Houston History

Gulfton, Houston History, Real Estate Marketing

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Lantern Village, 5815 Gulfton, Houston David Kaplan of the Chronicle catches up with Houston-apartment legend Michael Pollack and fills in a few details of the Colonial House story:

According to media reports then, Pollack lived in a super-size Colonial House apartment called “the Dream Suite,” which had a colored water fountain inside and a king-size water bed.

The Dream Suite was real, but Pollack says he never lived there. His home was the Four Leaf Towers and later the Houstonian, he said.

His glamorous stud image was just an act, he maintains, designed to rent apartments.

“I was promoting day and night,” Pollack said. “To me, it was a job.” . . .

According to Houston City magazine, he’d show up at nightclubs in a chauffeured custom Cadillac limousine with a moon roof. He traveled with an entourage, including bodyguards in satin jackets adorned with Pollack’s silhouette.

There are more memorable Pollack TV spots to be dug up:

One commercial featured Pollack in a safari outfit and a tiger. He had a fear of cats, even little cats, and being next to the full-grown beast was terrifying, he recalled.

In 1986, Pollack left Houston because, he said, the local economy and apartment market looked increasingly grim.

Colonial House was foreclosed on in 1988. It was acquired by DRG Funding Corp., the lender that financed the complex’s redevelopment. Pollack moved back to California, working there a few years before settling in Mesa[, Arizona].

In Houston, the Colonial House era is no more. A year after the foreclosure, the mammoth complex changed its name to Lantern Village.

After the jump: Laundry tips from a longtime resident of today’s Lantern Village!

77081, Apartments, Gulfton, Houston History, Houston Real Estate Marketing, Renting, Southwest-Houston, TV-Commercials

Houston History

03/24/08 7:53am

Goodbye, Felix

Montrose, Openings and Closings, Restaurants

Felix Mexican Restaurant on Westheimer, Houston

The Houston Press‘s Food Blog reports that the Felix Mexican Restaurant on Westheimer near Montrose has served its last enchilada. Finding the 60-year-old restaurant closed, patrons have been posting notes on the front door asking for an explanation.

More than three years ago, owner Felix Tijerina Jr., son of the Felix chain’s founder, reported to Marvin Zindler that the restaurant was about to go belly up. From a Houston Business Journal report in February 2005:

But ever since M-a-a-a-rvin broadcast the bombshell, legions of Felix groupies have descended upon the little faux hacienda for what might be a final nostalgic fix of Mexican treats drenched in cheese and chili.

Tijerina says his phone has been ringing off the hook with customers pleading with him to keep the restaurant open, and says he’s also received letters from patrons in San Antonio and as far away as North Carolina.

It worked for a while. This time, there were no media warnings.

After the jump, a look back at Felix’s place in Houston’s history (there used to be 6 locations!), plus a reprise of David Beebe’s Felix restaurant restoration concept!

77006, Montrose, Openings and Closings, Restaurants

Air Quality

02/27/08 1:01pm

Southeast Side: A Tour of the Houston Heartland

Garden Villas, Houston History, Park Place, Restaurants, Tourism, Toxic Sites, Water Quality

El Torito Lounge, Harrisburg Blvd., Houston

Houston’s lone professional tourists, John Nova Lomax and David Beebe, stop off at the Brady’s Island in the Ship Channel midway into their latest day-long stroll . . . through this city’s southeastern stretches:

The air is foul here, and the eastern view is little more than a forest of tall crackers and satanic fume-belching smokestacks, sending clouds of roasted-cabbage-smelling incense skyward to Mammon, all bisected by the amazingly tall East Loop Ship Channel Bridge, its pillars standing in the toxic bilge where Brays Bayou dumps its effluent into the great pot of greenish-brown petro-gumbo.

