Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
Without a Peep.
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- 47 Mohawk Path Trl. [HAR]
Between 1111 Guinea Dr.’s 1966 appearance in Better Homes & Gardens and the date it listed last Tuesday, there’s been time to mix things up in both the kitchen and the rest of the house. Not that everything’s different inside, though — those racket-like chairs, while not the originals, definitely take a page out of the magazine.
The house, a couple blocks west of Wirt Rd., is under contract now; it’s asking price: $890,000. Stepping on through the double doors pictured at top puts you right around the corner from the living area shown below:
1111 Guinea Dr.
Preservation Houston’s 2018 Good Brick Tour is our sponsor again today — with more information about one of the locations on this year’s tour. Thanks for supporting Swamplot!
The Sunset Heights bungalow pictured above remained largely unchanged from the time it was completed in 1921 until 2013 — when new owners began a comprehensive preservation project. The rehabilitation updated the house for modern living while preserving historic features, including the original front door lock and key, pine floors, and clawfoot tub. Heirloom furniture and original art distinguish this comfortable home.
This home at 934 Louise St. is one of 5 award-winning historic homes and buildings dating from 1892 to 1949 that will be welcoming visitors in the 2018 edition of the Good Brick Tour — with guided tours from noon to 5 p.m. on Saturday, October 27, and Sunday, October 28.
Purchase advance tickets for the 2018 Good Brick Tour online for $25 per person through Thursday, October 25. After that, prices will go up: Tickets will be available for $30 per person at any tour location during the weekend. Tickets are valid both days of the tour and provide 1 admission to each location on the tour.
Preservation Houston has recognized all the properties on this tour with Good Brick Awards for excellence in historic preservation. The other locations on this year’s tour are:
- Heights Textile Mill, 611 W. 22nd St., Houston Heights: Reminders of the building’s industrial past are preserved throughout this massive 1894 manufacturing facility, now repurposed as studios and offices.
- 67 Tiel Way, River Oaks: Exposed brick, fine finishes, and strong horizontal lines distinguish this impressive 1949 home by Houston architects MacKie & Kamrath.
- 2119 Lubbock St., Old Sixth Ward: This classic Victorian home built in 1892 by an immigrant German carpenter was rescued from collapse by a caring new owner.
- 3702 Audubon Pl., Montrose: Craftsman-style detailing and unique interiors distinguish this distinctive 1921 home, which has remained in the same family since it was built.
Swamplot appreciates its sponsors! Find out here how to become one.
Sponsor of the Day
A Swamplot reader reports that renovations to the shopping center on Westheimer across from Light Bulbs Unlimited “suddenly stopped about a month ago,” leaving a few gaping holes open in the face of the strip. Pictured at top is the space where Radio Shack once stuck out a few ft. from the rest of the building before it shut down along with the rest of the chain and sat vacant prior to the remodeling that began earlier this year.
Despite their presence on the marquee shown above, a number of the other tenants recently hit the road from the center as well: Tanacious Tanning, which occupied the spot (also wide open) just west of Radio Shack; Stars Cleaners, located off Commonwealth St. to the far west; and Consign It!, which punctuated the building’s eastern end. Their spaces are all up for lease right now, according to a LoopNet listing posted back in June. Nidda Thai Cuisine and its next-door neighbor Erotic Cabaret on the other hand appear to be sticking around.
An Inside Look
COMMISSIONERS COURT: NO ROBO-BROTHELS IN UNINCORPORATED AREAS EITHER, PLEASE 
Now that the city’s banned sex doll businesses that let customers get it on with the merchandise right there in the store, what about the rest of the county? “That activity is already not allowed,†Judge Ed Emmett says at the Commissioners’ meeting on Tuesday. County attorney Vince Ryan added that there are currently laws on the books that “would prohibit those kinds of acts.” But as to what the laws are: Emmett says Ryan “will seek clarification before the next Commissioners meeting on Oct. 23,” reports Community Impact‘s Vanessa Holt. In both the city and the county, there’s nothing illegal about selling human-like sex devices for take-home use, officials tell Holt. [Community Impact; previously on Swamplot] Photo of 5615 Richmond, planned location of thwarted sex doll brothel: LoopNet
- HAR: Houston-Area Home Sales Down Nearly 6% Last Month [Houston Chronicle]
- Houston Lands at No. 37 on Annual List of Real Estate Markets to Watch [HBJ]
- CityNorth Renovations Underway at Exxon’s Former Campus [HBJ ($)]
- Crowne Plaza Brookhollow in Northwest Houston Adding Lazy River in Multimillion-Dollar Renovation [HBJ ($)]
- El Tiempo 1308 Cantina in Montrose Guesses It’s Staying Open for at Least Another Month [Eater Houston]
- Houston’s Seventh-Area Snooze: An AM Eatery Coming to The Woodlands [Culturemap]
- Houston City Council Approves Tiny Property Tax Rate Increase [Houston Chronicle]
- Harris County Flood Control District, Army Corps To Conduct $6M Study of the Addicks and Barker Reservoirs [Houston Public Media]
Photo of home in Cherryhurst, Montrose: Bill Barfield via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
Today’s picking of home parts, annotated:
- 29 Wind River Dr. [HAR]
Nancy Sarnoff has a few more details today on what the Downtown Redevelopment Authority will be paying the private owner of the area shown shaded at top — which wouldn’t give up its one-acre parcel there for a new park but will grant the Authority a 30-year lease for: “$355,992 in annual rent,” during the first 5 years, a spokeswoman says, with a 10 percent hike every 5 years thereafter. With that agreement in place — and the Goodyear Auto Service Center that currently occupies the block’s Fannin-St.-side slated for demo next April — the Authority is now seeking plans from landscape architects that’d be responsible for designing the space, though it notes that whatever the chosen firm comes up with “will have a potentially short life, between 30 and 50 years, per the lease agreement currently in place and options to extend.” (The parking lot shown without shading belongs to the South Texas College of Law and is there to stay.)
