02/05/13 1:15pm

Seem familiar? This 1952 mod appeared in the HBO boob-job exposé Breast Men, starring David Schwimmer as Houston’s early-’60s boob pioneer Dr. Kevin Saunders. Or maybe that two-faced fireplace sparks your memory: Last July, the 4-bedroom, 3,558-sq.-ft. home was listed for sale at $1.1 million. (It was the one with the bomb shelter underneath the patio?) Well, in December it was sold for an even $1 million. And it showed up in today’s Daily Demolition Report.

Why not take one last peek, before it goes?

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01/24/13 4:45pm

Houston architect Wylie W. Vale passed away early this morning. He was 96. Vale’s career, according to photographer Ben Hill, who has documented his works, spanned from 1939 to 2001. Working in an array of styles, Vale played a substantial role in shaping the looks of River Oaks, Tanglewood, and Memorial. The home pictured above is in Katy.

Photos: Ben Hill

08/08/12 3:31pm

As mods go, this one in Tanglewood is just one of that neighborhood’s thinning pack of mid-century homes. What sets this property apart? Maybe the bomb shelter out back — and the property’s brush with Hollywood as a film set in Breast Men, the 1997 HBO David Schwimmer flick that finally gave Houston its due as the birthplace of the boob job industry. The mid-July listing of this property for $1.1 million calls the 60-year-old property on Sugar Hill Dr. a “wonderful building site” and leaves it at that. But preservation advocates at Houston Mod met with the home’s current, long-term owner and gleaned some tidbits to share about the home’s origins and features:

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05/04/12 10:54am

Silent sentries accent the brick colonnade and look over the “motor court” of this Lazy River listing in the Tanglewood area. Were the lions not of concrete, they might roam the home’s half-acre corner lot, which has grassy areas, a pool, an outdoor “summer kitchen” with dining pavilion, and an arbor.

Inside, a paneled library of near-collegiate proportions includes a second-floor balcony. Also: a wine cellar.

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08/01/11 8:11am

Only a few days after it sold, the 1961 Tanglewood home and bomb shelter on Brown Saddle St. featured on Swamplot back in January has been put back on the market. Only this time, the listing doesn’t mention the shelter or the abandoned pipeline slicing through a portion of the property — or really anything about the building itself. No more interior pics, either. The low-slung modern structure is now tagged as “not liveable” and won’t be shown — though the agent does fess up to having a key. The asking price? Only $550K more than what the property sold for earlier in the week, when the home and its interior were touted as sales features. At 38,263 sq. ft. (that’s actually been marked down a few thousand sq. ft. from the earlier sale), the lot is advertised as the biggest in Tanglewood.

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01/07/11 11:01am

What’s the safety of your family worth, anyway? Is $2,052,218 really too high a price to pay for the security of knowing that when the revolution/apocalypse/nuclear winter/plague of locusts/hurricane/historic designation comes, your loved ones could be comfortably ensconced in their very own bomb shelter? And look! A trained school of security fish stand guard by the shelter’s entrance — in their very own BB-proof booth. Plus, right next door, there’s a $5 million home!

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10/06/10 2:03pm

COMMENT OF THE DAY: DUMPSTER MODERN “This one looked like the love child of Bushwood Country Club and the Houston Junior League building on the inside, but remove the Boise State football field, consign grandma’s victorian chandelier collection, remove grandpa’s smoke infested wood paneling and replace with a mix of ranch-modern interior and 21st century awesome…[and] this place would rock.” [jg, commenting on Daily Demolition Report: Ocee What’s No Longer There] Photo: HAR

05/14/10 10:20am

THANK YOU FOR LEAVING YOUR PLACE FOR THE BANK IN SUCH GOOD CONDITION “We mowed the lawn this weekend, so we’re giving it to them in nice shape.” — Dougal Cameron of Cameron Management, leader of an investment group that delivered the freshly LEED-certified and entirely vacant 12-story 2000 St. James Place office building just south of Tanglewood to Wachovia Bank (now a part of Wells Fargo) in a sparsely attended foreclosure ceremony earlier this month. Minute Maid moved out of the building in February 2009 — about a year and a half after Cameron’s investment group bought it; the building has had no tenants since then. [Houston Business Journal]

02/01/10 12:42pm

Having trouble keeping track of all the homes, condos, and apartments financier, philanthropist, and accused Ponzi schemer Robert Allen Stanford had set up for his relations in Houston? With all the recent news reports, following it all can get confusing.

