COMMENT OF THE DAY RUNNER-UP: DROPPING IN ON HOUSTON IN 1957 “Here’s a film from 1957 I have uploaded to YouTube. Briefly it shows what a trip to Houston is about: Arrive at the airport, stay at the Shamrock, visit the oil industry, leave. That’s certainly what my family did in the ’50s – although we did visit the Zoo!” [Michael Bludworth, commenting on Comment of the Day: Houston Is Not a Destination]
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Houston History
GIGGLING CO-FOUNDERS OF NATION’S LARGEST PRIVATE PRISON FIRM RECALL HIJINX BEHIND THE CONVERSION OF HOUSTON’S OLYMPIC MOTEL TO IMMIGRANT DETENTION CENTER 
And that motel is still standing, says a rep from Corrections Corporation of America; you can drive by the history yourself at 5714 Werner Rd. — just north, incidentally, of Independence Heights. Of course, the motel doesn’t seem to be taking reservations; the phone has been disconnected. But if you can’t book a room in the building, you can watch these fellas — CCA founders Tom Beasley and Don Hutto — reminisce about it. Though CCA’s practices have been called into question recently by Grassroots Leadership and Hair Balls, you wouldn’t know it from the fondness with which Beasley and Hutto tell the story of flying to Houston on New Year’s Eve in 1982, seeing the motel sign, and fixing up the place for the INS. It was quite a turnaround: Just a few weeks later, on Super Bowl Sunday, Hutto says, the facility was open, processing “87 undocumented aliens” its very first day. You can watch the video here. [Hair Balls; Grassroots Leadership; CCA] Video still: CCA
Putting Google’s Landsat Annual Time Lapse function to work, Texas architect Samuel Aston Williams has created animated .GIFs that give a satellite’s view of how certain cities — Shanghai, Atlanta, Lagos, etc. — have changed during the past 30 years. And here’s Houston.
- The Devastating Impact of 30 Years of Sprawl, As Seen From Space [Atlantic Cities]
Image: Samuel Aston Williams via Atlantic Cities
SQUATTING AT THE SAVOY 
The news that Downtown’s old Savoy Hotel has been sold and will be converted into a Holiday Inn seems to have inspired some nostalgia in the Houston Chronicle’s Craig Hlavaty. Going back over the hotel’s past as housing for law students and even boarding for Lee Harvey Oswald, in town one day to apply for a job at nearby Conoco, Hlavaty also finds evidence that the supposedly vacant building was anything but: “In 2004, someone named “squatterkid” was posting on a Houston architecture forum about living inside . . . even getting phone calls there from people expecting to make reservations at the long dormant hotel. The number was still listed. At the time, he said that there was still electricity running in the place, too. The squatter, who went by Sean when he spoke with the Houston Press in 2007, said he and some homeless folks made the hotel their home using the leftover furnishings.” You can read more from “squatterkid” here. [Houston Chronicle; HAIF; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Allyn West
COMMENT OF THE DAY RUNNER-UP: BEFORE HOUSTON’S TREES LEFT THE BAYOUS FOR THE PLAINS “The Heights actually does sit on a rise above White Oak Bayou, which made it prime back in the day before any types of flood control existed. It’s hard to imagine these days, but when Houston was forest along bayou edges and grassland everywhere else, and people showed up in wagons, the ‘Heights’ area was like a little hill or knoll that was visible from anywhere else in town. You can still see this on topographic maps, and on I-45 headed south towards downtown, near North Main.” [Superdave, commenting on Comment of the Day: How Houston Neighborhoods Can Rise Above the Floodwaters]
Houston has a knack for knocking things down, and painter and Glassell School instructor Ken Mazzu has been showing up at a good number of those demo sites during the past 10 years, snapping the photos he then works from to render the bent rebar and crumbled concrete on canvas. The somewhat abstract painting shown here comes from the wreckage of the Kenneth Franzheim-designed Prudential Building that used to stand on Holcombe Blvd. in the Med Center until it fell a little more than a year ago.
Oh, and are there more:
How do you move a historic cottage from one location to another? Well, carefully: This video uploaded this week from the Heritage Society chronicles the easy-does-it, steady-as-she-goes relocation of a Fourth Ward cottage from its perch in Sam Houston Park. The Heritage Society says that the house, originally located on Robin St. in Freedman’s Town, dates to at least 1866. It’s been in the collection since 2002, temporarily sited on Dallas St., while the society awaited the funds to move it to its permanent home beside to the Jack Yates House in that architectural promenade on the park grounds along McKinney St.
