Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
Your vision is the promise of what you shall one day demolish.
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Demolitions
A reader who visited the site of the House of Deréon Media Center last night notes an unusual outcome to the demolition standoff that began on the Midtown block late last week. The excavator parked outside the former event and wedding venue at 2204 Crawford St. marketed as “The Home of Destiny’s Child” has apparently been removed — and the building, along with other structures that until last year belonged to former Destiny’s Child manager Mathew Knowles‘s Music World Entertainment complex, is still standing. There will be no, no, no demolition, it appears — for now.
A reader’s photo and video of the scene (above) show only a few mudtracks from the excavator remaining — and Kelly Rowland, Beyoncé Knowles, and Michelle Williams still staring it down, unmoved.
Say My Name
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
Close up, move out, smash down.
It appears that what’s left of Mathew Knowles’s Music World Entertainment compound in Midtown is Destiny’s Child now. “Ever since I read that Advantage BMW bought the block,” writes the reader who snapped this photo of the excavator now parked next to the House of Deréon Media Center at 2204 Crawford St., “I have been expecting something to come down.”
The pictured building, designated the “Home of Destiny’s Child” — later an event and wedding venue operated by Knowles, the group’s former manager — sits on the 1.43-acre block bounded by Crawford, Webster, LaBranch, and Hadley that Knowles sold to the corporate owners of the neighboring Midtown Advantage BMW dealership late last year, after (as he later told Nancy Sarnoff) “someone knocked on my door and made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”
Also on the block: the Music World Studios building, where (among others) Rick Ross, Lil Wayne, Mario, and Chris Brown recorded — as well as Knowles’s daughters, Beyoncé and Solange. And at 1515 Hadley St., next door to the House of Deréon Media Center, is the 3-story former Rice Mansion, which Knowles had made his company’s headquarters:
Child of Destiny
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
Richwood, Richmond, Rich-wherever Place, it doesn’t matter much when they’re all flattened.
There’s now nothing left of the 1952 2-bedroom house or its 3 accompanying oak trees that until late last month stood at 4027 Portsmouth St. in Weslayan Plaza, a tiny neighborhood just west of Greenway Plaza and just north of the Southwest Fwy.
Here’s a quick photo recap of recent activity on the site:
Now You See It
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
Trouble is, the house has holes in it and the time is running out, no matter what you do with it.
Neighbor-with-a-security-cam Bill Curry has now posted to YouTube 6 additional time-lapse videos covering days 2 through 8 of the demo of the Googie-style River Oaks Manor condo complex at 2325 Welch St. The structure went down at the end of last month across from his home just east of Revere St., in an unnamed neighborhood real close to River Oaks.
If you thrilled to the jumpy frames from Curry’s Nest camera chronicling the removal of a 26-unit, 2-story structure dating from 1950 (in favor of a 32-unit, 9-story structure dating from 2018) but wanted to see what more it took to remove the row of Welch St.-facing carports left standing in the first video, follow the rest of the sequence, beginning with Day 2 (above) and continuing with the third day (June 27th) below:
Clearing Out in River Oaks Adjacent
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
Demolition is the struggle of the soul, breaking loose from what is perishable, and attesting her eternity.
The metal garage-and-office structure that once housed the Neff Rental location at the southwestern corner of Independence Heights has now been obliterated, a reader notes — sending the above photograph to serve as evidence of the building’s absence. Site work began at the property last month.
When construction is complete next year, a 30,000-sq.-ft. 365 by Whole Foods Market will face the North Loop feeder road, in front of an attached tilt-wall 12,000-sq.-ft. structure slated for a Houston Heights ER. A parking lot of 242 spaces will front Yale St. Immediately to the north on Yale, a 19,200-sq.-ft. strip center will be surrounded by additional parking.
- Previously on Swamplot: Site Work Begins at the Coming Garden Oaks 365 by Whole Foods in Independence Heights; Yale St. Industrial Park That Just Lost Its Religion Will Also Fall Victim to Garden Oaks Whole Foods Plans; Whole Foods’s 365 Garden Oaks Spot Now Emptied of Neff Rental Rentals
Photo: Swamplot inbox
Enough for Neff
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
In a gentle way you can demolish the world.
If you’re trying to justify the expense and hassle of mounting and maintaining a capable security cam outside your home, shouldn’t the ability to capture timelapse footage of demolition crews as they quickly dispose of cute fifties condo complexes across the street tip the scales in favor? Here’s a sample benefit: the above video from the Nest camera of Bill Curry, which documents in quickly digestible form the final dozen-plus hours last Friday of the 26-unit Googie-style complex at the southeast corner of Welch and Revere streets adjacent to River Oaks — as it gets eaten from behind by a Komatsu track excavator.
Another possible benefit: A much longer timelapse documenting the construction of the 32-unit 9-story condo midrise Pelican Builders now plans to put on the site.
- The Revere at River Oaks [Pelican Builders]
- Previously on Swamplot: Be-Triangled Fifties Mod Condos on Revere St. Get Bent Into All Kinds of Exciting New Angles By Visiting Excavator; Daily Demolition Report: Lowly Revered; Fifties Mod Condos Slated for Midrise Swapout on Revere St.
Video: Bill Curry
Nest to Nothing, Next to River Oaks
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
Follow us to a land of falling buildings:
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
And we shall engrave these structures into the earth with our excavators, so that they be remembered.
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
To demolish is as human as to breathe.
