This is what Hermann Park says it would like to look like when it turns 100 next year: This drawing of Centennial Gardens from Chicago landscape architecture firm Hoerr Schaudt shows the blossoming of the current 15-acre Garden Center that’s between the museums and golf course along Hermann Dr. Looking forward to its centennial in 2014, the park conservancy has also recruited Peter Bohlin, the architect behind the Highland Village Apple Store, to design a new entrance:
All winter this Hermann Park high point has been fenced off while crews have worked on Miller Outdoor Theatre’s heavily used seating (and rolling-down) area to update drainage and irrigation systems, among other hill-improvement-type activities. The project, funded by the city, has a budget of almost $261,000. This photo shows a little patch of progress; though performances start back up in April, the theater warns you not to get your hopes up: the hill could remain closed through May.
Photo: Miller Outdoor Theatre
“Any biomedical educational institution gains considerable strength by being closely associated with TMC. There’s a much higher credibility and visibility factor. And as a bonus, students may be visited by Glenn McCarthy’s ghost.” [Chef, commenting on Headlines: Houston Club Shacking Up with Plaza Club; Galveston’s Port of Call Dreams]
“They didn’t have boat races. We did do waterski shows there for several years.” [gary, commenting on Comment of the Day: The Shamrock Hotel Shine and Fall]
“Wasn’t the greatest building, because Frank Lloyd Wright said so? The same guy who hated every skyscraper in New York City?
This was Houston’s most famous landmark before the Astrodome. It was what people around the country thought of when they thought of the city. The point of the Frank Lloyd Wright story should be that the nation’s most famous architect HAD to make a visit there and give his opinion, it was that renowned. It captured a whole era of the city’s history — its rollicking, mid-century, oil-rich extravagance — better than any other building.
But it made sense to tear it down because, gosh, it would have required renovating and updating. Oh, and the ceiling heights were low! With that reasoning, any historic building in the world would be torn down at some point.” [Mike, commenting on The Park Where Houston Architecture Critics Go To Sharpen Their Chops]
From Ben Koush’s new building-by-building history of the Texas Medical Center (which now apparently has more square footage than Downtown): “In 1991 the Gus S. and Lyndall F. Wortham Park was dedicated on part of the site of Shamrock Hotel. (The rest of the site is a giant parking lot.) It was designed by Philip Johnson’s ex-partner John Burgee and features water jets, columns that appear to be taken from a freeway overpass and vine covered pergolas. It makes a nice, very secluded place to take a nap during the afternoon since it is always deserted.” [OffCite; previously on Swamplot]
“That building may have looked good from the outside (from a distance; up close you could see the re-bar holding the granite slabs on) but it was WAY outdated on the inside. No way was it set up for a class of 100 students, which is what the School of Dentistry now enrolls every year.
I taught in a basement classroom there for 4 years. Between the complete lack of reliable electricity to all of the outlets and the jury-rigged data cables and conduits, it was a minor miracle we didn’t burn the place down or break someone’s neck during labs. And don’t get me started on the thermostats! Never knew if I was gonna need a sweater or a shower after class.” [Sunsets, commenting on M.D. Anderson Planning To Extract Dental Branch from Med Center]
The 1955 building Houston architects MacKie and Kamrath designed (along with several later additions) for the University of Texas Dental Branch will be removed from its home at the corner of MD Anderson Blvd. and Moursund in the Med Center, according to the Texas Historical Commission. The UT School of Dentistry abandoned the 5-story, granite-faced building earlier this year for a new 300,000-sq.-ft. facility in the new UT Health Science Center Research Park south of the Med Center proper (and OST) at 7500 Cambridge St. UT’s M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, which owns the Med Center site, hasn’t yet announced a schedule for the demolition.
Ivy creeping across the mostly unadorned facade of this Windermere home helps plant the 1950 contemporary into its leafy and landscaped setting. Interior updates over the years appear to have kept the home’s mid-century bones while adding some modern conveniences — and a whole lotta windows facing the large back yard. Listed a month ago at $619,000, the home in Southgate’s hinterlands west of Greenbriar Dr. is within walking distance of Rice Village and Roberts Elementary School — or just a short ambulance ride away from the Texas Medical Center.
UT’s M.D. Anderson Cancer Center plans to build this 8-ish story pavilion, called The Pavilion, in front of the Alkek hospital at the corner of Bertner and Bates streets in the Med Center — replacing the pavilion-like rotunda that stands there now. The new building will house the center’s interventional radiology department (on its third floor) as well as 11 new operating rooms. The 185,000-sq.-ft. structure, designed by Dallas’s HKS, includes 2 partial-height floors for maintenance above the operating rooms plus a mechanical floor at the top. Construction is expected to cost $102 million, and be complete by the end of 2015. An accompanying $96 million renovation of the adjacent Alkek hospital will extend into 2019.
Rendering: HKS, via M.D. Anderson
The all-day buffet line for Filipino dishes and Mongolian stir fry just west of the Med Center could be winding down. This standalone building at 2416 W. Holcombe, home to Gold Ribbon Bake Shop and Restaurant since the mid-nineties, has been listed for lease by Pipeline Realty. Located in the shadows of a recently completed storage facility, the property shares a back parking lot with an adjacent medical office. There are 48 parking spaces by day and another 40 after office hours. Interestingly, a sign on the door says the place is hiring, seeking new hires who speak English and Tagalog.
Photo: Pipeline Realty
Yesterday a few technical glitches got in the way of Swamplot’s plans to post videos showing the last moments of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center’s Houston Main Building, the iconic 18-story limestone-clad building at 1100 Holcombe Blvd. once known as the Prudential Tower, which was demolished over the weekend. But they’re here now. Enjoy!
Jarringly, the official video below tacks an animated version of M.D. Anderson’s “Making Cancer History” tagline onto the end of the well-documented urban rupture — allowing us to imagine that this violent implosion is merely the urban expression of the institution’s core cancer-eradicating mission. Cancer be gone! in 10 . . . 9 . . .
Comment of the Day: Where Torn-Up Streets Are Keeping the Kids Safe
“As a parent of students at Roberts Elementary, I both dislike and love the condition of Greenbriar. I hate it because it is awful for our cars. But I love it because it calms the traffic considerably and forces drivers to pay attention — we all fear the speeding that will occur when it is nicely reconstructed. We have been told that if Greenbriar makes it to the city list this year, we should expect the start of construction planning in 2017. Who knows if the current street will last until then!” [No History Remains, commenting on Headlines: More La Madeleines for Houston; Montrose’s Worst Potholes]