Some action near the Main St. exit on the North Freeway, plus more farther afield.
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COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOW HOUSTON’S EAST ENDERS HAVE RID THEMSELVES OF CLUTTER “Small closets are a great tool for stuff reduction. Houston, and especially the East End, is still full of similar vintage 1000-1500 sq. ft houses designed for simple living.” [DanaX, commenting on Houston Home Listing Photo of the Day: Fountain]
HOUSTON’S COMING CUDDLY ANIMAL INVASION 
Look out for a migration of flamingoes, and a few more bunnies for Easter, announces the Houston Press‘s John Nova Lomax, after an interview with stencil artist Coolidge. “A lot of people are like, ‘Aw, you need to do a cat!’ or ‘You should do a rhino!’ or something, and I’m like, ‘Well, if I was gonna do that, I’m not now.’ . . . It’s almost like I should stop doing them on city property. I should probably stick to private property. Some people have contacted me to thank me after I’ve done their buildings up. The city won’t mess with that stuff, but if it’s on their property they’ve been taking them down pretty quick.” [Art Attack] Photo of Taylor St. bridge at I-10: Alex Luster
THIS SCHOOL IS NOT FOR SALE 
The head of real estate for HISD tells Texas Watchdog’s Lynn Walsh that Jack Yates High School is not being sold, no matter what she’s heard. The Third Ward institution is wedged between a Texas Southern University parking garage and UH’s Robertson Stadium; rumors had HISD selling the 1958 campus to one university or the other. [Texas Watchdog] Photo: Nick Juhasz (license)
- 1230 Nicholson St. [HAR]
Three houses, a garage, and 2 sheds? That makes it.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: ROCK ON, PRUDENTIAL DEMO 
“Although I am a huge proponent of keeping architecturally significant buildings intact and committing to their re-use, this building is an exception. I worked on some interior spaces in this building and although it was beautiful on the outside (as beautiful as a limestone monolith can be) the interior, with the exception of the first floor was awful. Low ceilings, large thick structural walls and narrow passageways gave it a feeling somewhere between a habitrail and a cave. It is also loaded with asbestos. MD Anderson is committed to keeping functional buildings, as they showed by adding to to top of the existing Alkek tower last year, rather than tearing it down. Houston Main Building really did have to go.” [LISA, commenting on Report: M.D. Anderson Begins Demolishing Med Center Icon; more recently on Swamplot]
The Museum of Fine Arts’ Caroline Weiss Law Building, with extensions designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, sits on the southeast corner of Montrose and Bissonnet. On the northeast corner of the same intersection, there’s the Cullen Sculpture Garden, designed by Isamu Noguchi; the Contemporary Arts Museum by Gunnar Birkerts looks in from the northwest. And on the southwest corner . . . there’s this pomo villa-model home from 1991, designed by Will Cannady, a longtime architecture professor at Rice. Cannady, better known in B-ball circles as the architect of Hakeem Olajuwon’s home in Sugar Land, built this place for himself and his family on a half-acre Shadyside lot in 1991 but only lived there for a few years. The home’s second owners kept those cute little longhorn and lone-star frieze plaques on the outside of the 5,720-sq.-ft. stucco mansion, but did add an extra column or two. That should justify putting it all on the market with a $5.25 million asking price, no?
WHAT COUNTS FOR PUBLIC HOUSING IN HOUSTON The failure of the Houston Housing Authority’s “scattered sites” program has left the city agency as the proud owner of 174 vacant and decaying homes about town: “The houses, 365 in all, were purchased from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in 1987 and 1988. The agency upgraded the homes and opened them to public housing tenants as a way to provide rental houses to low-income families and eventually, a bridge for first-time homeownership. Since it began in the mid-1990s, the HHA program sold 191 houses, just over half. But in 2004, believing the houses would be more easily sold if renters weren’t living in them, they began moving tenants out. As of 2006, according to their records, 104 homes were still rented. Now, there are none. And yet, since 2007, just 27 houses have been sold – a mere dozen last year.” [Houston Chronicle]
- 5903 Spanish Oak Dr. [HAR]
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
If each of you can pitch in with a whack or two, these places will be down in no time:
19TH ST. IN THE HEIGHTS NOT QUITE READY FOR THAT SIXTIES VIBE Contrary to a few emailed and published reports claiming that it opened for business yesterday, the Heights Ashbury Coffee House still needs “a few more weeks” before it’ll be ready, owner Katy Whelan tells Swamplot . . . after an initial “YIKES!” The space at 242 W. 19th St. will be the new home of Staci Davis’s Radical Eats and Deborah Morris’s Juicy in the Sky with Vitamins juice bar. “We promise you we are ALMOST THERE,” writes Whelan. “We will be offering lots of specials for the wait.” [Previously on Swamplot]
Yes, it’s probably been a while since the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center’s 18-story Houston Main Building — the former Prudential Tower at 1100 Holcombe St. designed by Kenneth Franzheim — has had its windows washed. But that’s not what these guys on the gondolas are doing to the 59-year-old building. Off with the limestone! Hey, how’d that fresco come out?
- Previously on Swamplot: Will M.D. Anderson’s Contractor Bungle the Largest Fresco Rescue Ever?, The Prudential Tower’s Grand Entrance, Before Its Not-so-Grand Exit, Update: M.D. Anderson Not Demolishing Former Prudential Tower Yet, Just Hacking Away at It a Bit, Report: M.D. Anderson Begins Demolishing Med Center Icon
Photo: Candace Garcia
A MIDTOWN BEER BAR IS BORN Who’s the mama? “A craft beer bar will be coming to Midtown in roughly the same time it takes to conceive and gestate a baby. Except this baby’s father is one of the most esteemed bar owners in town. And the baby will have a diet primarily composed of small-batch craft beers. It’ll be taking up residence next to another beloved bar, right along the light rail, making this small section of Midtown suddenly infinitely more intriguing.” [Eating Our Words]
Photos: Swamplot inbox
