Riverside Terrace

Hazards
06/19/12 10:31am

What To Expect from a Dangerous Building in Riverside Terrace

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Homes for Sale, Riverside Terrace
11 Comments

After waging a year-long “all out war” against this abandoned house near the corner of Prospect and Live Oak in Riverside Terrace, a Swamplot reader declares “I feel like I won.” How? “The house went up for sale this past week, exactly two weeks after a yellow ‘Dangerous Building’ violation was nailed to the tree out front by the city (following one of several of my complaints to the city’s Neighborhood Protection office — previous complaints generated violations notices for weeds and trash).” The listing for 2536 Prospect features photos of the home’s foreboding exterior with clear warnings from the listing agent: “Dangerous Building — No access!” and “Do NOT Enter!” This hoped-to-be-vacant lot could soon house your dream home! Once it’s bought and the house gets torn down, that is.

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Attractions
01/19/12 10:58am

Wichita St. Mystery House Now in Foreclosure

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Buying and Selling, Foreclosures, Houston Landmarks, Real Estate Marketing, Renovations, Riverside Terrace
6 Comments

The late Charles Fondow’s castle-like construction at 2309 Wichita St. in Riverside Terrace has fallen into foreclosure, a source tells Swamplot. The neighborhood landmark was listed for sale at a price of $325,000 last May. That listing expired in November, but the home’s condition and an included stipulation that only all-cash offers would be accepted may have doomed it. Fondow’s legendary 31-year renovation and expansion project remained unfinished after his death last year; the former daycare center’s top-heavy rack of decks, gables, and turrets have long attracted attention from neighbors and passers-by.

Photo: HAR

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Home Design
07/29/11 8:02am

Everything But the Turrets: The Riverside Terrace Estate Sale You’ve Sorta Been Waiting For

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Homes for Sale, Houston Landmarks, Riverside Terrace
15 Comments

What’s to see at the Wichita St. Mystery House estate sale today and tomorrow? The usual household stuff . . . but “tons” of it, according to the Craigslist ad. You know, several refrigerators, an uninstalled “apple and desert rose” jacuzzi bathtub, and an uninstalled elevator. Sadly, all contents of the well-turreted home at 2309 Wichita (as well as its neighbor at 2306) must go. The home Charlie Fondow just couldn’t stop adding onto and renovating for more than 3 decades is still listed for sale at $325,000, but teevee reporter Isiah Carey — who calls the persistent builder’s distinctive creation the Castle of Third Ward — says he’s heard that “the bank is ready to get rid of it for much less in a short sale.”

Photo: Candace Garcia

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Comments
05/26/11 12:47pm

Comment of the Day: A Spoonful of Sugar Makes the Asking Price Go Down

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Homes for Sale, Quicklink, Riverside Terrace
2 Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: A SPOONFUL OF SUGAR MAKES THE ASKING PRICE GO DOWN “Who thinks $300,000 is completely unaffordable? Seriously? I won’t be dropping that on this unique piece of history, but that’s a remarkable price for that house. You’ll have to put in another $300,000 to make it livable, but in a city where West U bungalows with 2 bedrooms and one bath go for that much, or a simple 4/2.5 goes for a cool million, that folly is a steal. All it needs is a dedicated, kooky restorer/designer and a ninth fence! From that top platform, you can see enough to pretend you’re in another neighborhood, or even Admiral Boom himself!” [Meg, commenting on Wichita St. Mystery House Goes on the Market Today: Your First Peek Inside]

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Buying and Selling
05/18/11 10:49pm

Comment of the Day: He-Man, You Have the Power to Save These Turrets!

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Home Decor, Homes for Sale, Houston Landmarks, Interiors, Quicklink, Real Estate Marketing, Riverside Terrace
3 Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: HE-MAN, YOU HAVE THE POWER TO SAVE THESE TURRETS! “This house will more than likely be torn down. It’s a shame, really, because it’s one of the most unique structures in town, but the list of people who, a) could afford the $300K price tag, and b) would want to live in a house that looks like Castle Grayskull, is probably pretty short.” [Stormy Blanco, commenting on Wichita St. Mystery House Goes on the Market Today: Your First Peek Inside]

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Art
05/18/11 5:01pm

Wichita St. Mystery House Goes on the Market Today: Your First Peek Inside

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Buying and Selling, Home Decor, Home Design, Homes for Sale, Interiors, Real Estate Marketing, Renovations, Riverside Terrace
23 Comments

After the Orange Show, the Beer Can House, and the Third Ward home of the Flower Man, probably no Houston home has accumulated more outsider-art street cred than Charles Fondow’s decades-long transformation of a former Riverside Terrace daycare center into a bubbling stew of half-timbered gables, turrets, and towering rooftop decks. The ongoing Wichita St. skyward expansion project had an air of mystery, too. In Jennifer Mathieu’s 2001 Houston Press profile, Fondow comes across as shy and self-effacing, though he had by then spent $300,000 and countless hours of hard work on his grand, mostly-DIY creation, inspired by visions he had collected from visits to exotic far-away lands like Russia and Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Fondow, who loved to travel, passed away in March after falling ill on a Caribbean cruise. His gotta-keep-adding home-improvement project had lasted 31 years. And earlier today, a for-sale sign went up on the property. The listing features a first public viewing of what everybody wants to see: the building’s innards. Could this place be just as weird and wonderful inside as what Fondow carefully assembled outside and on top?

