Victoria’s Secret is the latest retailer to retreat from the Highland Village Shopping Center. The photo at top shows the former underwear and other mentionables store at 3942 Westheimer dressed down with a sign outside announcing its closure — which took place this past weekend. The vacant storefront now blends in better with its neighbor, the former Joseph shoe store that shuttered late last year:
Photo of Discovery Green: Marc Longoria via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
One sees qualities at a distance and demolitions at close range.
The H-shaped, 1961 structure at 5956 Bayou Glen Rd. now listed at $2.8 million sits right on the elbow of street, where the mostly east-west road turns south before ending 2 houses down, a couple blocks north of Woodway Dr. A set of double doors — shown open in the photo above — fronts the brick courtyard outside the entrance to the 4,732-sq.-ft house. Then a glassy hallway runs sideways when you walk in:
GANG-RUN BROTHEL NO LONGER IN BUSINESS AT THE CARRIAGE WAY APARTMENTS IN GULFTON 
Residents in the strip of apartments a block north of Bellaire between Mullins and Rampart don’t seem too rattled — reports Gabrielle Banks — after a criminal operation was shut down in their complex late last year. “But in an adjoining courtyard evidence remained of the recent FBI raid at an upstairs apartment: a cracked window pane and a boarded up door plastered with an eviction notice. The scheme, officials say, involved tenants who rented 10 of about 70 residential units in the complex. Several neighbors at the complex said they saw a team of FBI agents combing through units at the two-story complex during the first week in November. Before the raid, they said, they claimed to know nothing about a busy brothel where up to seven women provided services to customers from 10 a.m. to 2 a.m. The building manager at the apartment complex declined to speak with a reporter about the protracted criminal enterprise alleged by police. A Houston attorney who represented the building owner in a 2012 nuisance lawsuit – involving complaints at another residential property – did not return calls for comment.” [Houston Chronicle] Photo of Carriage Way Apartments: Apartments.com
Note: Story updated below.
There’s a new sign on a curved portion of H-E-B’s facade at 5895 San Felipe, marking a replacement for the former Table 57 in-store restaurant, which closed quietly sometime shortly before the new year. The supermarket’s new curbside service area is taking over the restaurant’s old space along the northwest corner of store.
Table 57 opened along with the rest of the H-E-B on the corner of San Felipe and Fountain View back in 2015. At the time, it was Houston’s first sit-down dining destination inside an H-E-B store. (The supermarket had already debuted similar venues in Austin and San Antonio.) The photo above shows the restaurant’s automatic entryway and patio frontage extending west towards Fountain View.
Here’s what the doorway to the former restaurant looks like now, stripped of its overhead signage:
Photo of Preston St. at Travis St.: Marc Longoria via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
Demolition is not a goal – it’s a by-product of a life well lived.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: STILL HOLDING UP DESPITE THE FAULTY WIRING 
“I was an employee of — and later a friend of — Jerry J. Moore, and was the only electrical contractor he would allow to work on this property. I know it inside and out. First, as of January 2018, it is still standing. During the early 2000s it was a bit of a maintenance nightmare. It was an old electrical system. The mechanical systems were always needing work. The interior and structure were in good shape, but to be a modern home it would need to be gutted and upgraded with more modern systems. I have many good memories of Jerry and Jean and was lucky to be their friend. I hope the main house stays, but the entire area is being rebuilt with new mansions, so it may be only a matter of time . . . and money.” [James Burrell, commenting on Is Jerry J. Moore’s Friar Tuck French Palace Ready To Be Demolished?; previously on Swamplot] Photo of 306 E. Friar Tuck Ln.: HAR
A Swamplot reader in motion along 290 sends photos of the late-stage demolition in progress on Exxon’s former Brookhollow campus, now down to its last office building at 4550 Dacoma St. Tear-down began on the structure last July after a partnership connected to Fidelis Realty Partners and Williamsburg Enterprises bought the 24-acre property just outside the Loop the year prior with plans to build a retail center on the site. The ruined 254,566-sq.-ft. structure is one of 3 office buildings that once stood on the campus.
A few more photos of the crumbling facility:
A note taped to the window of Chinese Cafe announces that the restaurant at 5888 Richmond has shuttered. The counter-service spot took over its location between Chimney Rock and Fountain View from a McDonald’s after moving out of the shopping center 2 blocks east on the corner of Richmond and Sage Rd. in 2014. HS Green has since cropped up in the restaurant’s old shopping center storefront.
The photo at top looks east to show Chinese Cafe’s signage still shining beneath a starless sky last Friday, although the inside of the restaurant appears to have gone dark. The 3,756-sq.-ft. building sits between Taco Bell and the Houston Camera Exchange.
Photos: Rex Solomon
Photo of Project Row Houses, Holman St., 3rd Ward: Swamplot inbox
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each demolition.
