January 18, 2008 – 9:05 am
What makes Hilshire Village and Spring Valley different from the rest of the Memorial Villages?
Both these Villages are north of I-10, which for Memorialites is sort of the wrong side of the tracks. Indeed, if you look at the household income of 77055 in the year 2000, the zip code that encompasses Hilshire Village and Spring Valley, it is $36.7 thousand. The average household income in 77024, which consists mainly of the southern Villages, is $82.6 thousand. The two northern Villages, however, are probably far closer to the Southern Villages in terms of wealth. It’s simply that as you go north and east from Spring Valley and Hilshire Village, you enter more working class neighborhoods, with lots of Hispanic and Korean immigrants. They may not be rich, but they are strivers, and the area North of I-10 on the Westside is, I think, getting wealthier and more middle class.
Robert Boyd returns from his latest bicycle tour — through Memorial’s northern outposts — with photos of his finds: wobbly Metro bike racks, shed-roof seventies Modern Memorial classics, ivy art, creekside barbecue, Tae Kwon Do parking-lot attendants, low-calorie McMansions, plus a couple of misplaced Victorians and a faux Adobe.
Photo of house on Winningham Ln.: Robert W. Boyd
Read more about: 77024, 77055, Hilshire-Village, Home Design, Memorial Villages, Spring Valley, Streets, Tours
January 14, 2008 – 8:50 am
Intrepid bicycle blogger Robert Boyd ventures into two more tony westside residential neighborhoods: Farnham Park and Charnwood — only to be hassled by security guards:
Now apparently some residents were alarmed to see me riding in their neighborhood taking photos. So the guards gave me a lot of shit when I left, and they strongly implied that this was private property and that I was not allowed to take photos. It was a humiliating dress-down, which I would have gladly avoided. I was afraid they’d try to hold me or call the cops, but they took my personal information (which if I had any guts, I would have denied them*) and let me go.
No pics of the security gates guarding a public street in his report, but plenty of languorous estates nestled behind twiggy foliage. A sympathetic commenter offers Boyd these words of encouragement:
I understand that these people are wealthy and value their privacy, but if you don’t want people taking pictures, don’t build such a great house.
A great number of Houstonians in other neighborhoods are already taking this advice.
After the jump: Boyd provides photographic evidence that Briarbend Park has Buffalo Bayou’s best front-row seats.
Continue Reading This Story >
Read more about: 77024, Briarbend Park, Charnwood, Farnham Park, Gated Neighborhoods, Streets
January 7, 2008 – 8:51 am
Biz-school student, blogger, and former comic-book publisher Robert W. Boyd takes web visitors on a bicyclist’s-eye-view tour through the rolling meadows of east Hunters Creek Village, reporting on real-estate values and encounters with wildlife — and peppering his travelogue with advice to neighborhood homeowners on naked sunbathing and monumental sculpture.
. . . the instant you leave Hunter’s Creek going east, there are apartments. I suspect Hunter’s Creek is zoned to exclude them, but they are bunched right along the boundary of the Village (despite the fact that the area along Memorial between Hunter’s Creek and the Loop is some of the richest real estate in the city–I guess it still makes sense to have apartments there).
Photo of home on Shasta Dr. near Buffalo Bayou: Robert W. Boyd
Read more about: 77024, Hunters Creek Village, Memorial Villages, Streets, Tours
November 13, 2007 – 9:51 am
The lovely and heavily wooded Holy Name Retreat Center in Bunker Hill Village is selling off 10 acres of its 20-acre property at 430 Bunker Hill Rd. The Congregation of the Passion of Christ, which operates the retreat and is based in Chicago, needs the cash “in order to meet certain financial needs, including caring for elderly members of the religious order,” reports Norm Rowland in the Memorial Examiner.
Commercial buildings and apartments aren’t allowed in Bunker Hill Village, and homesites must be at least 20,000 square feet.
Read more about: 77024, Bunker Hill Village, Buying and Selling, Development Restrictions, Homesites, Land Sales
October 18, 2007 – 10:00 am
Texas Architect magazine features a home that shows what the famous postwar Case Study program of modern steel houses might have looked like if it had landed on bayou banks in Houston instead of L.A. hillsides.
Of course, what was cool in the fifties wasn’t especially appreciated in the eighties. The home’s second owners
removed the terraced landscaping and painted the entire house white, including its darkstained walnut paneling and load-bearing walls of pink Mexican brick. They filled sunken terrazzo soaking bathtubs in children’s and parents’ bathrooms with concrete. They removed the lacy, cast-plaster screens separating the living and dining rooms designed by Gloria Frame’s father, Joseph Klein, and the unusual turquoise St. Charles steel kitchen cabinets with their little shiny stainless steel legs. In the main living areas they covered over a series of recessed light coves in the ceiling depicted in superb photographs by Ezra Stoller, which were published in House & Garden in September 1961. They also replaced the original copper roof flashing with galvanized steel flashing that had rusted to the point of failure by 2004 when the house’s third owner, Dana Harper, persuaded them to sell it.
After the jump, more swank pics from Harper’s expensive restoration of this cool modern home off Memorial Dr.
