DRESSING UP THE MENIL HOUSE, SCARING THE ARCHITECT AWAY 
“Philip [Johnson] felt we should have a Mies van der Rohe settee, a Mies van der Rohe glass table and two Mies van der Rohe chairs on a little musty-colored rug,” explained Dominique de Menil about the distinctive yet undeniably Miesian modern home at 3363 San Felipe St. the already-somewhat-famous museum curator-turned-architect had designed for her and her husband. “We wanted something more voluptuous.” And so in 1950 the first family of Schlumberger hired Mr. Voluptuous himself, the dress designer Charles James, to create the new home’s interiors — something he had never done before, and never would do again. How’d that turn out? Here’s Joanna McCutcheon, giving some background to the Menil Collection’s current exhibition featuring clothing and furniture James designed for his patron: “Upon entering the house — a clean, strictly modernist construction of brick, steel and glass, he immediately demanded that the ceilings be raised 10 inches. He wanted additional room to facilitate his plan of coating the walls in lurid felt and velvet. . . . The walls of the Johnson house were swaddled in dyed felts, while dark spaces were illuminated with shocking colour. Horrified, Johnson refused to include the house in his portfolio for decades afterwards.” [Disegno Daily] Photo of Menil House dressing room: Menil Collection
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What’s this? Some sort of fancy computer-controlled transportation system designed to hover over a new greenway freeway just west of Downtown Houston? Not really. Actually, not even close: It’s a maglev pod transporter all right, proposed by a company called skyTran operating out of the campus of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Northern California. But the system it’s designing is meant for Israel first, not the Bayou City. A background image of Houston’s maybe-not-quite-iconic-enough downtown skyline just seemed suitable enough for one of the promotional images (above) illustrating the SkyTran “personal rapid transit” system, which is meant to pair a low-cost, low-energy, light-weight elevated rail system with cozy, droplet-shaped 2-person vehicles.
Just order one up from your iWatch (or smart phone, if you’re old fashioned) and a pod will swing by and take you and your best buddy where you want to go:
skyTran
AEREO’S HOUSTON TEEVEE SERVICE LIKELY A BUST AFTER THIS MORNING’S SUPREME COURT RULING 
So which West Houston data center is the one crowded with all those tiny Aereo antennas on its roof? The secret location shouldn’t need to stay secret for much longer, since the Supreme Court issued a ruling this morning essentially declaring the company’s service — which grabs TV signals from local broadcasters and streams them over the internet to subscribers for a fee — to be illegal. In a 6-to-3 decision (with dissent, notably, from the judges generally considered the most conservative), the court declared that Aereo functions similarly to a cable service, and should be subject to the same regulations, copyright laws, and fees charged by television networks. Aereo currently operates in Houston and 10 other cities. [USA Today; previously on Swamplot]Â Photo of Houston West Data Center (probably not the Aereo location) at 5150 Westway Park Blvd.:Â CyrusOne
And here we go away with what we will no longer have, leaving us only with what’s left.
- Construction Starts on New Whole Foods Market at Hughes Landing in The Woodlands [Prime Property; previously on Swamplot]
- Breaking Down the First Phase of Retail Planned for CityPlace, Springwoods Village’s Town Center [Houston Business Journal]
- CondoSmart Realty To Break Ground on 15-Condo ‘Topaz Villas’ at 4520 Yoakum Blvd. in Montrose [Houston Business Journal]
- Former Houston Texans Quarterback Matt Schaub’s Tanglewood House for Sale for $4.29M [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot]
- Chocolate Boutique Cacao & Cardamom Opening Soon in the Galleria Area [Eater Houston]
- New Heights Crawfish Spot Boil House Closing Until Next Crawfish Season [Eater Houston; previously on Swamplot]
- A Sneak Peek at Chuck Hughes’s Westheimer Visit for ‘Eat the Streets’ Episode Airing July 31 [Eating Our Words]
- Federal Officials Poised To Green-Light Houston-Dallas Bullet Train Study [Houston Chronicle ($)]
- Houston Named Among Top 10 U.S. Cities With Highest Percentage of Green Commercial Space [Houston Business Journal]
- Freedmen’s Town Residents Oppose Plan To Dig Up Neighborhood’s Historic Bricks, Install Pipes [Houston Chronicle ($)]
- Harris County Suing Texas Industrial Box Maintenance in Channelview Because It Is a ‘Hazard to the Community’ [KHOU]
- Scientists, Advocates Concerned Gulf Coast Sargassum Invasion Will Threaten Endangered Sea Turtles [Houston Chronicle]
- What Rising Sea Levels Might Mean for Houston [OffCite]
- Broadway Cemetery in Galveston Added To List of Historic Places [Galveston County Daily News ($)]
- Obama, Icon Bank Team Up To Shut Down Katy Gun Store [KHOU]
- A Look at How Houston’s Street Couch Population Has Exploded in the Past Year [Houstonia]
Photo of construction on downtown Marriott Marquis: Marc Longoria via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
Could the crop of buildings forming downtown Houston’s skyline viewed from a rooftop terrace north of Avondale be the “garden” reference in a contemporary townhome 3-pack dubbed “El Jardin Moderno?” Or maybe it’s the wispy palm trees that sharply mark the 2004 property’s portals? Or perhaps it’s the color use inside, where each level interprets a slice of the spectrum:
Taking a Long View
- 5620 Bordley Dr. [HAR]
A reader sends Swamplot photos of this TABC notice posted on the door of 2505 Mason St. in Avondale. That’s the side address of the Pictures Plus framing company and Hyde Park Gallery building, whose entrance is around the corner — and under the David Adickes sculpture of a bewhiskered telephone (at far left in the top photo) — at 115 Hyde Park Blvd. The notice announces a Brewheme Brewery coming to the property, and lists 307 Fairview as the applicant’s address. That spot, one block up and 2 blocks over, is the home of Montrose bar Boheme.