We hadn’t encountered a comprehensive account from local media coverage. But we hadn’t checked the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, either. It turns out that reporter Patsy R. Brumfield — who is currently in the throes of withdrawal from a 6-year-long Nexium habit — had put together this quick survey of the sites of Stanford’s Houston-area comings and goings for the Tupelo, Mississippi, paper last August:

[Stanford] and his wife, Susan, now estranged, lived in the upscale Tanglewood area at 5476 Holly Springs Drive. The Spanish-style home, with red-tile roof and white stucco exterior, looks comfortable but not particularly impressive among a neighborhood of near-mansions.

His fiancée’, Andrea Stoelker, and Stanford maintained a home in the multi-storied Museum Tower at 4899 Montrose Blvd. Stoelker still lives in No. 1304 while a federal court document says Stanford’s son and daughter, Ross and Allena Stanford, and their mother, Louise Sage, who moved to Houston from Dallas, are living in the same apartment building in No. 1905.

Another reason for Stanford to ride those Museum Tower elevators:

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05/14/09 10:31am

Swamplot readers have a few things to say about Greenwood King’s latest fancy-neighborhood market report, which came out yesterday! Our regular GK watcher notes that the separate breakdowns for new construction and existing home sales introduced in last month’s edition have been abandoned. Still:

The news is relatively bad. Sales volumes are down sharply all over town. 17% more high end listings than last year . . . River Oaks, Tanglewood, Boulevard Oaks, and Memorial Close In are all over 12 months of inventory. . . .

The 17% higher inventory is reflective of a market of motivated sellers. By definition, a high end homeowner should not “have to” sell unless there has been a life change (divorce, death, job interruption). Everyone knows the housing market is weak in 2009, so…. the only class of sellers on the market are those having cash flow problems or those who have to sell due to a life change. There are almost no trade up sellers right now.

Memorial has 19.1 months of inventory

. . . as big $3-5 million white elephants sit there waiting for the landscapers to come and cut the lawn for the week. It takes a good $20,000 a month to live in one of those monsters. I guess the supply of willing millionaires just isn’t going to match the number of mega mansions. It will take some time, but they will soon move onto bank balance sheets and then to the auction block.

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04/02/09 4:07pm

COMMENT OF THE DAY: DRIVING THE GENTLE HILLS OF TANGLEWOOD “. . . I think the layout of the streets can have a significant effect on how the neighbors interact. Did you know Tanglewood streets were laid out the way they are with several curving to give the feel of inclines where there were none lending it to a more genteel feeling as opposed to the straight street grid which is a bit cold. With those curvy streets, they still have a pretty straight street grid, but with more gentleness. While cul de sacs may create community within that cul de sac, I think it cuts the few houses on it off from the rest of the streets and therefore offers fewer opportunities for casual social interaction and in effect creates an us against them. Of course these are all generalizations, but developers deal in generalizations anyway.” [EMME, commenting on Welcome to Bizarro Heights. What Are You Drinking?]

03/19/09 11:48pm

Hey, we have another Rice Design Alliance membership to give away!

Your guesses for this week’s Neighborhood Guessing Game were: Rice Military, the East End of Galveston, Camp Logan, Oak Estates, The Woodlands, Avalon Place, “the area between Shepherd & Montrose and 59 to Milford or North,” Southampton, “west of Chimney Rock to around Voss, between Woodway and Westheimer,” West Lane Place, Nantucket, Southside Place, “Indian Trail/Indian Circle/Tecumseh off Chimney Rock btw Woodway and Memorial,” along the “divorcee belt” between Beltway 8 and 610 “crossed by the likes of Westheimer, Woodway, Richmond, Bissonnet et al.,” the divorcee belt north of Westheimer and east of Voss, “in the area of the Houstonian off of Memorial, closer to San Felipe-Sage/Post Oak,” Midlane at San Felipe, near Bering, “past the Galleria heading towards Voss,” and West University. Plus two each for the Heights, Afton Oaks, and Bellaire. All very sharp!

The winner of a one-year RDA individual membership — donated by the Rice Design Alliance — is Rachel, for this entry:

This home is in the area of the Houstonian off of Memorial, closer to San Felipe-Sage/Post Oak. The kitchen dates it to around 2001 and the small size makes me think the lot is not especially large. It looks to me like they had a decorator come in and all of the built in book shelves suggests a higher end builder.