Continue Reading This Story >
Read more about: 77024, Buffalo Bayou, Historic Preservation, Home Design, Houston Architects, Interiors, Memorial, Modern Design, Renovations, Restorations
October 12, 2007 – 12:01 pm
Remember the $1.53 million party house the City of Piney Point Village bought back in April? The one it wanted to use as City Hall, because City Hall was being kicked out of a strip center outside city limits? Remember how Mayor Carol Fox was all excited about it, and didn’t think they’d even need to redecorate? And how local residents were all upset about a City Hall in a Party Pad moving into a quiet residential neighborhood and having visitors park in a church lot across the street? Sure, the place looked cool, but what would it be like holding police court in the pool room?
Well, it didn’t work out. The mayor backed down, City Hall moved to a third-floor suite in an office building on Woodway, and the house was put back out on the market for bids, which are due today. There were 30 showings, but only three bids had come in by Monday. How will Piney Point Village do on its city hall flip? Stay tuned!
Most of the fun throughout this adventure, of course, has been eavesdropping on politicians trying to play the housing market:
Councilmember John Ebling asked the council to allocate about $3,500 for painting and minor repairs to make the house more attractive to potential buyers. Councilmember Susan Jones objected, saying that most buyers want to do their own painting.
Read more about: 77024, Buying and Selling, City Hall, Homes for Sale, Piney-Point-Village
September 17, 2007 – 7:36 am
Demolition begins at the Allen House Apartments, plus a few other structures around town. See our daily list of Houston destruction sites after the jump.
Continue Reading This Story >
Read more about: 77008, 77019, 77024, 77026, 77030, 77090, Daily Demolition Report, Demolitions
September 7, 2007 – 8:24 am
Houston’s demolition pace picks up, with new destruction sites at Westheimer and the Beltway. Read all the addresses in our daily report, after the jump.
Continue Reading This Story >
Read more about: 77007, 77008, 77019, 77024, 77042, 77055, 77056, 77063, Daily Demolition Report, Demolitions
September 5, 2007 – 7:10 am
A day of relative rest in the Houston demo world. Our daily list of where the work persists is after the jump.
Continue Reading This Story >
Read more about: 77020, 77024, 77093, Daily Demolition Report, Demolitions
August 30, 2007 – 6:54 am
A special all-residential edition of our daily list of demolition permits begins after the jump.
Continue Reading This Story >
Read more about: 77007, 77024, 77057, 77081, 77396, Daily Demolition Report, Demolitions
August 14, 2007 – 10:39 am
What happens when a Memorial mansion decorated with animal skins and pairs of chandeliers meets a designer with a . . . critical eye?
Two for dinner? This designer really likes the “two” theme. In the dining room, we have two matching tables, each with matching bowl, and of course, two matching chandeliers! I’m beginning to wonder if there was a 2 for 1 sale at the local lighting company? Oh and look, we have two matching Oriental horsemen on the mantle!!! I’m kind of sorry there aren’t two fireplaces!
Don’t miss the zebra-print (we hope it’s a print) rug on the grand circular entry stair. More design entertainment in Cote de Texas’s interior tour of this modest estate on two (and a half) acres in Hunters Creek Village, not far from the Houston Country Club. It’s on the market for $8.75 million.
Read more about: 77024, Homes for Sale, Hunters Creek Village, Interior-Design, Interiors, Memorial
A modernist classic gets its dust-conversion approval. That and other building-retirement news in today’s report, which begins after the jump.
Continue Reading This Story >
Read more about: 77004, 77006, 77007, 77008, 77019, 77024, 77030, 77061, Daily Demolition Report, Demolitions
A cold death for Flamingo Chill on Airline. That and more in our daily list of sunsetted structures, after the jump.
Continue Reading This Story >
Read more about: 77004, 77008, 77024, 77025, 77074, 77076, Daily Demolition Report, Demolitions
Today’s round of demolitions are all residences. Ten doomed houses, after the jump.
Continue Reading This Story >
Read more about: 77004, 77018, 77024, 77025, 77030, 77045, 77080, 77081, 77096, Daily Demolition Report, Demolitions
April 27, 2007 – 10:42 am
Piney Point Village’s City Hall is moving . . . to a party house! And a pretty swank one, too: It’s got five bedrooms plus a den and a game room; six full bathrooms; huge windows and vaulted ceilings; a large kitchen with Corian countertops, stainless-steel appliances, and a Sub-Zero refrigerator; a three-car garage and a storage shed; a circular driveway; a 60-foot-long granite swimming pool, an in-ground hot tub, and a giant rock waterfall. Plus, the master suite
is very large, with coffered ceilings, extra sitting room, atrium access, skylight and large master bath featuring his and hers sides/vanities, separate closet space, jetted tub with separate shower and separate water closets.
Bet that’ll be pretty exciting for the mayor, huh? “We won’t have to do a thing to it,” Mayor Carol Fox told the Memorial Examiner. And it only cost $1.53 million!
Why move to a residential neighborhood? That’s easy: City hall is getting booted from the strip center it was occupying, on San Felipe in Houston, because the center’s owners have decided they want to tear it down. And here’s a benefit of having city hall right in the neighborhood, Fox says: It’ll now be legal to hold elections and police court there. Wonder which lovely room they’ll choose.
Read more about: 77024, Buying and Selling, City Hall, Piney-Point-Village
