06/22/11 6:08pm

It’s certainly not the first aircraft to show up in a Google Maps satellite view, but this Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 found lounging on Broken Bough St. just east of Gessner may be the first to be found through a real estate listing. A reader came across a portion of the airplane image in the HAR map view of this 1961 Memorial Forest Ranch listed for sale one street over. The home features 4 bedrooms, 2 baths, a den with fireplace and backyard view, and is conveniently located on the flight path to Hobby Airport.

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03/04/10 11:49pm

So many pretty close guesses in this week’s game, but we’re awarding the prize to the player who came the closest of all. Flake, congratulations! You’ve just won a one-year individual membership in the NGG’s longtime sponsor, the Rice Design Alliance!

Is this place really (as commenter Phil put it) the “MOST. INNOCUOUS. HOME. EVER.”?

Have a look and judge for yourself. There’s no harm in that.

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04/03/08 1:23pm

House on Pine Rock, Houston

House on Beauregard, Houston

Having finished with the Memorial Villages, Robert Boyd’s latest bikeride documentary takes us through the neighborhoods lining Gessner, south of I-10:

The houses here were built mostly between 1959 and 1965. The lots tend to be small compared to those in the Villages (just east of these subdivisions). In fact, if you go immediately south or west, the lots and the houses tend to be larger. This is where Memorial starts to become the more familiar kind of Houston suburb–similar houses on same-sized lots, with developers reusing floor-plans and exterior designs.

As usual, Boyd is on the lookout for anything unusual:

I had a Steve Reich album on my IPod as I rode (Sextet, Piano Phase, and Eight Lines played by the London Steve Reich Ensemble–I recommend it highly), and it occurred to me that a neighborhood like this is like a Steve Reich piece, where there is a comfortable, rhythmic sameness with tiny changes as you go along. The tiny changes wouldn’t have even caught my eye while riding through the much more heterogeneous Memorial Villages, but here they stand out.

After the jump: A few more pix of Boyd’s West Memorial picks!

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