These signs, in versions specially designed for both taller and shorter readers, are now posted on the north side of the recently revamped Buffalo Bayou trail just before it ducks under Memorial Dr., a reader informs Swamplot. Just in case the message isn’t clear: This trail is a bike route. Two sets of double signs are posted, for trailgoers in each direction.
Photos: Swamplot inbox
COMMENT OF THE DAY: LICKED CLEAN BY MILLIONS OF COCKROACHES “Roaches? I didn’t leave them out. I just didn’t see any — as in, not one. No living creatures at all, except us humans. The place smelled clean, like fresh water. I wonder where those roaches went…. and (ugh) what they were eating down there in the ’80s.” [Lisa Gray, commenting on Comment of the Day: The Cockroaches Found That Cistern First]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE COCKROACHES FOUND THAT CISTERN FIRST “Back in ’83 until about ’85 my buddies Colin Mazzola, Keith Tashima and myself would go down an open hatch into that thing — they closed it up sometime around ’86 or ’87 — this was back when jogging around the North side os Allen Parkway (near the celemetaries) was a little sketchy — people hanging out in the park near/under the Memorial Dr underpasses — anyway, what Lisa Gray left out was the 10 million roaches down there — we couldn’t hang out there for long — you couldn’t sit down or hang — BUT it was really cool and I remember being totally amazed that the City had an underground aqueduct/storm sewer overflow (yes it flooded and was impossible to go down the ladder) that was open and pretty much abandoned.” [David Beebe, commenting on Poking Around in Buffalo Bayou’s Abandoned Basement]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE HOUSTON MUSIC UNDERGROUND “it sounds really really cool, but aside from asking Pauline Oliveros to re-record her Deep Listening album i can’t think of a single thing that would make good use of an abandoned cistern.” [joel, commenting on Poking Around in Buffalo Bayou’s Abandoned Basement]
POKING AROUND IN BUFFALO BAYOU’S ABANDONED BASEMENT 
Lisa Gray finds echoes, art, and a few dramatic rays of light in the giant abandoned 1927 underground reservoir near the Buffalo Bayou at Sabine St., under the planned site of a new outdoor performance pavilion: “The question now, of course, is what to do with the Cistern. [Buffalo Bayou Partnership’s Guy] Hagstette says that everyone now agrees it won’t be used for parking or storage. But what should it be? How should the public have access to it? And how will it be paid for? (The Cistern was discovered after the Buffalo Bayou Project had budgeted all its Shepherd-to-Sabine money for other projects.) When we reached the far end of the Cistern, we left the ledge, walking down concrete stairs to the muddy floor. The silty red mud, Shanley explained, was composed of iron and other minerals that long ago settled out of the reservoir’s water. Every now and then, a drop of condensed water from the ceiling would hit the soft mud, and the tiny sound would echo. Shanley shone his flashlight on the ground, examining the droplets’ marks. ‘It’s like the surface of Mars,’ he said.” [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Site plan for Water Music Place on top of reservoir: Buffalo Bayou Partnership
STUDEMONT KROGER AIMS FOR A CITY TAX DEAL A couple of news bits about the new grocery store Kroger is planning for an 8.5-acre site it purchased in February at 1400 Studemont, just south of I-10 and just north of the Arne’s Warehouse and Party Store: It’ll measure 79,000 sq. ft., and will have a gas station. Plus, Chris Moran reports, Houston’s city council will consider sales and property tax reimbursements to the company of as much as $2.5 million. The proposed deal would require the company to create 170 jobs at the location for 13 years and donate $40,000 for improvements to Olivewood Cemetery across the street. [Houston Politics; previously on Swamplot]
In separate moves on Tuesday and Wednesday night, Cherry House Moving rolled pieces of this sold-at-auction stray house from its longstanding freeway-side location in the parking lot of the police station downtown to a new home opposite the corner of Sabine and Lubbock in the Old Sixth Ward. First though, the former home of woodworker Gottlieb Eisele was chopped down the middle and decapitated. Architect and housewrangler Kirby Mears, who snapped the above photo of Tuesday night’s journey down Sabine St., says that’s not a problem, because he’d already planned to replace the structure’s bungalow-style roof — which was built in the 1920s after a lightning strike — with a gable roof meant to match the 1872 original. One exception: The home’s new roof will feature lightning rods.
Both halves of the house are now sitting on steel beams and wheels at the new site, Mears reports. “We are in the process of determining exactly where it will go. As soon as it is set on a foundation, the new roof will begin. Drying it in is our first priority.” Here’s his preliminary drawing of the new Sabine St. elevation:
The future looked a bit dire last week for the strange, dilapidated bungalow hiding in the back of a parking lot of the old HPD HQ building, just across the Gulf Freeway from the Downtown Aquarium. A 10-day online auction for the city-owned building ended with no bids. And the requirements of the bidder looked a little steep: partial demolition, repairs, a move, and restoration.
