Houston Landmarks

Art
02/28/13 10:00am

Big Blue Horn To Join Orange Show’s Motley Munger St. Crew

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Galleria, Houston Landmarks
4 Comments

The owners of the former Billy Blues club have donated Bob Wade’s “Smokesax” to the Orange Show. The 70-ft. Bunyanesque horn that’s composed of found objects — including a VW Bug — will be transported today from the property at 6025 Richmond where it’s been standing for 20 years across town to a warehouse at the Orange Show’s headquarters on Munger St., just south of UH and a block west of I-45. The cost of the move that’s expected to take all day? $40,000. The Orange Show says the horn’s new home hasn’t been chosen yet.

Photo: Flickr user readontheroad [license]

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Houston History
02/20/13 1:00pm

What Emancipation Park Might End Up Looking Like

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Houston Landmarks, Land Development, Parks, Proposed Developments, Public Buildings, Renovations, Third Ward
11 Comments

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.

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Adaptive Reuse
02/20/13 11:00am

Historic International Coffee Company Building Downtown To Begin Serving Kayaks

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Bayous and Waterways, Downtown, Houston History, Houston Landmarks, Proposed Developments, Renovations, Tourism
20 Comments

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.

Rendering: Buffalo Bayou Partnership

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Home Design
02/15/13 4:30pm

Spotlighting an Old School Shadyside Spread

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Homes for Sale, Houston Architects, Houston History, Houston Landmarks, Interiors, Shadyside
8 Comments

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.

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Downtown
12/28/12 12:04pm

The Mostly Glass Building That Won’t Be Replacing the Downtown Macy’s

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Houston Landmarks, Proposed Developments, Retail
8 Comments

This rendering of a glassy new Macy’s, posted a couple of weeks ago on the website of architects Munoz + Albin, incited a new round of speculation (on HAIF, anyway) about the fate of Downtown’s last department store. The ol’ box of bricks at 1110 Main St. (pictured below), designed by Kenneth Franzheim, opened in 1947 as the Foley’s flagship. Would Hilcorp, which now owns the property, demolish the post-war relic?

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Demolitions
12/07/12 3:03pm

Strip Club Where Anna Nicole Smith Met Her Billions Gains Houston’s Approval To Take It All Off

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Houston History, Houston Landmarks, Mangum Manor, Nightlife
13 Comments

The city of Houston granted a demolition permit yesterday to a company called Magnolia Services, allowing it to demolish the Pleasures Men’s Club, aka Pleasures Cabaret, off Highway 290 at 34th St. As aficionados of Houston history (as well as lurkers on the website of the shuttered strip club) will no doubt recall, Pleasures was the latest incarnation of Gigi’s Cabaret, where in 1991 the former Vickie Lynn Hogan, fresh off stints working at Walmart and Red Lobster, gave a fateful lap dance to her future husband, octogenarian oil (and breast) man J. Howard Marshall II. The rest, as they say, is history. As was Marshall, only 14 months after the wedding.

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Houston History
11/26/12 11:48am

Landmark Lower Westheimer Felix Mexican Restaurant Sign Comes Apart in Ebay Auction

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Houston Landmarks, Lower Westheimer, Montrose, Signage
22 Comments

No bids yet on the sleepy sombero man in front of the hacked cactus removed from the sign in front of the former Felix Mexican Restaurant at the corner of Westheimer and Grant last year. And no bids on the other formerly east- and west-facing portions of the popular sign, which the space’s new owner, Uchi, put up for auction separately on eBay early this morning. The starting bid for each disassembled segment is a hefty $1,500, but Uchi doesn’t appear to be in this game for fish money. Proceeds are promised to the LULAC National Scholarship Fund; the former restaurant’s namesake, Tex-Mex pioneer Felix Tijerina, served as LULAC’s national president for 4 terms. The “Orders To Go” flyer from the original sign hasn’t shown up in any online auction yet.