ART GUYS WORKING WITH SHIP CHANNEL IN NEXT ‘EVENT’ 
At the site shown here in Pasadena near the old Paper Mill and Washburn Tunnel, where General Antonio López de Santa Anna is said to have been captured during that historically succinct Battle of San Jacinto, the Art Guys are planning their next performance: They’ve announced they’ll crack out their batons and “conduct the sounds of the Houston Ship Channel.” (Not sure what that could look like? Go see it for yourself.) Jack Massing and Michael Galbreth, the helmsmen of “12 Events,” a yearlong series of monthly head-scratchers that commemorate their 30 years of Houston mischief, have so far in 2013 shrugged off their divorce from the Menil, signed their names for 8 hours at the Julia Ideson Library on National Handwriting Day, and walked all 29.6 miles of Little York Rd., the longest in Houston. Next up, once they’ve conducted the Ship Channel waters? The Art Guys unwind a spool of thread, and then — wait for it — wind it back up again. [The Art Guys; Culturemap; previously on Swamplot] Photo: JimmyEv via Waymarking
COMMENT OF THE DAY: SOMEDAY, SOMEBODY SOMEWHERE WILL RECOGNIZE US FOR BEING IN THE RIGHT PLACE AT CLOSE TO THE RIGHT TIME “We’re just living in Houston before it’s cool.” [jp, commenting on Headlines: Popular Harris County; Houston’s Hipster Factor]
$17.5M TO BE SPENT REPAIRING BATTLESHIP TEXAS 
Leaking and taking on Ship Channel water since last summer, Battleship Texas will be receiving some structural repairs beginning this April: Texas Parks and Wildlife announced today — the 99th anniversary of the ship’s call to action — that a $17.5 million contract with a North Carolina firm will cover “about half” the repairs needed; they’ll be “a first step,” says TPWD’s Scott Stover, to ready the sinking ship for its eventual dry berth. During the repairs, history seekers and field trippers should still be able to see some significant sights: “[T]he ship will remain open to the public as conditions allow, and visitors will see plenty of activity at the site, as well as construction equipment and an access barge on the north side of the ship.” [Texas Parks and Wildlife; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Candace Garcia
GETTING TO THE BOTTOM OF THE WILLIAMS TOWER 
The $412 million sale last week of the Williams Tower seems to have provoked some curiosity in the Houston Chronicle’s Katherine Feser: Pursuing a lead from a retired employee that, were it not for those pesky FAA regulations, the record-breaking 64-story skyscraper would have been even taller, Feser goes into the paper’s archives and finds evidence that the tower’s slab was something to behold, too: “The foundation pour . . . started at midnight Friday and was completed early Saturday night. The contractor, J.A. Jones Co., said it was believed to be the largest continuous pour ever made in Houston — more than 10,000 cubic yards of concrete. There have been larger pours but they have been completed in several stages. The area of the poured mat is 200 feet by 200 feet, almost an acre.” [Prime Property; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Russell Hancock
Design plans for the $18 million Emancipation Park overhaul are done, reports KUHF’s Pat Hernandez, and the work — including renovations (as this rendering suggests) to the gym, baseball field, pool, and community center — is expected to begin at the 10-acre Third Ward park this summer.
The same architecture firm that transformed Wilshire Village into the H-E-B Montrose Market across town has been pegged to redo 1910 International Coffee Company Building (aka Sunset Coffee Building), resuscitating the derelict shell on Allen’s Landing into use as a Downtown tourist attraction and kayak rental shop. San Antonio firm Lake Flato submitted this drawing of the building at the coffee-with-cream-colored confluence of White Oak and Buffalo Bayou underneath Main and Fannin to Buffalo Bayou Partnership, which plans to begin the project in April.
- Houston building steeped in history to get facelift [abc13]
- Plan to renovate city’s ‘front door’ to begin in April [Houston Chronicle]
- International Coffee Building [Buffalo Bayou Partnership]
Rendering: Buffalo Bayou Partnership
Before this pedigreed property in Shadyside had air conditioning, the breeze sometimes carried the sound of lions roaring at Houston Zoo. And when some monkeys escaped from there decades ago, they apparently found temporary amusement in some of the trees on this 1926 estate. Or so goes some of the lore shared (and overheard) by those touring the home’s brief transformation into the Villa de Luxe designer showcase, a 17-day fundraising event benefiting Preservation Houston — and ending this weekend. For those who miss that rare opportunity to get behind the gates of the just-north-of-Rice gracious-living neighborhood, this mansion’s re-listing today extends its appearance in the limelight. Access to it, though, jumps from the tour’s $30 entry ticket, which includes lectures and presentations, to the far loftier asking price: $8,390,000.
LBJ wuz here: Built in 1904, this 3,161-sq.-ft. home on the corner of Hawthorne and Garrott in the Westmoreland Historic District gave the future president a place to crash in 1931 when he was teaching public speaking and coaching the debate team at Sam Houston High School.
In March 2011, the house was put on the market for the first time in 90 years; the price climbed to almost $619,000 that June. It sat for a year, going for just under $285,000. Renovations began that summer. And the house returned 9 days ago with a new MLS number, new photos, and a new historically low — for this place, anyway — price: $569,900.
