- 263 Chimney Rock Rd. [HAR]
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Tag: 77024
- 204 Kensington Ct. [HAR]
What’s next for the modestly proportioned  home in Bunker Hill Village that Frank Lloyd Wright designed in 1954 for insurance executive William Thaxton (top and middle photos) and the more recent, more commodious addition (above) of 1995 by Bob Inaba of Kirksey Architecture? The pedigreed and restored property, on a cul-de-sac off Strey Ln., which peels off Memorial Dr. east of Gessner, landed on the market Monday with a $3.195 million asking price. That’s a bit less than the $3.5 million sought in 2010 when owner Allen Gaw previously tried to move on — but a little more than the $2.9 million that earlier listing shrunk to after a year of no takers.
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Wright Righted?
Jump or Dive? Try both. A Hill Country-like retreat in Memorial’s Sandlewood neighborhood is perched on a spring-fed lake — and comes with a pool, among other chill-worthy amenities. The asking price was set at $4.2 million in the property’s early June listing. Built in 1997 for its current owners, Midway Companies’ Brad and Claudia Freels, the fan-filled home appears to have waltzed across Texas to find some of the older touchstones incorporated into its finishes.
Breeze Ease
The 10,000-sq.-ft. Becks Prime location in the Sears wing of the Memorial City Mall — dubbed the Sportatorium on account of its 30 big-screen teevees showing major league sporting events, video game room, and conference room — shut down for good on Saturday. The location had been open since 2008, when the local hamburger chain was substituted late in the game for a venture originally planned to feature Roger Clemens, back in the days when the former Astros, Yankees, and Red Sox player was best known for his standout pitching.
Burgers Are Out!
Renovations after Hurricane Ike appear to have maximized the lighting and open plan of a streamlined Bayou Woods home cited in separate records as a 1960 or 1964 edition. The property listed a week ago; it has a $2.9 million asking price.
An Ike Redo
Does Sisyphus do windows? With floor-to-ceiling expanses and sliders trimming a tree house of a home in Saddlecreek Village Estates, the adjacent woodlands provide most of the background art. Last week, the updated 1980 property landed on the market, with a listing that keeps the home’s façade a bit of a secret. It’s a split-level and has a $1.75 million asking price. The glassy structure squeezes into its zig-zag lot’s leafy terrain in Hunters Creek Village, but much of the interior is wide open . . .
The So Big House
- 9 Falling Leaf Ln. [HAR]
- 330 Hunters Trail St. [HAR]
Paul Revere didn’t ride past this pedigreed residential slice of New England in Memorial’s Greenbay Forest, but it sure looks like he could have. The classic Cape Cod home (top) is a much more recent vintage than 18th c., however. It’s a 1978 design by the go-to group for such work, Boston-based Royal Barry Wills Associates. With its simple, broad-faced elevation and snow-deterring roof, many features are true to form, right down to the “keeping room” off the kitchen (above). Earlier this week, the home landed on the shores of the MLS. It has an asking price of $3.5 million.
Colonial House
A 13-and-a-half-acre park-like lot on Memorial Dr. just north of the Ethan’s Glen condo complex and across the street from the Lantern Lane Shopping Center where Fresh Market took over a former Rice Epicurean market is the planned site of a new mixed-use development. A joint venture between the property’s longtime owner, Methodist Hospital, and the developer of nearby CityCentre is behind Memorial Green, which is meant to include apartments, offices, and restaurant and retail space, as well as single-family homes. “The project will center around an urban green space, which connects the uses in a pedestrian environment,” reads a description of the project in the annual report of Midway Companies.
“Local dog owners will be devastated,” notes a Swamplot reader. The lot has long been used as an informal dog park. Surveyors have been seen at work on the property, which is sprinkled with tall pines.
A couple of blocky renderings (above and below) of early concepts for Memorial Green, planned for Methodist’s lots and 12505 and 12601 Memorial Dr., were also included in Midway’s annual report.
Memorial Green
You may have seen some harrowing home listings in your day, but for sheer, ballsy “abandon hope, all ye who enter here” bravado, it would be hard to imagine outdoing the agent’s MLS presentation of the single-bedroom condo at 12748 Huntingwick Dr.
How fearsome is this place? Well, let’s just say the featured photo in the listing is the down-the-hole toilet-bowl shot shown at right. Yes, if while trawling through listings, you are attracted by a full-on view of dank toilet water, surrounded on the floor and porcelain by brown bits that bear more than a passing resemblance to dead cockroaches, this might be the place for you. If, that is, the agent’s sage discouragement, dispensed in contract-friendly all-caps, doesn’t drive you away:
Fair Warning
- 11302 Piney Point Cir. [HAR]
- 935 Magdalene Dr. [HAR]
Far into the woods of the Memorial Oaks section of Hunters Creek Village, a 1958 contemporary attributed to Houston architecture firm Neuhaus & Taylor seems to defy access. There is, however, a mini-driveway extending from a private road that peels off an equally discrete cul-de-sac street west of Wirt Rd. Originally, the secluded property also had ramps spanning the ravine lot’s “intermittent” stream bed of Briar Branch. Or so reported one of the daughters of the original owners in an online forum about 5 years back.
Bring Your Squeegee
