No one knows yet how it started, Friday’s 5-alarm fire that took out the Southwest Inn and caused the death of 4 Houston firefighters working to put it out — and the hospitalization of 14 others. The investigation, says HFD spokesperson Ruy Lozano, will take time. Meanwhile, much of the attention has shifted to the Sharpstown motel’s rather colorful history.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: CHEAPER, CLOSE-IN “I would just add to what Cody said. You can avoid traffic AND get a big house and lawn here in Houston. You just need to set aside your prejudices about certain neighborhoods. We’ve been living in the Brays Oaks area, formerly known as Fondren Southwest, since 2007, and it’s wonderful. Houses prices are on-par with far-flung suburbs like Jersey Village and Spring; far less than Inside the Loop. Barring any major accidents we can get from our house to the Museum District in less than 25 minutes; the Medical Center in under 20. My commute to work only takes me one exit on the Southwest Freeway. I take a certain satisfaction and watching all the people from Sugar Land sit in traffic, knowing that they spent more and got less house than we did. (Crime issues here are overblown, by the way – the result of sensationalized local news reports. The public schools are lousy, but we have some great private schools.)” [ZAW, commenting on Comment of the Day: First We Crowd]
Smile and step carefully. No fewer than 16 security cameras are installed in this battened-down Braeburn Acres property, a 2007 custom design by Cameron Architects. It’s a big, big stucco-over-concrete-block house — more than 10,000 sq. ft. — with 50 stone columns supporting a double-decker carousel of arches and tile-topped rotundas. The cleared 1.2-acre lot includes a pool-in-progress and very little landscaping (other than lawn). Maybe that explains why a cartoony rendering (at top) is employed as the listing’s featured photo.
Last fall, the restoration-minded owner of this stretched-out 1956 Mod by architect Lucian Hood in Braeburn Valley told Swamplot he was fixing to sell his property. Now, having finished reviving the redwood exterior from beneath the paint that covered it up and sprucing up the brick and ledge stone walls, Jason Jones reports his 5-year project is ready for its closeup, just listed, and now asking $365,000. The home is located on a big corner lot across from Braeburn Country Club greens — and next to Maison DeVille, a Mansard-roofed apartment complex from 1962, later converted to condos.
Never lived in. Never finished, actually, since its start in 2004 by the owner’s son, a builder. An update posted last week to the property listing says “an unfortunate automobile accident prevented completion.”
As is, the stucco structure on 1.2 acres in Braeburn Acres has 2 silo-shaped wings. One contains a room 50 ft. in diameter intended to hold the living, dining, and kitchen areas. Above the center of that combo space is a skylight within a dome that rises 18 ft.
ST. AGNES PICKS UP DROPPED SUIT 
The lawsuit the Academy of St. Agnes filed and then dropped last month against the city, the TABC, and the owners of a nightclub planning to open in the former Finger Furniture space at PlazAmericas is back on again, Purva Patel reports. The suit is an attempt to prevent the planned club, El Corral, from receiving a liquor license. A year ago, the private girls school bought the 18.7-acre former Gillman auto dealership at the corner of Bellaire Blvd. and Fondren, across the street from the former Sharpstown Mall, with plans to turn the property into an athletic campus. [Prime Property; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Candace Garcia
This Lucian Hood-designed Midcentury Mod across the street from the Braeburn Country Club in Braeburn Valley hasn’t exactly been listed for sale anywhere yet — well okay, the owner has shown it off on HAIF. But Jason Jones says he’d be willing to part with it for, oh, $298,000. After he finishes patching and painting and getting it all ready for sale, that is. Over the last 5 years, Jones says, he’s done a bit of foundation work and put in a new 3-phase AC system and a new roof, but the home is still sporting the same 3 bedrooms and 2 baths it started out with in 1956.
ST. AGNES DROPS SUIT St. Agnes Academy has officially ended its lawsuit meant to prevent a nightclub called El Corral — planned for the former Finger Furniture store in PlazAmericas — from receiving a liquor license. The suit was filed last Friday against the nightclub’s owners, the city of Houston, and the TABC. A spokesperson for the all-girls private school, which is building an athletic facility across Bellaire Blvd. from the former Sharpstown Mall, tells Swamplot “any future plans regarding the suit are to be determined,” but offered no further comments. [Previously on Swamplot]
St. Agnes Academy has already begun constructing an athletic complex on the site of the former Gillman Auto dealership at the corner of Bellaire and Fondren in Sharpstown. The 18.7-acre property, which it bought last fall, will have 3 athletic fields, 2 softball diamonds, 8 tennis courts, plus weight rooms, conference rooms, and meeting rooms. But administrators of the all-girls private school aren’t too happy with a development planned across the street in PlazAmericas, the former Sharpstown Mall. Last Friday, the school filed suit to prevent a nightclub from opening in the mall’s former Finger Furniture store.
“For the price of a mid-priced Lexus,” notes a reader, “you too can have your very own possibly William Floyd designed MCM in Robindell, Swamplot’s 2009 Most Under Appreciated Neighborhood.” That would be this 3-bedroom, 1-bath, but . . . uh, high-mileage foreclosure on the corner of Bob White and Grape St., which just came onto the market earlier this week. Really, did William Floyd design this place? “It seems like a reasonable guess,” says our informant, who notes the 1960 house “only kinda looks like a 1/4 scale model of McNamara Elementary School around the corner.” Sure, all those modern buildings look alike:
“Wanna play?” asks the reader who clued Swamplot in to the nonstop . . . uh, doll party going on at this house in Braeburn Valley.
Why, yes, you’re invited! Won’t you stop by for a visit?
COMMENT OF THE DAY: TAKE IT FROM SOMEONE WHO’S BEEN THERE 
“That’s too bad; this home was quite the beautiful antique. Just the other day I broke into the backyard shed and spent the night in there, along with a pile of scrap metal… It smelled very old.” [Cornelius Rostiger, commenting on Daily Demolition Report: Whacking Wateka]