Congratulations, Rachel! Deserving of an extremely honorable mention this week is Harold Mandell, who stepped out of a shadowy corner of Montrose to deliver two classic NGG entries — first, introducing the Great West Houston Divorcée Belt:

Long time lurker, 1st time player–impelled to jump in because I really want the prize. And because you guys are so off the mark on this one.
No man doth live in this house– and the baby in the baby’s room is a guest baby. This home is found in the great divorcee belt– one of those late ’80’s or newer townhomes found west of Chimney Rock to around Voss, between Woodway and Westheimer. The stairwell and the upstairs ceiling tell all.

. . . and next, in response to a broader definition of the belt, tightening it in a wide-hipped circle around the target:

Bobby Hadley, you see the Great West Houston Divorcee Belt right on– but remember, there’s also the divorcee demographic that arrived from comfortable circumstances in say Briargrove, or even Memorial. Comfortable until there comes a time when “she’d rather be homeless than be at home with him”. Then she finds herself in downsized quarters– but at last she can decorate it just like she wants it. I say this place is definitely north of Westheimer, and except for Hammersmith I would say east of Voss.

So, what’s the real deal with this place?

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01/12/09 1:10pm

HOUSTON APARTMENTS: MORE VALUE FOR YOUR RUPEE A quick back-of-the-air-mail-envelope real estate comparison of greater Tanglewood and Colaba, a commercial district in South Mumbai: “My friends house was about 2 blocks away from Nariman house – the sight of the infamous siege on the Jewish community on 26/11. For a 600 sq ft 1 bedroom hall kitchen, my friend and his room mates were coughing up Rs 45,000 /- a month. My friend corrected me that the real rent is actually Rs 50,000 / month but he is getting a discount because of some renovation going on in the building. Judging by the fortune he paid for the apartment, you would imagine it to be an ocean facing villa with modern amenities like swimming pool, gym and manicured garderns. Horror behold! His apartment was actually in a very busy market area, in a dilapidated building which was probably more than 40 years old and might come down any minute. Once inside his compact apartment, I immediately started comparing this with my $700/ month (Rs 34,000 month), 800 sq ft 1 BHK in Houston in a very wealthy neighborhood. If Senior Bush could live a mile away from my apartment, I am sure my neighborhood must be really good! So even if I earn in rupees, it is much easier for me to afford a place in Houston than in Mumbai!!” [Continued Unnoticed]

12/11/08 7:27pm

We’ve had a pretty good run of 35 Neighborhood Guessing Games. So a train wreck like this week’s contest was probably overdue.

At least 6 participants in this round already knew the property posted on Tuesday. Sadly, only one bothered to spice up the game by writing in with the answer, then attempting to deceive the other players with wacky but mildly credible guesses. Most everyone stuck by the rules, but those rules will probably need to see some adjustments (beginning next year) to prevent the NGG from turning into a contest where players compete to guess at things they already know.

Here’s where those of you who were actually guessing thought this colorful pad might be: Meyerland, Tanglewood, the edge of River Oaks, Southampton, Mandell Place, Montrose, the Medical Center, the near Northside near Patton and Main, on Blossom near Shepherd, the Memorial Villages, “somewhere near the Galleria,” Rivercrest, Southgate, Rice Military, Camp Logan, Memorial near Westcott, “that modernish enclave of new houses north of Richmond and west of Kirby,” “just west or southwest of Highland Village shopping center,” or off Woodway near Buffalo Bayou.

The winner this week was John, who managed to stretch out his quick guess into this complete sentence:

My guess is, of all places, Tanglewood.

A few of the many (later) Tanglewood entries:

I think it is that hideous house that is painted school bus yellow just off the boulevard that was built maybe 10 years ago.

this has to be that horrible house in tanglewood near chimney rock.

This has to be that bright yellow, Legorreta wannabe house just east of Chimney Rock.

It reminds me of the hotel Pierce Bronsan stayed at in Matador. All that purple, pink and yellow sure is festive.

Special honors go to this week’s double-agent, Richard, who unleashed some mad FUD-inducing skillz:

The owners of this paean to contemporary high-class-Mexican architecture are probably maxing out their platinum American Express cards at the Louis Vuitton shop at the Galleria. The scale and colors remind me of the Camino Real Hotel in Mexico City, but if they want to sell this house in Rivercrest, they’re going to have to make a trip to Home Depot for some taupe and tan colored paint. This second-home for Mexican immigrants of the non-gardening-or-custodial variety is in Rivercrest, probably even north of Briar Forest on Crestbend. . . .

In fact, after reviewing a previous Swamplot headline, may I venture to guess it’s on the corner of Crestbend and Enchilada??

So what’s the scoop?

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