Demo artist Dan Havel sends in positive and negative preview photos of Give & Take, a sculpture he and partner Dean Ruck carved and carefully extracted from a dilapidated bungalow on West Cottage St. in East Norhill. The 30-foot-long egg-shaped piece they removed will be on display as part of a group show at the Contemporary Arts Museum featuring Houston-related work by various Houston artists. The exhibit, called No Zoning, opens this Friday.
So what’s the take?
Here’s a whizzy reel showing what the new Metro trains and stations on 4 upcoming light-rail lines are supposed to look like. Dowling St. in the Third Ward, the Edloe Station in Greenway Plaza, the Moody Park Station on the North Line, MacGregor Park Station on the Southeast Line, and Lockwood Station on the East End Line each get about 30 seconds of CGI treatment, from a low-flying camera buzzing some extremely lifelike — though torpid — pedestrians.
Christof Spieler finds a few flaws:
The Third Ward footage seems to be out-of-date; it shows the old alignment crossing Dowling on Wheeler, not the new route that switches to Alabama. But other details are correct: the stations shown are the new prototype station design (by Rey de la Reza Architects), minus artwork.
It’s nice to be able to visualize what these lines might look like. But it’s also a reminder that it’s important to get the details right. At Edloe, for example, the trees integrated into the canopy are nice, but there’s no crosswalk at the west end of the station platform, which means a 500-foot detour for some riders. The Moody Park and MacGregor stations do show that crosswalk, and the sidewalks look pretty good, too. But in all the images, the overhead wires are suspended from their own poles in the middle of the street, not from the streetlight poles on either side, as on Main Street. That makes for more poles and a more cluttered streetscape.
In this episode: Katy Freeway anthill mover, moon-unit coffee, and that robot on the porch.
What’s this special delivery rushing down I-10?
“Before developers established the heights and its various neighboring subdivisions, a massive filling project took placed. It was pretty much a landfill for the City of Houston. . . . Developer clear cut the existing pine forest (the oaks pretty much only existed near the bayous and tribs) and filled in the uneven landscape. A big example is in Woodland Heights. A 60-inch storm sewer line runs in an old trib to White Oak Bayou. The line is 20-ft below the current natural ground in the area. After the line was built, the natural channel was filled in and streets placed on top. The line currently goes under many people properties and houses and many don’t know it exists. . . . Outside of that, several ox bows and other trib were filled in. A couple were not though. There is one just east of TC jester where it cross White Oak Bayou south of 11th. It has water in it. There is another just west of Yale that is dry. I’ve seen historic photos showing people jumping off the banks of the the natural streams in the bayous in the Clark Pines area (14th street west of Durham). A current development is actually being build on an undeveloped piece of land that was a site of the landfill in this oxbow. The houses are being placed on piles driven deep into the ground to avoid them from sinking or collapsing. I doubt they are telling the home buyers this. Long time residents know about it though.” [kjb434, commenting on Wet and Wild: Strip Redo on White Oak]
More than a dozen photos of the pristine interior, front-porch swing, and side-yard lap pool may not, in fact, be sufficient for you to get a complete picture of the lifestyle afforded by the renovated bungalow at 617 Byrne St. in Woodland Heights. So former neighbor Kelley fills in the details for you:
Oh how I miss the carefree days of living across the street from Pete & Fernando … so many memories of them and their awesome house…like the time I popped over to their porch for a quick glass of wine while waiting for my husband to get home from work … and then stumbled home at 4 the next morning…oh, the stories the lap pool in the side yard could tell…the beautiful Easter brunches in the dining room…
…the time I saw Pete naked in the bathroom…
There’s a lot of junk for sale in this tiny Norhill storefront: Thermoses from the 1970s, a bouffant-hairstyle catalog, a 1967 Delta Zeta sorority photo, hand-painted cans of Campbell’s Soup, and — writes Kelly Klaasmeyer in the Houston Press — “what is possibly the world’s largest extant collection of macramé owls.”
Who would want any of this stuff? Even the owner wants to be done with it:
[Bill] Davenport decided to get rid of stuff because of a move. “I had to move all my junk over from storage, and I thought, ‘Oh no, this can’t go on.’ I had to look at everything as I unpacked it.” As a result, he started thinking that maybe he didn’t need all of it.
Davenport and Francesca Fuchs, both artists, bought the 4,320-sq.-ft. 1930 commercial building at 1125 E. 11th St. (off Studewood) more than 2 years ago. After 16 months of renovations, they recently moved in upstairs with their kids. And Davenport opened Bill’s Junk in one of the retail spaces downstairs:
Next experiment at that Swamplot-Award-winning house built out of shipping containers on Cordell St. in Brookesmith? The unique driveway installed earlier this week. John Walker of Numen Development writes in with details:
It is composed of recycled crushed glass, with a resin binder, and achieves the consistency of caramel popcorn for lack of a better description, so it has voids that allow surface water to percolate through the paving and ultimately be absorbed into the underlying soil rather than running off into the storm drainage system. It is a triple threat: recycled material, reduces environmental impact of development, and it’s really cool!