- Previously on Swamplot: Pictures Plus Telephone Picture
Photos: Swamplot inbox
Pictures Plus Beer?
COURTLANDT MANOR SITE PHOTOGRAPHER: GOOGLE PLUS ATE YOUR ‘G’ 
The reader who sent in pics that Swamplot posted yesterday showing a banner announcing the new 14-townhome Courtlandt Manor development at 411 Lovett Blvd. — where developer Croix Custom Homes had a 1906 mansion in fine condition torn down earlier this year — writes in to apologize and explain why they inadvertently made it look like the developer’s sign had a prominent typo. Having examined the originals and discussed the issue with one of the firms marketing the project, Swamplot can now confirm that Courtlandt Manor is indeed “pre-selling,” not “pre-sellin” units for $875K and up, and that the actual sign spells this out accurately. “I feel really bad about this,” writes the photographer, who didn’t notice anything wrong with the photo until it was posted. “My phone automatically uploads all the photos I take to Google+ for backup. When it sees several images taken side by side, it ‘auto-enhances’ them into a panorama.” That’s more of an explanation for a missing letter than Croix had provided publicly for the site’s now-missing mansion, but the spelling-oblivious auto-panorama mechanism in Google+, apparently, is a little more complicated. Original, unstitched photo of sign at Lovett Blvd. and Taft: Swamplot inbox
Seeing the Eighteenth for the last time — and other complicated numerical exercises about town.
- Nearly 6-Acre Vacant Galleria Property at Post Oak and Richmond Sold To Unknown Buyer [Prime Property; previously on Swamplot]
- Boxer Property Acquires Northwest Crossing II Office Space at 7676 Hillmont in Northwest Houston [Prime Property]
- Sage County Opens in Former Wonder Bar Space in Midtown, Inspired By Dives You’d Find on I-45 Midway Between Houston and Dallas [Culturemap]
- A Peek Inside the Brand-New Red Dessert Dive on Studewood [The Heights Life]
- Watermark Properties Planning 368-Unit Luxury Apartment Complex at Hwy. 96 and Walker in League City [Galveston County Daily News ($)]
- Proposed Policy Change Would Increase Height Limit for Billboards Along Texas Interstates and Major Highways to 65 Ft. [Houston Chronicle ($)]
- 311 Has Been ‘Inundated’ With Calls About ‘Funky’ Houston Tap Water [KHOU]
- Mapping Houston’s Best Public Restrooms and Drinking Fountains [Not of It]
- 10 Billboards Along I-10 Between Beaumont and Brookshire To Display Quotes By Gertrude Stein for Next 6 Weeks [Glasstire]
- Montrose Rollerblader Juan Carlos Makes It to the Next Round of ‘America’s Got Talent’ [Houstonia; previously on Swamplot]
Photo: David Elizondo via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
- 12543 Highway 36 [HAR]
And there’s the pitch. Look up! Lots of roof peaks cap this 1971 Northampton home near Willow Creek Golf Course. And the rooms upstairs really play off the angles. A new agency relisted the property this week, though it trimmed the asking price by $4K to $375K from the tag attached for a week or so earlier this month. We begin our tour in the slightly schizophrenic foyer . . .
Acute House
Update, 6/24: The banner depicted in the photo above really does spell “pre-selling” correctly; the photographer explains how Google+ ate the ‘g.’
And here’s what you all were waiting for, while patiently enduring the demolition of the recently renovated 1906 Bullock-City Federation Mansion at 411 Lovett Blvd. this past March: The old building’s old-fashionedly-named replacement. Signs announcing Croix Homes’ Courtlandt Manor development went up Friday at the two-thirds-of-an-acre site on the corner of Lovett Blvd. and Taft St. A rendering of the development (at top) may make it kinda look like a single collegiate building, but it’s being sold as 14 separate townhomes, with prices “from” $875,000. The site plan (above right) shows the structures grouped around some sort of central argyle auto court, perhaps reminiscent of the former brick-and-concrete design on the parking lot of its vanquished predecessor, in a twisted-45-degrees kind of way.
Avondale Replacements
The Dream’s & Bros. Hand Car Wash at the corner of San Felipe and Bancroft just east of the Target parking lot has shut down, a bunch of readers have reported to Swamplot. The car wash was founded by Afis Olajwon, brother of former Rockets center Hakeem Olajuwon (and himself a former guard for the UTSA Roadrunners), in 1998. On Friday, a large piece of demo equipment was hanging around in the parking lot behind a new chain-link fence surrounding the property at 4303 San Felipe St. Earlier in the week, the basketball-themed signage was removed.
Photo: Ray Hankamer
To That Great Car Wash in the Sky
