether some sort of Photoshop trickery might be involved. But a few commenters note that the home, whose Houston Mod open house was featured on Swamplot in 2012, was a foreclosure, that many of its modern features had been altered before its most recent sale, or that the 4-bedroom, 3-bath, 2,650-sq.-ft. home appears to be much more livable in its current state.

Unfortunately, the earlier listing included only a few additional photos, making direct before-and-after comparisons of the extensive changes made to the home’s interior — including the addition of laminate floors and granite countertops — difficult. The home was listed for sale in mid-December for $210,861. Pre-renovation, it sold in March of 2013 for $78,000.

Remuddling
05/28/14 4:00pm

5443-whispering-creek-03-2

Berry Bayou’s banks lie behind an aqua-tipped and aqua-tinted 1962 mod in Meadowcreek Village. The ravine lot property popped up on the market today, with a $99,900 asking price. Many of the home’s original details are intact:

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Hollowed Grounds
05/07/14 2:15pm

5522-sleepy-creek-07

5522-sleepy-creek-02

Almost matching wings of a deep set 1960 “rancho deluxe” mod extend across the front of a wedge lot formed by the street curling off Forest Oaks Dr. in Meadowcreek Village. When listed last week, the asking price was $215,000 for the property — believed to have been custom built back in the day for the owner of Moore Paper Co. It’s still a swank spread offering many period details — and a few curiosities . . .

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Roofing Hangover
12/23/13 2:15pm

CROWDWATERING, CROWDGOBBLING SUCCESSES Map Showing Planned Locations of New Trees at Meadowcreek Village Park, Meadowcreek Village, HoustonCrowdfunding efforts for 2 separate Houston ventures featured on Swamplot last month have achieved their fundraising goals. Rebecca Masson tells Swamplot that “Fluff Bake Bar will happen,” after a campaign on Kickstarter brought in $53,580 in donations. But Masson says she’s “still in talks” with the landlord about the new Midtown retail sweet shop she’s planning; location details won’t be announced until there’s a signed lease. Meanwhile, $3,035 brought in from a campaign on YouCaring means 20 new trees donated to Meadowcreek Village Park by Trees for Houston will have enough water to drink for 2 years. Got concerns about what the trees will drink after that? The campaign still has 9 days to go before it closes. Map: Meadowcreek Village Civic Club Beautification Committee

11/19/13 11:30am

A TREESTARTER FOR MEADOWCREEK VILLAGE PARK Map of Meadowcreek Village Park, Forest Oaks Blvd., Meadowcreek Village, HoustonThere’s no ponderous selfie video to go with the appeal (a more generic promotional vid from Trees for Houston is posted instead), but the Beautification Committee of the Meadowcreek Village Civic Club has taken to a crowdfunding site to raise money for twenty 15-gallon trees they hope to plant at drought-stricken Meadowcreek Village Park on Forest Oaks Blvd. just south of Allendale Rd. The $3,000 the committee hopes to raise from online donations won’t be going to buy the trees, however — Trees for Houston has already donated them. Instead, they’re trying to fund the trees’ watering costs for 2 years, which committee chair Joe Rocha figures will cost $75 per tree per annum. With a mere 43 days to go before the end-of-the-year watering-fund deadline, the campaign is almost a third of the way toward its goal. [YouCaring] Drawing of Meadowcreek Village Park: Beautification Committee

09/25/12 1:00pm

A MEADOWCREEK VILLAGE HELP-YOU-SELL “SELLER WILL DO NO REPAIRS,” shouts the listing. But . . . um, visitors to this past Sunday’s open house did bring their own period furniture to dress up a brick flat-roofed Modern 4-bedroom in Meadowcreek Village celebrating its 49th birthday — as a foreclosure. That was for Houston Mod’s hastily announced Mod of the Month event. The instant living room arrangement from Heights vintage shop The Mod Pod is gone now, but the 2,558-sq.-ft. vinyl-over-terrazzo home at 2042 Forest Oaks Dr. is still on the market at $99,900. [HAIF; listing] Photo: Mod Pod/Karen Moyers

03/13/12 2:39pm

Who snuck all the wood paneling into this 4-plus-bedroom Meadowcreek Village mod on Berry Bayou? Its original owners, according to the home’s seller, who reports they ran a Houston lumber shop called All Woods Schroeder. The shop was located in the industrial complex at 5401 Lawndale just west of Country Club Place; this home served as a showcase for some of the exotic and fine woods it carried. That’s teak paneling you’re looking at above, wrapping the kitchen. For walnut, try the living room and dining room:

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04/26/10 8:57am

Eastside mod chaser (and Swamplot advertiser) Robert Searcy reports on a peculiar property he toured last week on Allendale Rd., not too far from Meadowcreek Village Park:

“. . . it is an odd mix style & architecture wise. The exterior looks like some suburban office building while the interior has a semi-commercial utilitarian feel with a heavy dose of Boogie Nights decor. The rooms are all ridiculously large with huge vaulted ceilings and lots of glass. Giant room dividers, not unlike what you see to partition off hotel ball room spaces, divide the giant open kitchen from . . . large U shaped front living areas. Could be a living room and a den, or a conference room and a reception area. Walking through the cavernous space, which appears much larger than HCAD records, you find yourself describing the rooms with sentences that all start with “well it could be either….”

Seems to fit right in with another hint in the listing: If you like that cute little white home you see next door [see bottom photo], it’s . . . available too!

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12/09/08 12:39pm

PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE BAYOU Lisa Gray gets a glimpse of the “chai-colored” waters of Berry Bayou behind her 1966-model Meadowcreek home: “Most of the new houses sprouting in the neighborhood did their level best to ignore the bayou. Most of them still do; it’s rarely a selling point. A year ago, I was delighted to find that not only was it possible to buy a non-flooding bayou house for $150K, but that it might not cost any more than a similar three-bedroom house on a neighboring suburban lot. On har.com’s real estate listings, bayou frontage either went unmentioned or hid under the faint praise ‘no backyard neighbors’ — the same thing sellers say when a house backs up to train tracks. When first looking at the house I now live in, I had to stand on an overturned bucket to see over the privacy fence and down to the water.” [Houston Chronicle]

03/28/08 11:06pm

Whispering, Cripple, Shady, or Straight: In Meadowcreek, every street is its own creek! The neighborhood has lots of great old houses, preserved marvelously in the area’s specially formulated air. These four homes are all on the Houston side of the neighborhood, and they’re all open for inspection this weekend!

5238 Cripple Creek Ct., Meadowcreek, Houston

Location: 5238 Cripple Creek Ct.
Details: 3 bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths; 2,470 sq. ft.
Price: $172,900
The Scoop: 1968 Storybook Ranch with lots of brickish accents inside. Big Kitchen opens to Family Room with cylindrical corner fireplace. Lot next door is also available. On the market since the beginning of the month.
Open House: Sunday, noon-3 pm

Click this way to see more!

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