Houston Architects

Houston Architects
01/24/13 4:45pm

Wylie W. Vale, 1917-2013

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Houston architect Wylie W. Vale passed away early this morning. He was 96. Vale’s career, according to photographer Ben Hill, who has documented his works, spanned from 1939 to 2001. Working in an array of styles, Vale played a substantial role in shaping the looks of River Oaks, Tanglewood, and Memorial. The home pictured above is in Katy.

Photos: Ben Hill

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Glenbrook Valley
01/23/13 4:45pm

A Preview of a $110K Modest Mod

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Home for Sale, Houston Architects, Interiors, Modern Design
16 Comments

In Southeast Houston, Glenbrook Valley sits between Telephone and Broadway near Hobby Airport. Developed during that same spate of post-war optimism that gave us the Jetsons, the neighborhood is home to many smaller mid-century mods, including this 1,375-sq.-ft. one at 7722 Glenalta. Designed by P. Herbert Caldwell, the home should be listed this Thursday or Friday at $110,000. Have a look around:

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East Downtown
01/22/13 3:30pm

Now Listed: The Slightly Bigger Half of That New Small Modern East Downtown Duo

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Homes for Sale, Houston Architects, Redevelopment
10 Comments

Look familiar? Two weeks after its smaller look-alike housing unit appeared on the market, this bigger-by-a-bedroom version finishing up right next door listed for a bit more. And speaking of doors, this mini-mod’s entry is cool blue instead of the cheery yellow one marking its neighbor. Other differences include the roofline’s wider wingspan — to accommodate a broader, shorter driveway that bumps against that extra room downstairs.

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Demolitions
01/04/13 3:00pm

Mayor Parker Announces the Death Sentence for Downtown Macy’s Building

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Downtown, Houston Architects, Houston History, Retail
21 Comments

Yesterday morning, Macy’s announced that it would be closing its store Downtown at 1110 Main this spring. But what’s going to happen to the building? Mayor Parker, who knows a thing or two about demolition, said yesterday afternoon that Kenneth Franzheim’s former Foley’s is coming down: “Macy’s is losing the lease, and the owner of that piece of property wants to build something else,” she told KUHF News. The owner in this case would be 1110 Main Partners, an entity connected to Hilcorp Ventures, whose president, Doug Kelly, told the Houston Chronicle yesterday that the company has “no specific plans to announce” about the site. Well, announcing plans is one thing:

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Apartments
11/20/12 11:28am

Kuhl-Linscomb Plans To Turn Googie Penguin Arms Apartments into Modern Home Goods Showroom

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Houston Architects, Houston Landmarks, Modern Design, Renovations, Retail, Upper Kirby
13 Comments

About a year after snatching up the Penguin Arms building at 2902 Revere St., Dan Linscomb and Pam Kuhl-Linscomb announce to the Chronicle‘s Lisa Gray their plans to incorporate Arthur Moss’s pedigreed 1950 Googie-style apartment building into the multi-building streetside campus of their Upper Kirby home-furnishings-and-knick-knacks empire: “In about a year, after a round of renovation and restoration, they plan to open the Penguin Arms as a showroom,” Gray writes. “Maybe, Dan says, they’ll reserve a little piece as an apartment, so they can literally live above the shop.”

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Houston Architects
08/31/12 3:53pm

An Updated Guidebook to Houston Buildings New and Through

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Houston Data, Quicklink
13 Comments

AN UPDATED GUIDEBOOK TO HOUSTON BUILDINGS NEW AND THROUGH The third edition of the Houston Architectural Guide won’t be available officially until October 8th, but the Houston AIA is now taking pre-orders through September at a discounted price (PDF). The latest version of the encyclopedic catalog and tour guide, updated by Stephen Fox, will include 340 new entries covering structures that have popped up in the last 13 years — plus a whole bunch more from the last edition, moved to the back-of-the-book “now demolished” section. [AIA Houston]

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Comments
08/30/12 1:41pm

Comment of the Day: The Houston Design Sweepstakes

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Demolitions, Houston Architects, Houston Landmarks, Quicklink
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COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE HOUSTON DESIGN SWEEPSTAKES “MacKie and Kamrath seem to be winning the award for most demolished landmark buildings in the last 18 months. . . .” [Matt, commenting on M.D. Anderson Planning To Extract Dental Branch from Med Center]

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Demolitions
08/29/12 1:00pm

M.D. Anderson Planning To Extract Dental Branch from Med Center

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Historic Preservation, Houston Architects, Texas Medical Center
10 Comments

The 1955 building Houston architects MacKie and Kamrath designed (along with several later additions) for the University of Texas Dental Branch will be removed from its home at the corner of MD Anderson Blvd. and Moursund in the Med Center, according to the Texas Historical Commission. The UT School of Dentistry abandoned the 5-story, granite-faced building earlier this year for a new 300,000-sq.-ft. facility in the new UT Health Science Center Research Park south of the Med Center proper (and OST) at 7500 Cambridge St. UT’s M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, which owns the Med Center site, hasn’t yet announced a schedule for the demolition.