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Buying and Selling
03/31/11 10:07pm

Comment of the Day: How Much for That Riverside Terrace House with the Turrets?

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Comments, Home Design, Quicklink, Riverside Terrace
No Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOW MUCH FOR THAT RIVERSIDE TERRACE HOUSE WITH THE TURRETS? “. . . how does one set a price point for a house like this? I’m not one to persist in preserving things just because they’re kooky, but in this case it was one individual’s personal vision that has entertained and piqued local interest over the years.” [Claire de Lune, commenting on Charles Fondow Leaves His Wichita St. Mystery House Unfinished]

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Home Design
03/30/11 3:56pm

Charles Fondow Leaves His Wichita St. Mystery House Unfinished

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Houston Landmarks, Renovations, Riverside Terrace
13 Comments

Houston’s longest-running home renovation project may never be completed, but work on the extraordinary 31-year-long effort has come to an end. Charles Fondow, the retired VA nurse and dedicated do-it-yourselfer whose ongoing home-improvement efforts in Riverside Terrace have intrigued and astounded neighbors and passers-by for decades, passed away earlier this month at the age of 64. Fondow began fixing up and adding on to his 2-story brick home on Wichita St. near Dowling shortly after he purchased the termite-ridden former duplex for $35,000 in 1980. Three years later, after Hurricane Alicia knocked a couple of trees onto the roof, he got the inspiration to add the property’s first 2 turrets — one modeled after a courthouse he had seen in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and the other a Russian-style onion dome. Later, Fondow began work on more additions to the property, including among many other features 2 giant decks, an elevator, a tall glass atrium, and a separate apartment in back.

“I would really love to get it finished before I die,” he told Houston Press reporter Jennifer Mathieu in 2001.

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Buying and Selling
12/07/10 2:25pm

Riverside Terrace Assisted Living: Whatever It Is, You Should Be Against It

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Neighborhood Disputes, Proposed Developments, Riverside Terrace
12 Comments

Passed on to Swamplot: an “anonymous call-to-arms of sorts” distributed to the front doors of a few residents on the Hwy. 288 edge of Riverside Terrace. A reader who received the crooked yellow flyer complaining about the encroachment of businesses into the area tells Swamplot “I would find it hilarious if it didn’t make me so angry.” Our tipster notes in the author of the double-sided note an apparent “disjunction between the things that irritate them (‘Speed Racers’ and ‘sexual deviants’) and the alleged causes (businesses, like Denny’s).”:

I don’t even know how to respond – I thought about creating another flyer, actually using my name, and systematically debunking each of their complaints, but that would probably just get my house egged.

At issue: a future “assisted living facility” apparently being planned for 2323 Prospect St. The author of the flyer doesn’t exactly know what’s going in there, but writes adamantly that it can’t be good:

What kind of services are being provided and to whom these services are being provided is unknown at this time. Will this pending facility provide services for the released mentally fragile, released prisoners, sexual deviants, homeless or for drug rehab? Whatever! This business is not safe for you, your family, our block, our neighborhood and our community.

The complete flyer:

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Critters
07/21/10 1:51pm

Letting It Go in Riverside Terrace

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Gardening, Landscape, Riverside Terrace, Streetscapes
39 Comments

A reader writes:

There is an overgrown 12 foot wide city-owned “alley” behind my house in Riverside Terrace that due to weeds and trees is no longer navigable by anything larger than a “mini hydraulic excavator.” I know this because Centerpoint drove one back there when they put in my new gas meter in October.

My busy-body retired neighbor informs me that I am responsible for maintaining the alley by keeping the weeds and grass down, though when I look a few houses down in both directions from my house, I see a forest – and no one other than my neighbor complaining about it.  So I quit mowing it 2 months ago, much to her chagrine.  I’d like to treat it more like a green belt. Occasionally I’ll see a screech owl hunting back there during the late evening from its perch on my wooden fence.  IMO the more trees, the better.

Am I really legally bound to mow back there?  Mowing that small strip of grass would equate to another 2 pints of sweat lost, according to my experiences this past month.”

