Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
All the zip codes in a row, and Society of the Sacred Heart must go.
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Residences
- 1907 Bolsover St. 77005 (Southampton Place)
- 1525 Marshall St. 77006 (Mandell Place; new construction by Archigraphics Deacon; photos)
- 511 Terrace Dr. 77007 (Glen Cove)
- 2020 Harvard St. 77008 (Houston Heights; new construction by T&W builders; photos)
- 612 Cordell St. 77009 (Brooke Smith; possible partial demolition; photos)
Photo of 2020 Harvard St.: HAR
Seriously? New construction? This 1930 (HCAD) home appears to have great bones, attractive features, & a good floor plan, not to mention the residual blessings and serenity of the previous owners. It’s not in a historic district, however, and therefore destined to be kindling rather than updated.
This home has been slated to be donated to Habitat for Humanity. A deconstruction contract is in place and the hope is that most of the home will be re-purposed for future use in other homes. Everything that can be re-used will be done so. So no, it will not be used for kindling. After getting in 4 contractors to bid on updating the home, it was found that getting it back up to code for electrical, plumbing, sewer, etc would be MORE expensive than donating and starting new.
The excuse is always that the structure would be too expensive to update and bring up to code. Lack of respect for historical properties has allowed the Heights and Houston to become an unattractive mish-mash of oversized dwellings.
Re: 1525 Marshall – I was surprised to see them start tearing this down a couple weeks ago without a mention on Swamplot. I checked the City’s web site and it looked like they pulled demo permits months ago. Did they pull a new one?
Darby, put your money where your mouth is. Oh wait, it would get lost in there.
@Darby Mom – take your pick, over-sized homes or over-priced homes?
“Darby Mom: The excuse is always that the structure would be too expensive to update and bring up to code”
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Your fight is with the city and their code requirements. If it wasn’t so costly and time consuming to ‘save’ this house, that would likely be the better choice for the owner.. If they make something too much of a pain, the property gets knocked down. The result is a newer ‘safer’ house, which is good — but at the cost of knocking down a lot of old cool buildings.