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Churches
08/23/12 2:02pm

New Fourth Ward Park of the Open Church

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Fourth Ward, Houston Architects, New Construction, Parks
41 Comments

Friday is the official groundbreaking ceremony for the Fourth Ward’s new Bethel Church Park — though an eagle-eyed Swamplot reader noted workers from contractor JE Dunn getting a jump on things at the site of the former Bethel Missionary Baptist Church at Andrews St. and Crosby earlier this month. The Freedman’s Town church in the shadows of Downtown, portions of which date from 1923, was largely destroyed by fire in January 2005 after several years of sitting vacant. Its shored-up walls have stood mostly undisturbed since then.

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Braeburn Valley
08/22/12 10:16am

Results of a Braeburn Valley Redwood Revival

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Homes for Sale, Houston Architects, Interiors, Renovations
23 Comments

Last fall, the restoration-minded owner of this stretched-out 1956 Mod by architect Lucian Hood in Braeburn Valley told Swamplot he was fixing to sell his property. Now, having finished reviving the redwood exterior from beneath the paint that covered it up and sprucing up the brick and ledge stone walls, Jason Jones reports his 5-year project is ready for its closeup, just listed, and now asking $365,000. The home is located on a big corner lot across from Braeburn Country Club greens — and next to Maison DeVille, a Mansard-roofed apartment complex from 1962, later converted to condos.

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Apartments
07/02/12 1:10pm

Apartments Replacing Park Memorial Condos in Rice Military: More than Triple the Density

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Houston Architects, Proposed Developments, Redevelopment, Rice Military
36 Comments

Plans for the 5- and 6-story complex Wallace Garcia Wilson Architects has designed for the new owners of Park Memorial at 5292 Memorial Dr. show that the former grounds of the park-like 108-unit Rice Military condo complex (pictured in better days above) will soon be home to 372 new apartment units. The new project by JLB Partners, currently out to bid, will fit buildings surrounding 2 courtyards, a narrow 7-level garage, and a detention pond onto the 4.85-acre site at the corner of Memorial Dr. and Detering. That’s the plan at the top. And below are a couple of elevations, in different scales, of the west and east sides:

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Buying and Selling
06/19/12 2:24pm

Strip Center at the Corner of Westheimer and Montrose: Sold

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Commercial Real Estate, Houston Architects, Houston Landmarks, Lower Westheimer, Montrose, Strip Centers
20 Comments

The half-empty strip center left over from a series of unfortunate redos of City Hall architect Joseph Finger’s 1937 Tower Community Center (which once served as an art-deco companion piece to the former Tower Theater across the street) is now under contract to a new owner, along with the entire 2.86-acre block at the southwest corner of Westheimer and Montrose. That’s the word from a posting on the property’s listing site noted by Going Up! City, but the listing brokers at HFF aren’t providing any additional information.

Unless someone wants to spill the beans on the purchaser’s identity or any plans for the current home of Half Price Books, Spec’s, Papa John’s, and 3-6-9 China Bistro (along with the standalone Jack-in-the-Box at Montrose and Lovett) before then, you’ll have to wait until the seller issues a press release — which will happen sometime next week, a source tells Swamplot — for additional details. The property went on the market in early March.

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Home Design
06/18/12 4:35pm

An MC2 Townhome from Circa Y2K

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Houston Architects, Interiors, Old Sixth Ward, Townhomes
9 Comments

These twin townhomes look a bit steely-eyed beneath heavy-lidded, cantilevered roofs. They share skyline views of downtown from their double-decker balconies and storefront windows laced with Mondrian-style tracery. However, only 1 of these by-the-bayou units designed by MC2 Architects is for sale. It’s the one just a tad closer to downtown (above, at right). Last month, the asking price on this April listing dropped $30K to $549,000.

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Art
06/11/12 12:04pm

Sicardi Gallery Steps Up to West Alabama

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Houston Architects, Menil, Openings and Closings
3 Comments

Brave Architecture’s new Sicardi Gallery across from the Menil parking lot is “pretty amazing,” declares Glasstire art critic Kelly Klaasmeyer, who was there for Thursday’s opening opening. The 2-story 5,800-sq.-ft. stucco-and-steel structure is a big step up from the gallery’s small previous space next to the McClain Gallery on Richmond. That lone window on the second floor of the new building facing West Alabama is designated as a rear-projection screen for exhibited videos, but they’re not showing yet:

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Briar Hollow
05/29/12 5:45pm

A Townhome in the River Hollow Treetops

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Homes for Sale, Houston Architects, Interiors, Townhomes
19 Comments

If the natural world off the many balconies of this River Hollow townhome proves too relentlessly bucolic, just descend into its more urbanized underground garage. The residence-over-parking elevation is a 1980 design by architect Kurt Aichler, whose later work veered into the French countryside with neo-Norman tendencies. Meanwhile, this 30-ish-year-old custom contemporary has been “reconfigured.”

Listed earlier this month at $999,000, the 4,194-sq.ft. home incorporates glass — and lots of it. There are, for example, full-height picture windows in most rooms; curved bays of glass brick, one of which contains a bathroom; and a glass cage elevator linking 4 levels of domain. Now, about those balconies:

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