But a second one-day-only last-chance auction produced — surprise! — an actual bidder at the initial $1,000 asking price. Lucky winner Kirby Mears says he’s representing an “out-of-town client” who plans to restore the 1872 home to its original condition. “She’s very excited,” he tells Swamplot. But he says the former residence of Sixth Ward carpenter and contractor Gottlieb Eisele — last used as an office for the HPD’s old Explorer program — is in bad shape: “It will be a major restoration, and in the end have a new roof which will match the original in design, slope, and eave details.” It’ll also have a new home:
COMMENT OF THE DAY: MUST HAVE LOST SOMETHING IN THERE SOMEWHERE “It’s depressing to see that little house in the Bing aerial view, ready to be swallowed by a sea of parking lots, overpasses and beat-up Crown Victorias. All its neighbors are gone, the once residential area turned into a decaying urban Houston at its worst. I guess I’m nostalgic for a past I never lived in and wasn’t really all that great without today’s comforts, but oh well. Why didn’t the city ever just tear it down to build a more cohesive tarmac? When/who was the last inhabitant?” [Rodrigo, commenting on Ready To Be Hauled Away: Under the Freeway, in the Back of the Parking Lot]
How about another go of it? The auction of the 1872-vintage former home of Gottlieb Eisele, now a vacant and dilapidated former HPD office surrounded by parking lots and the Gulf Freeway, ended last night with no bids. But today it’s back on the block, with a brand-new item number and a new closing-gavel time of 8 pm tonight. For a minimum bid of $1,000, the opportunity to partially demolish, jack up, repair, move, restore, and then register this property can be yours.
Why isn’t there an address given in the auction listing for the “1872 Bungalow Cottage” near the former police headquarters at 61 Riesner the city is trying to get rid of? Because the streets it used to be on have all faded away. The home is tucked almost under the Gulf Freeway at the eastern edge of the surrounding city parking lot. Museum of Houston director (and GHPA staffer) Jim Parsons tells Swamplot the home is all that’s left of an old residential area at what used to be the eastern tip of the Sixth Ward. According to Parsons, the original address was 34 South, and later 22 Artesian Place. Now it isn’t visible from any street.
The final deadline for bids is 8 pm tonight.
A few neighbors actually picketed this home on the corner of Decatur and Silver streets for months after it was built. In 2001 Cite magazine labeled it “probably the most scrutinized — and criticized — private home in recent Houston history.” What was all the fuss about? It was a brand-new home built on a long-vacant lot around the turn of this century in a recently designated historic district: the Old Sixth Ward.
The protest signs have been down for years, but a for-sale sign went up in the yard last fall. After a failed closing, the house came back on the market this summer. Then a second buyer couldn’t come up with financing. The sellers cut the asking price $20K, to $539,999, just last week.
The 3 bedroom, 2 full- and 2 half-bath house was designed and constructed by Houston’s MC² Architects. A picketer-free photo tour is below:
It looked like the end of the line for the Chevy dealership in the streamline building at the corner of Houston and Washington Ave just west of Downtown: GM notified Knapp Chevrolet last May that it would not be renewing its franchise agreement with the 62-year-old Houston company. But a law passed by congress and signed by President Obama in December set up a neutral arbitration process for jilted dealerships, and late last month Knapp learned that its appeal had been successful. Unable to obtain new cars from GM for about a year, Knapp has survived by buying inventory from other local Chevrolet dealers. Expect to see a few more cars on the lot soon, now that Knapp has been reinstated.
Photo: Chris Adams
Hey, how’d they do that?
HOUSTONIANS NOW EAT THEIR VEGETABLES IN THE STRANGEST PLACES 
Food and travel writer Salma Abdelnour, who grew up here, takes New York Times travel section readers on a tour of 5 Houston restaurants carved out of former something-or-others: the car dealership that became Reef, the ice house that became Beaver’s, the burlap factory that became Textile, the appliance warehouse that became Block 7 Wine Company. Somehow the spaghetti-western-themed strip center that ultimately became Stella Sola gets mixed up in this crowd (Abdelnour calls the building a “town house”). She adds: “In the film ‘Urban Cowboy,’ based in Houston and nearby Pasadena, the mother of the John Travolta character told him, ‘You just can’t get good vegetables in Houston.’ You certainly can now.” [New York Times] Photo of Stella Sola: 2Scale Architects