But that hasn’t stopped those involved from dreaming big while they can. A conceptual map of the park drawn up Project for Public Spaces — a New York planning firm hired to brainstormed some preliminary ideas for the Authority — shows it divvied up among a pair of buildings and a variety of different green spaces including a dog park:
Block 333
Please join us in thanking today’s Sponsor of the Day:Â The Classic. The Classic is the new restaurant at 5922 Washington Ave, at the edge of Rice Military. Swamplot appreciates the support!
An unabashedly American restaurant, The Classic has something for everyone. This fresh American bistro is perched just east of Memorial Park. And it’s brought to you by Benjy Levit — the restaurateur behind Local Foods and Benjy’s.
The Classic is a no-rush, no-fuss neighborhood spot that pivots neatly from brunch to date-night cachet. Enjoy The Classic’s wide-ranging all-day menu — featuring subtle flavors and techniques that have traveled here across oceans and generations. In the light-filled interior you’ll find a touch of retro.
Check out The Classic’s menu and hours, reviews, pics of its interior and dishes, or make reservations on the restaurant website.
If you’ve got it, flaunt it. Become a Sponsor of the Day.
Sponsor of the Day
AN OPENING-NIGHT BRAWL AT CAM STARTED WITH A FEW LOAVES OF BREAD 
One highlight of Pete Gershon’s new book about Houston’s ’70s and ’80s art scene is his description of the all-out melee that erupted in the Contemporary Arts Museum’s upper gallery at the opening night of an exhibition put on by Spanish artist Antoni Miralda in 1977. Notorious for his work with food, Miralda, writes Gershon, had “hung color photographs of brightly hued macaroni, labeled huge mounds of salt and sugar with garishly flashing neon signs, and showed videos . . . of food being prepared and eaten in restaurants from around Houston.” The centerpiece was “four thousand loaves of bread dyed with food coloring” which performers placed “on a 175-foot row of benches bisecting the exhibition space.” Following some nibbling and “the playful tossing of slices,” one “notorious troublemaker from the St. Thomas art crowd,” picked up a loaf and chucked it carelessly, hitting a 6-year-old girl and knocking her to the ground. A fellow attendee dragged him out the back entrance to teach him a lesson, but it was too late: “inside the gallery the scene quickly escalated to a full-scale, Texas-sized donnybrook, with flying bread and flying fists.” Fifteen minutes later, management had cleared the room “and mopped up the blood,” adds the museum’s then-director. But his boss worried about the mark it’d left — not just in the minds of those who disapproved but, worse, the ones who “eagerly entered the fray.” Perhaps, writes Gershon, “they thought this happened at CAM all the time.” [Arts and Culture Texas; interview with Pete Gershon] Photo: Contemporary Arts Museum Houston
SNEAKING A PEEK AT THE BIG WALLS, BIG GATES ARMY CORPS COULD PROPOSE FOR THE COAST LATER THIS MONTH 
On October 26, the agency will single out one of the 4 big proposals it’s been pondering for the Texas coast as the chosen one, reports the Texas Tribune’s Kiah Collier. One of them “calls for the construction of a 17-foot-high levee along the entirety of Galveston Island,” as well as Bolivar Peninsula. Ring any bells? It’s the so-called Ike Dike (also known as the “coastal spine”) that A&M scientists dreamed up about a decade ago in response to the disaster and hypothetically-even-worse disaster that could’ve occurred if Ike had struck 30 miles further west. Another defense against that doomsday scenario that could make it into the proposal: a giant gate structure adapted from Rice’s Jim Blackburn and Philip Bedient’s 2011 idea for a mechanism that’d close before storms to block surge. (They wanted to put it just upstream from the Fred Hartman Bridge; the Corps has number of different spots in mind.) All the plans in the running include a so-called ring levee around Galveston’s bay side to protect it from reverse storm surge, a helping of smaller levees and gates, upgrades to existing flood control structures, and ecosystem restoration projects geared toward creating natural floodwater-fighting barriers. [Texas Tribune; previously on Swamplot] Map indicating proposed Alternative A plan: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
- Six Weeks After Flood Bond Passage, More Than $1.4B-Worth of Projects Are in the Works Around Houston [Houston Chronicle]
- Pulte Group Planning Gated Townhome Community Near Oak Forest [HBJ ($)]
- Spec Distribution Space Underway in Bayport North Industrial Park [HBJ ($)]
- Lakeside Estate in Fort Bend County Going to Auction Starting at $1.8M [HBJ]
- Design Store Rejuvenation Opening First Houston Location Oct. 18 in Uptown Park [Culturemap; previously on Swamplot]
- New Springwoods Village Marriott Adds Restaurant Dubbed SwitcHouse Plates & Pours [Eater Houston]
- New Orleans-Based Neyow’s Creole Cafe Sets Its Sights on Former Beaucoup Bar & Grill on Richmond Near Hillcroft [Eater Houston]
- Levy Park Wins International Award from Urban Land Institute [Houston Public Media]
- Two Giant Hives of ‘Killer’ Bees Removed from Braeburn Home in Southwest Houston [Houston Chronicle]
Photo of mural by Ana Marietta on the Dramatika Custom Framing building at 331 W. 19th St., painted as part of the Allstate Foundation Purple Purse program: Bill Barfield via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
The bus stopped here.
