January 30, 2008 – 12:35 pm
Not all recipients of the 2008 GHPA Good Brick Awards will be able to attend this Friday’s historic-preservation awards banquet at the River Oaks Country Club, but some will have better excuses than others. Ken Rice, who along with Sarah Goodpastor will receive an award for the renovation of a 1930 brick duplex at the corner of Kipling and Dunlavy, won’t be able to make it because he’s currently serving a 27-month sentence in federal prison for securities fraud.
Yes, that’s former Enron Broadband CEO and architecture patron Kenneth Rice, who already helped lessen his sentence by testifying against other Enron executives in two separate trials after his 2003 guilty plea. Rice agreed to forfeit more than $13.7 million worth of cash investments, real estate, cars, and jewelry as part of his plea agreement. His sentence included a $50,000 fine.
Rice, 48, could end up serving less than half of his prison term, though.
His lawyers say he hopes to enter a drug and alcohol treatment program available to nonviolent federal inmates that, if completed, could shave up to a year from his term. In addition, federal inmates can reduce their prison time by 15 percent with good behavior. With those two combined, Rice could get out of prison in 11 months.
After the jump, details and photos of a project Rice is likely hoping will count towards that good-behavior credit.
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Read more about: 77006, Crime, Duplexes, Enron, Historic Preservation, Home Design, Houston Architects, Interiors, Renovation, Winlow Place
January 29, 2008 – 11:15 am
A reader reports that the Frame House, a fifties-Modern classic tucked off Memorial Dr., is up for sale for a cool $3 million. Designed by Houston architect Harwood Taylor in 1960, this is about as close to a Case Study House as Houston ever got — and it perches just about as close to Buffalo Bayou as you’d ever want a home to get. Its recent restoration from a mid-eighties whitewashing earned the current owner, his architects, and builder a local preservation award.
If you’re a fan of this kind of Modness, the best news of all is that you don’t have to pay to play: An open house is scheduled for the afternoon of Sunday, February 17th. If you’re not a fan, you can visit and imagine how it would all look with crown moulding and a nice, traditional pitched roof.
After the jump, a few more details about the home, plus a demonstration of the real value real estate agents can bring to a fine listing like this.
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Read more about: 77024, Buffalo Bayou, Historic Preservation, Home Design, Homes for Sale, Houston Architects, Interiors, Memorial, Modern Design, Open Houses, Real Estate Marketing, Renovations, Restorations
November 7, 2007 – 5:31 pm
A 1955 River Oaks “country house” designed by John Staub appears on MLS just days before architectural historian Stephen Fox’s book on the Houston architect appears in bookstores. Mere coincidence? Or brilliant upper-end home-marketing technique?
There’s a slight price difference between the two: The Country Houses of John F. Staub lists for $75, though Amazon.com whacks 37 percent off of that. No telling if the sellers will accept a similar discount off the $7.495 million asking price of 3740 Willowick.
The house overlooks Buffalo Bayou and features four fireplaces, three bedrooms, and six full and one half baths — all in a single story. Yes, it looks like some ranch-house flavor got mixed in here. There’s a garden loggia and lots of trees, plus a three-car attached garage. It’s a 5,532-square-foot home on a quarter-acre lot.
The book is 408 pages long and comes in hardcover. It features photographs by Richard Cheek, and will take up just three-quarters of a square foot on your coffee table.
After the jump: the not-so-ranchy interiors.
Of the house.
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Read more about: 77019, Books, Buffalo Bayou, Buying and Selling, Home Design, Homes for Sale, Houston Architects, Interiors, John Staub, Ranch-Houses, Real Estate Marketing, River Oaks
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.
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Read more about: 77024, Buffalo Bayou, Historic Preservation, Home Design, Houston Architects, Interiors, Memorial, Modern Design, Renovations, Restorations
September 4, 2007 – 10:13 am
From the design mags to demolition . . . in less than ten years! Remember the modern house with the curious metal proboscis off Bissonnet, near the Museum of Fine Arts? It won a couple of design awards a few years back from the American Institute of Architects, but if the judges had realized it was temporary housing it probably would have swept that category.
A week ago 1 Waverly Ct. appeared quietly in our demolition report, but it became a smashing success just a few days later. It was built in 1999.
After the jump, what lurked behind the proboscis: photos of this record-shattering short-timer from the architects’ website.
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Read more about: 77005, Construction Materials, Demolitions, Home Design, Houston Architects, Museum-District
