COMMENT OF THE DAY: PUSHING DAISIES “The Greenbriar house is on a 11,500 sq ft lot just a stones throw from the Med Center. I bet the new construction will be something modest, leaving most of the grounds for a beautiful garden.” [Old school, commenting on Daily Demolition Report: All Together Now]
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Tag: Texas Medical Center
Note: Linbeck has posted a response, which we’ve now included at the bottom of this story.
If everything goes well, the giant ranch-scene mural by artist Peter Hurd that’s stood in the lobby of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center’s Houston Main Building at 1100 Holcombe in the Medical Center since the structure was built as a Prudential Life Insurance HQ in 1952 will likely qualify as the largest fresco painting ever moved successfully to a new location. A donor is paying more than half a million dollars for the curved 16-by-46-ft. wall painting, appraised for more than $4 million, to be dismantled, preserved, and transferred eventually to a new home in a public library in Artesia, New Mexico, where the artist once had a studio. But at this point it’s not entirely clear that the move will go well, because Linbeck, the contractor hired by the Texas Medical Center institution to manage the enterprise, has fired the mural-conservation consultant who’s been working on the job for more than a year, only days before a looming deadline: the handing over of the famous 18-story building the painting occupies to a demolition contractor.
To move the mural, in January 2010 Linbeck hired Nathan Zakheim Associates, an art conservation firm from California, to develop a complex multi-stage process that included painting the back of the structure with resin and fiberglass and attaching it to massive trusses. Last month, the building’s entrance canopy was demolished to allow enough room for the painting’s exit. The mural was originally scheduled to be out the door before February 11th of this year. But efforts to meet that deadline were stymied by an almost two-and-half-month delay — which one source blames on the engineering firm hired by Linbeck — in the fabrication of the two 9,000-lb. curved steel trusses required for the job. After the trusses were finally delivered on January 10th, the conservator submitted a revised proposal that pushed the move-out date into the first week of March. Linbeck fired Zakheim from the job on January 20th.
“When you fire your conservator and bump up the schedule, it doesn’t mean it’s because you want to do the job right,” a source complains to Swamplot, expressing fears Linbeck will meet its original deadline for getting the mural out of the building — and damage or destroy it in the process. Linbeck would have had to pay additional fees to the conservator in order to keep him on, according to the source, and Linbeck’s contract with M.D. Anderson stipulates financial penalties for construction delays. “They re-read the contract, and the contract does not prohibit them from taking the mural out in crumbled pieces,” explains the source.
The mural was painted to illustrate Prudential Life Insurance’s motto at the time: “The Future Belongs to Those Who Prepare For It.” Linbeck has reportedly expressed confidence to M.D. Anderson and the donor that the company can manage the move successfully without the assistance of the conservator. But to do that, the company will have to overcome a couple of significant obstacles:
One of the things UT’s M.D. Anderson Cancer Center will be doing with that $150 million gift the president of the United Arab Emirates is handing over: Constructing a new 600,000 sq.-ft. therapy building, named after the donor’s dad: the Zayed bin Sultan al Nahyan Building for Personalized Cancer Care at MD Anderson. But where in the Med Center will they fit it? It won’t be replacing M.D. Anderson’s Houston Main Building, the former Prudential Life Insurance Tower already being hacked away at, and which the medical institution reportedly plans to demolish within weeks — a new treatment facility of some sort has been planned for that site for almost 9 years. The new building funded by the Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan Charity Foundation will land instead on a different demo site: the southeast corner of Moursund St. and M.D. Anderson Blvd., a 5-acre lot which until last year was the home of the UT Health Science Center’s Mental Science Institute. M.D. Anderson bought the 2-story concrete-and-brick building at 1300 Moursund from its sister institution, then had it torn down over the summer, identifying the land at the time only as a location for “future expansion.”