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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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Attractions
11/08/12 3:56pm

Deep Inside Mission Control

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Houston History, Houston Landmarks, Johnson Space Center, Quicklink
2 Comments

DEEP INSIDE MISSION CONTROL At last, that in-depth, exhaustive tour through the Johnson Space Center’s Building 30 that you’d been waiting for — coffee bars and tiny women’s rooms included: “The corridors look like they should exude the odor of decades of cigarette smoke,” space-travel fan Lee Hutchinson writes, “but the federal government’s ‘no smoking’ policy has been in place long enough that most smell faintly of stale coffee instead.” Bonus: Every console in Apollo-era Mission Control explained — or close enough. [Ars Technica] Photo: Steven Michael

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Comments
09/10/12 3:33pm

Comment of the Day: How Big Was the Shamrock Hotel Swimming Pool Again?

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Hotels, Houston History, Houston Landmarks, Quicklink, Texas Medical Center
5 Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOW BIG WAS THE SHAMROCK HOTEL SWIMMING POOL AGAIN? “They didn’t have boat races. We did do waterski shows there for several years.” [gary, commenting on Comment of the Day: The Shamrock Hotel Shine and Fall]

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Comments
09/07/12 8:42pm

Comment of the Day: The Shamrock Hotel Shine and Fall

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Houston History, Houston Landmarks, Quicklink, Texas Medical Center
6 Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE SHAMROCK HOTEL SHINE AND FALL “Wasn’t the greatest building, because Frank Lloyd Wright said so? The same guy who hated every skyscraper in New York City? This was Houston’s most famous landmark before the Astrodome. It was what people around the country thought of when they thought of the city. The point of the Frank Lloyd Wright story should be that the nation’s most famous architect HAD to make a visit there and give his opinion, it was that renowned. It captured a whole era of the city’s history — its rollicking, mid-century, oil-rich extravagance — better than any other building. But it made sense to tear it down because, gosh, it would have required renovating and updating. Oh, and the ceiling heights were low! With that reasoning, any historic building in the world would be torn down at some point.” [Mike, commenting on The Park Where Houston Architecture Critics Go To Sharpen Their Chops]

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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
No Comments

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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Houston Landmarks
07/19/12 1:22pm

Fair Warning: About To Mess with Alabama Theater Marquee

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Quicklink, Renovations, Retail, Shopping Centers, Upper Kirby
11 Comments

FAIR WARNING: ABOUT TO MESS WITH ALABAMA THEATER MARQUEE Publicists for Weingarten Realty want Swamplot readers to know that workers about to poke into the underside of the Alabama Theater marquee aren’t dismantling it. They’ll only be replacing the lights there with new LED fixtures. Doing that will require removing the soffit panels below the Shepherd-facing sign on the soon-to-be first Houston-proper Trader Joe’s. “The marquee will look just as it does today with the only exception being new energy efficient lighting on the underside,” the shopping-center owner tells Swamplot. The work should take about 2 weeks. [Previously on Swamplot] Photo: Weingarten Realty

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Flooding
06/25/12 2:46pm

Battleship Texas Battles To Stay Afloat

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Houston Landmarks, Houston Ship Channel, La Porte
15 Comments

“It was very eerie to see the stern deck of the ship so close to the water,” writes Swamplot reader J.W. Lodge IV, who visited the leaking Battleship Texas by boat yesterday, and who notes that a news story from Friday linked to in this morning’s Headlines post — which claimed that the dual-world-war veteran parked by the San Jacinto Monument had been repaired and reopened — seemed a bit off. “As far as I can tell they’ve got a long way to go with the pumps,” he reports. The ship was reopened for tours on Saturday, but beginning that evening more problems developed. As of this morning, about 1,500 gallons of ship-channel water were pouring in each minute, from 2 separate areas of new leaks in the vessel’s rear port side. Also developing in the water around the ship: an oil sheen.

Photo from Sunday: J.W. Lodge IV

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