While Bradyâ€™s Landing today seems to survive as a function room â€“ a sort of Rainbow Lodge for the Ship Channel, with manicured grounds that reminded Beebe of Astroworld — decades ago, people came here to eat and to take in the view. This was progress to them, this horrifically awesome vista showed how we beat the Nazis and Japanese and how we were gonna stave off them godless Commies. As for me, it made me think of Beebeâ€™s maxim: â€œChicken and gasoline donâ€™t mix.â€

More from the duo’s march through “Deep Harrisburg”: Flag-waving Gulf Freeway auto dealerships, an early-morning ice house near the Almeda Mall, a razorwire-fenced artist compound in Garden Villas, Harold Farb’s last stand, colorful Broadway muffler joints, the hidden gardens of Thai Xuan, and — yes, gas-station chicken.

“There is nothing else like the Southeast side,” Lomax adds in a comment:

I see it as the true heart of Houston. Without the port and the refineries we are nothing. The prosperous West Side could be Anywhere, USA, but the Southeast Side could only be here.

Photo of El Torito Lounge on Harrisburg: John Nova Lomax and David Beebe

Buying and Selling

01/22/08 2:50pm

Preservation Alert: Save the Historic Salvage Yard!

Demolitions, First Ward, Historic Preservation, Houston History, Industrial Properties, New Construction: Residential, Openings and Closings

Johnny Franks Auto Parts Ad It’s not just the rice silos that’ll be leaving the First Ward. Next thing you know, they’ll be demolishing . . . the used-auto-parts yard across the street. A source very close to Charles Kuffner reveals that the owner of Johnny Franks Auto Parts at 1225 Sawyer St., across the street from the Mahatma Rice silos, has already sold the land to residential developers.

But wait. Johnny Franks Auto Parts bills itself as “The Nation’s Oldest Salvage Yard.” Is this true? If so, how could Houston let such an important historical site be destroyed? Founded in 1910, the salvage yard for years advertised itself as “the house of a million parts.” Sadly — like so many other historic structures in Houston — that may be its ultimate fate.

After the jump, Kuffner counts the reasons why there’s probably no stopping residential development from taking place on this historic site:

77007, Buying and Selling, First Ward, Historic Preservation, Houston History, Industrial Properties, New Construction: Residential, Openings and Closings

Apartments

01/21/08 11:54am

Free Eighties Furniture at Colonial House!

Furniture, Gulfton, Houston History, Interiors, Real Estate Marketing, Renting

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLnLsrK5Tjs 400 330]

The brave work of Southwest Houston and Houston Apartment Renaissance scholars has been rewarded — a second mid-1980s Colonial House TV commercial is now available on YouTube!

No it’s not quite as iconic and over-the-top as the one with the VCR in the pool, but look at that fabulous indoor-outdoor furniture! Almost a quarter century later, we know Michael Pollack is alive and well, but does anyone know where that living-room mandala and dining-room set ended up?

Colonial House Apartments [YouTube, via Lou Minatti]
Beautiful Southwest Houston: The Golden Age of Apartment Living [Swamplot]

77081, Apartments, Furniture, Gulfton, Houston History, Interiors, Real Estate Marketing, Renting, Southwest-Houston, TV-Commercials

Edmondson Addition

12/31/07 11:01am

Telephone Road Walking Tour: Not How They Sang It Was

Flooding, Golfcrest, Houston History, Telephone Rd

Smile Lounge, 4348 Telephone Rd., Houston

Telephone Road south of I-45 has changed forever, declares John Nova Lomax:

Gone is the Mexican Catholic blue-collar neighborhood to the north around Queen of Peace church, its place taken by a string of hot sheet motels, clip joints, massage parlors and other such venues of vice. This is whatâ€™s left of the Telephone Road Mark May, Steve Earle, Rodney Crowell, Culturcide and others have written songs about.

