“I am thankful for Ben’s research and for putting me in touch with Robert who had the right buyer for my Dad’s house. I have always loved this house and have great memories here. It’s where I learned to appreciate unique architecture. I now live in NYC.
I will have an open house on June 1st 10a to 4p if anyone would like to stop by, say hello — see the ‘before’ and the Texas shaped hot-tub my dad made in the back before it probably goes. If you are allergic to dust, wear a mask.
PS — the boat is gone. long story.” [laura kellner, commenting on The Century Built Home in Garden Oaks That Sold in About an Hour]
Read more about: 77018, Buying and Selling, Comments, Garden Oaks, Modern Design, Open Houses
This is the route the Art Guys say they will be taking tomorrow morning when they stage the 5th of the yearlong series of monthly celebratory stunts they’re calling “12 Events:” Titling this one “A Length of String,” Jack Massing and Michael Galbreth will unwind a spool of thread they’ve had sitting around since 1983 while walking along White Oak Bayou between W. Tidwell and T.C. Jester, just north of the Loop, and then they’ll turn around . . . and wind it back up. Last month, you’ll remember, they donned tuxedos and conducted the sounds of the Ship Channel from the Santa Anna Capture Site in Pasadena. [Art Guys; previously on Swamplot] Map: Art Guys
Read more about: 77091, Art, Art Guys, Bayous and Waterways, Garden Oaks, Oak-Forest, Performances, White Oak Bayou
Here’s the third of 4 houses designed by not-so-famous Houston architect Allen R. Williams in the 1940s and fifties, dubbed “Century Built” homes. If the name was intended to indicate how long the concrete-block homes were all supposed to last, the record isn’t so stellar: The one off Campbell Rd. was torn down some time ago. But the others are doing fine: One in Idylwood was snatched up by an architect a few years ago, and another in Country Club Place has served as a showcase for the renovation work of its current owner, architect Ben Koush.
But this unrenovated Century Built home at 851 W. 43rd St., in the middle of Garden Oaks, didn’t last so long, either: Real estate agent Robert Searcy tells Swamplot he had it locked up in a contract very quickly earlier this week, after he made a few phone calls. Not to a builder — the sellers didn’t want the place to be torn down — but reportedly to a serial renovator interested in Midcentury modern design.
Continue Reading This Story >
Read more about: 77018, Buying and Selling, Garden Oaks, Houston Architects, Modern Design, Real Estate Marketing
January 30, 2013 – 4:07 pm
Shadow-hued through and through, an updated Garden Oaks home has a floor plan that’s a bit like a slice of Neapolitan ice cream. Room functions — sleeping quarters, living areas, and food-related spaces — stripe the home in thirds. Compact but fully loaded, the property listed earlier this week at an even $249,000. It last sold in 2009, for $198,500.
Continue Reading This Story >
Read more about: 77018, Garden Oaks, Homes for Sale, Interiors, Renovations
It isn’t calling itself a bar, but the website for a new craft-beer retail outlet planned for the former site of Kaboom Books next to the Antidote coffee shop on Studewood says it’ll offer “fresh pours” of draft beer and “growlers to go.” The Twitter account for Premium Draught at 733 Studewood announced yesterday that its construction permit has already been approved.
Meanwhile, the owners of Liberty Station on Washington Ave plan to open the craft-beer-focused Cottonwood Bar in the building shown above on Shepherd at 34th St., just north of Pink’s Pizza, according to the brand-new establishment’s Twitter feed — “adding everything we wanted to do at Liberty Station but didn’t have room . . . kitchen, more taps.”
Photo: Cottonwood Bar
Read more about: 77007, 77018, Bars, Garden Oaks, Houston Heights, Nightlife, Proposed Developments, Retail
To all of you who’ve been emailing, tweeting, and speculating about H-E-B buying the Sears shopping center at 4000 N. Shepherd at the edge of Garden Oaks and turning it into a Central Market: Interesting idea. But here’s your rumorkiller: Houston division prez Scott McClelland tells Swamplot, “H-E-B has not looked at this location and we’ve had no discussions about it to date.” Photo: City-Data
Read more about: 77018, Garden Oaks, Grocery Stores, Retail
Taken down to its studs: This home’s renovation project is in the works on a quarter-acre corner lot backing up to the feeder road of the North Loop at Yale St. That’s in Garden Oaks, or so says the neighborhood signage on the property’s easement.