Walker says Presto Geosystems, a division of Alcoa, installed the driveway as a pilot project for the Houston market.
This installation has been described by their consulting engineer as most likely the “first and last” residential project they will do in Houston as the product is expected to meet with huge commercial demand, especially for “landlocked” developments for whom expansion is limited by Harris County stormwater detention limitations.
Some views of the installation:
Where was this thing?
First, your guesses: 2 each for Braes Heights, Bellaire, Westbury, and Garden Oaks. Plus: “within a mile of Montrose/Studemont /Studewood,” east of Montrose near Alabama, near Westheimer and Kirby, Highland Village, Montrose, Meyerland, Castle Court, near the Menil, Sharpstown, West University, Larchmont, Oak Forest, Timbergrove, Lazybrook, Timbergrove or Lazybrook, Spring Branch, “Maplewood, west of Chimney Rock, maybe even right on Beechnut,” “somewhere right off of Shepherd between 59 and Allen Parkway,” Idylwood, near Stella Link, and Afton Oaks.
Fortunately, nobody guessed the Heights. Is it in the Heights? In a lazy, geographical way, maybe. But not really. Only the real-estate agent would call this neighborhood the Heights. Or, more specifically, “Heights/East.”
Which means the winner is . . . the quick-to-the-draw marmer, in the very first response:
This smallish one-story was probably built just before or just after WWII, and is probably within a mile of Montrose/Studemont/Studewood, could be anywhere between Bissonnet and North Main.
And it is — just barely — at the top end of both ranges.
If someone is able to detail the garage history of this home, it might win Carol an honorable mention. Without that, the nod goes to Howard Hughes, for this bit of only somewhat peccable real-estate logic:
Lack of seperation between the living/dining areas, as well as a small squatty window denote this as a post-war house…probably from the mid to late 1950s. $ was spent on the interior decoration, so it’s probably in an area enjoying a resurgence.
So . . . what’s with the garage?
Avenue Community Development Corp. will be working with the Houston Housing Finance Corp. to build 80 to 100 homes and 180 to 250 apartments on the site of a former FedEx facility it bought near Moody Park. “The redevelopment of the 20-acre tract at 4004 Irvington Blvd., just south of Calvacade Street, is the nonprofit organization’s biggest to date, according to Avenue CDC. . . . Construction will begin in 2009.” [Houston Business Journal]
Touring the Heights after the hurricane, Katharine Shilcutt Gleave is surprised to discover the front porch of Fitzgerald’s still intact. And Mimi Swartz spots these recycled yard gingermen leftover from Christmas, pressed into window-protecting service.
A few more of their photo finds from the Heights, Woodland Heights, and Norhill:
A reader writes in with this report on the newly reopened McDonald’s at I-45 and N. Main, at the entrance of Woodland Heights:
It’s no “McStarbucks,” but it is different from most McDonald’s I’ve seen. The colors are rich coffee browns. There’s some fake zebrawood-looking formica on some walls, and a strange wallpaper-like tile in the bathroom. Right in the middle of the main eating area there’s a round structure that looks vaguely like a DJ booth. A bar-height counter juts out from it, where people waiting for their orders can rub elbows. The indoor playground in front is in a separate room. Sorry, no comfy couches.
How were the hamburgers?!!!?
Thanks to y’all for playing the Neighborhood Guessing Game! We had 19 guessers and 24 guesses for this week’s contest. And they were all over the place . . . but all inside the Loop!
Three of you guessed Montrose and another 3 guessed the Houston Heights. There were 2 votes each for Brookesmith, Washington Terrace, Riverside Terrace, Lindale Park, and Idylwood or Eastwood. Other guesses were: Bellaire, Woodland Heights, the Reliant Park area, Midtown, Sunset Heights, Southgate, Winlow Place and environs, and “over by the Orange Show.”
The winner this week was missjanel, who was the first to mention Lindale Park . . . though she didn’t explain her guess.
Sure, there were plenty of neighborhoods a house like this could have been in. How were you supposed to figure out Lindale Park? No one nailed it precisely, but some commenters were pretty sharp at picking up the clues. jgbiggs noted
a brick house next door with a horribly inappropriate iron fence. Also, the painted over windows on the front door give evidence that it is in a high crime neighborhood.
Jeff was (probably) off about the vintage of the house next door, but pointed out:
Definitely a gentrifying area. New behemoth next to a bungalow with no central AC.
Commenter karen noted some of the contradictions:
The bricks next door are so close and the gold-tipped iron fence so ugly that it really could be West U, but then this would be a tear-down, so why show interior house images on HAR?
