A little deco purge on Almeda, and other tales of Houston development:
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Commercial Structures
- MiniMax Store No. 2, 5216 Almeda Rd. 77004
Residences
- 1823 Bissonnet St. 77005 (garage)
- 1535 Nashua St. 77008 (Houston Heights; new construction by Bastian Builders)
- 3946 Dorchester St. 77016 (Westcott Gardens)
Photo of MiniMax Store No. 2: Jim Parsons
Awww! Go drive down Almeda, there are still a few cool buildings left. Now there will be one fewer.
This is another one of those buildings that someone with a little imagination could have made into something really great. Washington Avenue 2.0, here we come!
This is news to me! This is more significant than the loss of a dozen Heights bungalows and is certainly more distressing than the new Heights Wal-Mart. I mean, at least the Wal-Mart is subtracting from our inventory of vacant lots; this is subtracting from our heritage.
Where are the facebook petitions? The yard signs? The angry white activists? The news articles, tv clips, and radio interviews? Why hasn’t even one red herring, disingenuous claim, or unrelated anecdote been deployed in this building’s defense?
Sad to see the area lose some of its deco history. That being said, I shop at the Walgreen’s next door once weekly, and I’ve never even noticed this building.
I agree, I always thought this deco bldg was cool and its a shame it will be demo’d. So typical.
Very similar to the building on the NE corner of W. Grey and Taft that will probably be demolished to make way for the new HISD project next to the ugly new middle school.
“From Jim: Washington Avenue 2.0, here we come!”
Really? I hate to be the one to break the news to you, but whether you like the development on Washington or not, the one thing it is NOT is a destruction of historical property. In fact, numerous old buildings have been restored to better than their previous condition such as the Pearl Bar/Salt building, Soma art deco building, Liberty Station, Phil’s BBQ, etc. And whether or not Walmart is desirable, it’s at least filling an otherwise unattractive vacant lot.
What a shame :(
@ extrovert – I was thinking about the exact same building at W. Gray and Taft, I hope that one stays put and someone does something with it.
Yeah next to the red/whie pole of nothing, wasn’t that an old minimax store or something (west gray and taft?). Love the art deco, shame to see it go..
I heard from a blogger on swamplot once that the ALMEDA Corridor is poised to be the next wash ave….Can anyone verify this????
This is sad. I really wish we had a way in this city to save some of these buildings. I remember the Turnverein (http://www.houstondeco.org/1920s/turnverein.html) and was really sad to see it demolished and replaced with a Walgreens or CVS in some non-descript building.
Yep. Sorry. It’s so true. My wife was driving down Almeda this morning coming back from aerobics at Judson and pulled over to talk to the crew. She managed to save at least one architectural feature…it’s a rather large concrete ‘crest’ that was over the front door and under the deco ‘outer shell.’ The facade of the building might have been salvaged, but from what she saw the rest of the place was a wreck. The northern half of the place was burned out. Google the addres and you’ll see it in the viewl
Sorry to hear this, I used to shop for groceries there long ago when I lived at 4900 Caroline with a bunch of other Rice students. It was at this store that I purchased the raw ingredients for my legendary “Chicken Butts in Wine Sauce.”