Listed last week at $350,000, the future version of this 1950-built cottage will have new siding, windows, plumbing, hardwood and stone floors, custom cabinetry, and granite counter tops. The kitchen is already displaying the bones of its new, barrel-vaulted ceiling:
Continue Reading This Story >
Read more about: 77018, Garden Oaks, Homes for Sale, Renovations
Harris County Housing Authority interim CEO Tom McCasland takes a visitor from Portland along the path of the bike trail he hopes will soon connect Downtown Houston seamlessly to the city’s northwestern suburbs. From Georgia’s Market downtown they head out the MKT Trail into the Heights, which dead ends near the Shepherd-Durham overpasses. “The lot turned into a truck path, which ended at a decrepit railroad bridge. We took a sharp right down a singletrack path along the edge of the bayou far below us,” writes Elly Blue, who’s been touring U.S. cities to assess their bikeability. McCasland, an advocate for expanding Houston bikeways, tells the Houston Press‘s John Nova Lomax that “part of the city’s latest grand biking plan is to dynamite [that burned-out bridge] and rebuild it as a bike/pedestrian thoroughfare. The trail will then continue along White Oak Bayou’s banks and connect with the existing trail that begins at West 11th and TC Jester and heads north through Timbergrove, Garden Oaks, Oak Forest and all the way up to Acres Homes.”
Continue Reading This Story >
Read more about: Acres Homes, Bicycles, Downtown, Garden Oaks, Oak-Forest, Proposed Developments, Rails to Trails, Timbergrove Manor, Trails, White Oak Bayou
A coverless manhole just west of Shepherd on 34th St. in Garden Oaks has taken to Twitter to broadcast its plight. “I am a gaping hole in the city’s underbelly,” declares Gringo Trap 34, between drooling appreciations of photos of attractive manhole covers posted on other Twitter streams. By the hole’s third-ever tweet, yesterday, it had snared a response from Mayor Parker, who commiserated over problems caused by copper thieves. (“Like roaches, they mess up more than they take,” quipped the mayor.) Shout-outs to various reporters followed. But as of Friday afternoon, the square hole under the constable sign is still uncovered, and Gringo Trap 34 has posted its latest “glamor shot.” “I may be pretty,” reads the latest report, “but that doesn’t mean I won’t tear your ACL.” [Twitter] Update, 9:13 pm: The Gringo Trap 34 account appears to have been suspended, but its tweets live on in this Chronicle story. Photo: Gringo Trap 34
Read more about: 77018, Garden Oaks, Hazards, Streetscapes
A studio, spa, and amped-up patio share a 10,000-sq.-ft. lot in Garden Oaks with this 2-or-3-bedroom house of 1,800 sq. ft. The master bedroom’s open-ended double shower features hot tub access and views of — and from — the great outdoors. Rooms overlooking the back yard have lots of windows, too. The days of curtain-free living here may be numbered, however. A listing photo (at top) shows something under construction rising over the fence, its neighborly vantage point yet to be determined.
Continue Reading This Story >
Read more about: 77018, Garden Oaks, Home Design, Homes for Sale, Interiors
October 11, 2011 – 2:36 pm
The next contender for the endcap of the Modern strip center at the corner of North Shepherd Dr. and 34th St. refashioned last year from the longtime home of Garden Oaks’ Binswanger Glass Co. is almost in. Taking over from the stalled out Octane Coffee and Wine Lounge will be the Shepherd Park Draught House — a pub featuring a full menu and an interior festooned with punk, pop, and rock memorabilia. Its owner: Ken Bridge of Delicious Concepts, the same company behind Heights restaurants Lola, Dragon Bowl, and (most notably) Pink’s Pizza, which has a convenient location next door. Expected opening date: “very soon.”
Continue Reading This Story >
Read more about: 77018, Bars, Garden Oaks, Openings and Closings, Restaurants, Strip Centers
Comment of the Day Runner-Up: Y’all Come By Now, Y’hear?
“I am thankful for Ben’s research and for putting me in touch with Robert who had the right buyer for my Dad’s house. I have always loved this house and have great memories here. It’s where I learned to appreciate unique architecture. I now live in NYC.
I will have an open house on June 1st 10a to 4p if anyone would like to stop by, say hello — see the ‘before’ and the Texas shaped hot-tub my dad made in the back before it probably goes. If you are allergic to dust, wear a mask.
PS — the boat is gone. long story.” [laura kellner, commenting on The Century Built Home in Garden Oaks That Sold in About an Hour]