But itâ€™s all impossibly sadder. The Telephone Road that Earle and Crowell sang about in the rollicking songs of that name is long gone. Crowellâ€™s version is set in the â€™50s and early â€™60s, and Earleâ€™s in the early â€™70s. Todayâ€™s Telephone Road far better fits Earleâ€™s â€œThe Other Side of Town.â€

There’s more street-level reporting in Lomax and David Beebe’s latest narrated and well-lubricated walking tour, which starts Downtown and heads east along Leeland, through a neighborhood called Edmondson Addition:

Boarded-up hovels line some streets, awaiting inevitable transformation into the (mostly shoddy) condos that are springing up like dandelions here. Other streets reminded us of some of Galvestonâ€™s less opulent older districts â€“ one and two-story wood frame houses standing on bricks, interspersed with brick warehouses and workshops.

The story includes Lomax’s encounters with Golfcrest’s underground shopping-cart economy and his retelling of a Telephone Rd. crack-and-hookers tale too uh . . . racy to fit into a song lyric.

After the jump, a very different portrait of Telephone Rd. from an earlier era.

77003, 77021, 77023, 77054, 77087, Edmondson-Addition, Flooding, Golfcrest, Houston History, Pedestrians, Telephone-Rd.

Apartments

12/10/07 11:02am

Beautiful Southwest Houston: The Golden Age of Apartment Living

Gulfton, Houston History, Real Estate Marketing, Renting

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WC5mvVXGGjc 400 330]

This charming period piece from the abortive early-’80s Southwest Houston apartment renaissance surfaced on YouTube late last month, to the great acclaim of chief Michael Pollack fan Lou Minatti, who has hosted an online shrine to the iconic and once high-profile Houston developer on his website for several years. Why was Pollack such a big deal?

What Gallery Furniture’s “We really will save you moneyyyyyyy!” was to the north side of town, the VCR in the Pool was to the southwest.

And really, who can forget the charms of Colonial House, at the corner of Chimney Rock and Gulfton? Writes Minatti:

Built in the late 1960s, Colonial House was in terrible shape.

Gangs and prostitutes had moved in, while basic amenities such as air conditioning had quit working. Pollack moved in and the gangs moved out. Pollack’s crew gutted and rebuilt each of the 1,800 units in just three months. But after all that hard work, Pollack had an even bigger task ahead: How was our suave, sophisticated hero going to fill those apartments? That’s where his infamous TV ads came in.

Here’s a question: Doesn’t the bench-pressing dude on the Nautilus about five seconds in look a bit . . . familiar?

After the jump: Pollack claims it was all an act! Plus, what he’s up to these days — with pix!

77081, Apartments, Gulfton, Houston History, Houston Real Estate Marketing, Renting, Southwest-Houston, TV-Commercials

Homes for Sale

09/25/07 10:37am

Just Listed: Texas Modern Outside, Martha Washington Inside

Houston History, Interiors, River Oaks

3202 Huntingdon Place, River Oaks

Note: Story updated below.

A house in Houston can’t earn much more of a modern Texas pedigree than this: Designed in 1970 for Oveta Culp Hobby by quintessential Texas architect O’Neil Ford. Built by Brown & Root. Later, the home—until his death earlier this summer—of former Texas secretary of state, attorney general, chief justice, and 1978 Democratic gubernatorial candidate John Hill.

It’s just been listed with Greenwood-King agent Colleen Sherlock: three stories, five to seven bedrooms, five full and two half-baths, 8275 square feet on a quarter-acre lot in River Oaks. Asking only $2,395,000.

From O’Neil Ford, you’d expect a classic Texas modern design: clean brick lines with a sense of history, an easy flow between indoors and out. Until you get inside, where—it appears—an early-1960s interpretation of a New England colonial interior has somehow been grafted in.

Sound like a jarring contrast? Continue after the jump, and see for yourself.

77019, Architects, Homes for Sale, Houston History, Interiors, Modern Design, ONeil-Ford, River Oaks

Alternative Energy

08/22/07 10:00am

How the Downtown Tunnel System Was Born

Downtown, Houston History