Lastly, Mike noted that the brick house next door was probably an older one. And one of his 3 guesses was Lindale Park!
Let’s add it all up: well-kept or recently redone hardwood floors? Check. New, reasonably sophisticated interior paint colors? Check. Security-conscious fencing nearby? Check. Toddler toys in bedroom? Check. Nearby property values probably not high enough to support yuppifying the kitchen or dealing with the window-unit AC? Check.
It wasn’t runaway obvious, but Lindale Park does fit those specs.
After the jump: The house! Where, what, and how much.
This Methadone Clinic graphic was posted today on the Medusa Properties website, and conveys in slightly different fashion the same news we received in our email from a Heights-area reader:
The oh-so-neighborly Mr. Jared Meadors did *not* receive the variance he requested for the Baylor St subdivision.
Photo of 2601 Baylor St. and Methadone Clinic Graphic: Medusa Properties
Here’s just one paragraph from a nine-page variance request application submitted for consideration at today’s Planning Commission hearing:
So what message does this whole process send to people like me who are willing to go out and spend their time and their hard earned money and take risks in order to improve the city and improve our neighborhoods? The message is: Only the guys with deep pockets and deep connections—the Perry Homes, the Tricons, the Fingers, the Olmsteads, the Levits, the Weingartens—only those guys get to win at this game. Those guys can build what they want when they want. Everybody else loses. Everybody else gets bad advice and the run around. Everybody else should just stay home and sit quietly on their couches and watch TV.
There’s more to like in Jared Meadors’s request to subdivide the 49-by-120-ft. property he owns at 2601 Baylor St. in Sunset Heights into three separate lots — including an accounting of his annual net adjusted income over the last three years, two HAR.com screen shots, and some occasional heavy leaning on the CAPS LOCK key. But it’s nothing, really, compared to his more wide-ranging complaints about his difficulties with his neighbors and the Prevailing Lot Size ordinance that he has posted on the website of his company, Medusa Properties. It begins:
NEW CONSTRUCTION! SUNSET HEIGHTS - MODERN CRAFTSMAN STYLE - AVAIL SPRING 2008
*** UPDATE *** THE BLUE HAIRED LAWN NAZIS OF EAST SUNSET HEIGHTS STRIKE AGAIN!
More name-calling, after the jump!
From MarkWBennett (Mark W. Bennett): RT @StephStradley: #FF @houstonpress "Blog Stars" @kuff @lmayes @thebloggess @houstoncalling @swamplot @htownchowdown @bluejeangourmet & me
From steveneparker (Steve Parker): A good explanation of the the major light rail issues: RT @swamplot Where the New Light Rail Lines Are Stuck http://tinyurl.com/yj579v3
From texaswatchdog (texaswatchdog): Can anyone help rescue the ex-presidents buried in the mud in Pearland, TX?: http://twurl.nl/hmxdjj h/t @swamplot
From StephStradley (Stephanie Stradley): #FF @houstonpress "Blog Stars" @kuff @markwbennett @lmayes @thebloggess @houstoncalling @swamplot @htownchowdown @bluejeangourmet & me #nice
From icemanhorns84 (David Crowl): I would support this RT @swamplot Extending Metro’s Main St. Rail Line to Fort Bend County http://tinyurl.com/yzvfygp
From smurfing74 (Irfan S): I heard from someone in pearland that they decided to not put obama's bust their for fear of vandalism. So sad. @swamplot
From melindamerola (Melinda Merola): Did it. RT @swamplot Coming Soon to San Felipe: Winetopia http://tinyurl.com/yzd7jb6From melindamerola (Melinda Merola): Edit: I *love* Swamplot! RT @swamplot The Houston Press Sez Some Nice Things About Us http://tinyurl.com/yhjre5o
From FoodPrincess (Joanne Witt): +2 RT @she_eats: Congrats @HTownChowDown @BlueJeanGourmet @texanschick @swamplot @lmayes named Houston's best bloggers: http://is.gd/aM9GCFrom FoodPrincess (Joanne Witt): +2 RT @she_eats: Congrats @HTownChowDown @BlueJeanGourmet @texanschick @swamplot @lmayes named Houston's best bloggers: http://is.gd/aM9GC
Comment of the Day: Heights Home Replacement Program
“Demo permits sold in the greater Heights last year - approx 220. (zips 007,008, 009) The Chron’s real estate report showed that 25% of 2008 home sales in the Heights were new construction. And how many were built in the last 10 years? Don’t know, but for anyone who thinks The Heights has NOT been decimated, go to HAR.com to see how nearly all listings were built since 1999 or are lot value only. Heard a story on the radio not long ago about how people stood in line for hours to see the Bill of Rights, but when an exact replica went on display, nobody bothered. What does that tell us?” [Sheila, commenting on Jack Preston Wood: Making an Impression in the Freeland Historic District]