Photo: Swamplot inbox

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Montrose
06/11/10 11:35pm

Swamplot Street Sleuths: Gotta Fight for Your Right

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Nightlife, Renovations, Riverside Terrace
9 Comments

Got a question about something going on in your neighborhood you’d like Swamplot to answer? Sorry, we can’t help you. But if you ask real nice and include a photo or 2 with your request, maybe the Swamplot Street Sleuths can! Who are they? Other readers, just like you, ready to demonstrate their mad skillz in hunting down stuff like this:

Answers — of a sort — to your questions:

  • Montrose: Alas, none of our readers were able to identify concrete plans for the uh, seminal Montrose nightclub at the corner of Westheimer and Yoakum, which closed last year. But some of you were happy to pass on rumors about Mary’s: “Last I heard it was being purchased/leased again and will become a new Montrose hangout paying homage to the original, but that was about two months after it closed,” reports kjb434. LandGuy points out that the next-door parking lot between Mary’s and Burger King is owned by someone else; however HCAD records indicate the owners of Mary’s still also own the lot directly behind the former club, facing California St.
  • Riverside Terrace and beyond: Can anyone snap photos of your home? “If you are in a public space, you can photograph anything you like. There may be restrictions around military installations or FBI buildings, though,” declares roving pic-snapper RWB. But watch out for overzealous security guards and cops, he warns. RWB has some experience in that department; but not so much as Downtown electric shuttle entrepreneur Erik Ibarra — who, sadly, did not weigh in to this discussion. (Ibarra founded REV Eco-Shuttle in 2008, shortly after he and his brother received a $1.7 million lawsuit settlement from the city. Six years earlier, sheriff’s deputies had entered their home near Park Place, seized their film, and arrested them after Ibarra’s brother took photos — from his own and public property — of a drug search being conducted at their next-door neighbor’s home.)

    Lauren offered a link to this handy guide to photographers’ rights. But a couple readers were certain the would-be design stalker was casing, not admiring: Says montrose: “They were just seeing if anyone was home before they robbed the joint. Nobody wants to take a picture of your house.”

We’ll post the next set of reader questions next Tuesday. Send us what you’ve got before then!

Photo of 1022 Westheimer Rd.: Swamplot inbox

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Montrose
06/08/10 4:15pm

Swamplot Street Sleuths: Something About Mary’s, Design Stalkers

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Nightlife, Photography, Riverside Terrace, Uncategorized
51 Comments

Got an answer to either of these reader questions? Or just want to be a sleuth for Swamplot? Here’s your chance! Add your report in a comment, or send a note to our tipline.

  • Montrose: A reader wants to know if anyone has heard of any plans for the site of Mary’s Lounge at the corner of Westheimer and Yoakum — as well as the parking lot between it and Burger King. The famous Montrose club shut down last year.
  • Riverside Terrace and beyond: When strangers just love your style!

    My partner and I are renovating our house in Riverside Terrace, and the other day a well-mannered gentleman rang our doorbell requesting our permission to photograph our house. While we’d like to presume that his request was a compliment that our hard work is paying off, we didn’t feel comfortable with the idea of a stranger snapping photos of our house. Not knowing his true intentions, we politely declined.

    Otherwise who knows where your stuff would show up?! So . . . what’s the question?

    However, I know that applications such as Google Street View capture images from the public domain and make them readily available via the internet. Are there any restrictions to what we can or cannot photograph in Houston?

Photo of 1022 Westheimer Rd.: Swamplot inbox

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Attractions
06/04/10 12:45pm

Swamplot Street Sleuths: Electric Horse Mystery Tour

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Critters, Home Design, Renovations, Riverside Terrace, Taxes, Willow Meadows, Willowbend
1 Comment

Got a question about something going on in your neighborhood you’d like Swamplot to answer? Sorry, we can’t help you. But if you ask real nice and include a photo or 2 with your request, maybe the Swamplot Street Sleuths can! Who are they? Other readers, just like you, ready to demonstrate their mad skillz in hunting down stuff like this:

Some answers to your questions!

  • Riverside Terrace: Homeowner and eternal contractor Charlie Fondow told the Houston Press back in 2001 that his continually expanding house on Wichita St. just east of 288, where he’s lived since 1980, “is the love of my life. I don’t know how to live in a house that’s finished.” Clair de Lune comments on his towering and turreted Queen Anne show:

    I wonder how Charlie is doing these days, and (since the story doesnt mention a family) what will happen to the house after he’s gone. I also wonder if the interior is as interesting as the exterior? It might be time for a follow-up.

    Hey, all you local journalist types who use Swamplot as a tip sheet: How about it?

  • Willowbend: Commenter Sihaya explains that the horses gently grazing under the high-voltage power lines in the easement west of Stella Link below the South Loop are the animal benefactors of agricultural-use leases set up by Houston’s power company in order to lower its property taxes:

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