A couple more photos of that site, from last year’s demo:
Responding to Swamplot’s request last week for photos of the former Prudential Life Insurance Tower the University of Texas’s M.D. Anderson Cancer Center is getting ready to demolish, architect Karen Lantz sends in a few photos she took while on a mod-gawking expedition in September 2003. Last week the medical institution began knocking down the porte-cochere at the building’s Holcombe St. entrance — to allow workers to remove one of the few items being preserved from the building: a mural in the building’s lobby painted by Peter Hurd in 1952. Lantz, who’s a bit of a demolition expert herself (her piece-by-piece dismantling of a home in Ranch Estates was awarded Swamplot’s Best Teardown Award in 2009), includes a few views of the grand entrance to Houston’s first-ever corporate campus:
The only part of M.D. Anderson’s Houston Main Building at 1100 Holcombe Blvd. being demolished today is a “coach canopy” outside the structure, cancer center spokesperson Laura Sussman tells Swamplot. Removal of the canopy will allow workers to extract a large mural from inside the space before the building is demolished. Sussman couldn’t confirm when demolition of the 18-story former Prudential Life Insurance Building would take place, but a source tells Swamplot it’s been scheduled for the middle of February. Mournful modernists, you have a few more weeks to get the building’s obituary in order.
Update, 5:14 p.m.: Today’s demo is just of an exterior canopy. But the entire building will likely be demolished next month.
The Rice Design Alliance is reporting that M.D. Anderson has begun tearing down the former Prudential Life Insurance building at 1100 Holcombe St. in the Med Center. Since 1975, it has served as the “Houston Main Building” for the medical institution’s campus. The 18-story limestone tower was constructed as the centerpiece of Houston’s first suburban office park in 1952, from a design by Kenneth Franzheim. For almost 10 years, the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center has been floating plans to knock it down and replace it with a new medical facility. Got any pics of the action, or images of the building’s notable interior to share? Send them in! We’ll publish updates as we get them.
- Prudential/Houston Main Building [arch-ive.org]
- Preservationists oppose plan to demolish historic building [Houston Business Journal]
Photo: Candace Garcia
In from Swamplot roving photographer Candace Garcia: photos of the last moments of the UT Health Science Center’s Mental Science Institute at 1300 Moursund St. in the Med Center. The school’s department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences deserted the 1965 structure back in February, when it moved to a brand new 6-story Behavioral and Biomedical Sciences building near the corner of Cambridge and OST, south of the main Med Center campus in a new development dubbed UT Research Park. The vacant Moursund building was sold to the building executioners at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, who are now busy demolishing it “for future expansion.”
University of Houston architecture professor Susan Rogers explores the Bellaire-Holcombe corridor from Highway 6 to the Med Center and finds a donut in her path.
For each census tract that intersects Holcombe or Bellaire Blvd., Rogers tallied the total number of residents born outside the United States and those residents’ country of origin, using 2000 Census data. The results surprised her:
Most of the action is in the zone between the Loop and the Beltway. “The diversity drops steeply inside 610,” she notes:
I had graphed the street from just 610 to Hwy. 6 for a talk on the links between Asia and Houston and then decided to add the rest as a potential “contrast†– what I found when I completed it absolutely astounded me – the absolute drop is so stark – and of course the income graph is nearly the exact opposite . . .
That graph showing median household income in the same census tracts:
The Hospitality Apartments at 7300 Bertner just north of OST are “not posh. But they’re perfectly nice,” explains Ann Hightower, whose husband Joe founded the organization that runs them 42 years ago. “Totally functional, with linens, dishes, a stove and oven, a microwave, TVs and access to free laundry.”
Where’s the swimming pool? There isn’t one, but that’s not usually too much of a concern of the people staying there. All the residents of the 42-unit complex are out-of-towners undergoing treatment at the nearby Texas Medical Center.
Joe [Hightower] estimated the apartments have been filled “99-plus percent of the time†over the years.
“You could probably have four projects this big in Houston and just barely meet the demand,†Ann said after the organization’s annual meeting on Super Bowl Sunday. “And then you would uncover another layer of need.â€
Residents stay anywhere from 2 weeks to 3 months — for free.
The nonprofit has never applied for or received money from any government agency. The organization has relied on personal fundraising efforts by the Hightowers and friends and the generosity of Houston congregations, private foundations and hundreds of individual contributors. It has no debt, pays no salaries and operates each apartment for less than $10 a day.
BAYLOR AND RICE: THE DEAL IS OFFICIALLY DEAD Just out from the presidents of the two institutions: A formal “we’re not going to merge” statement: “Baylor College of Medicine and Rice University have ended our discussions about a possible merger of our two institutions. At the same time, both institutions have agreed to develop further our existing academic and research relationship, which has grown significantly over the years.” [Rice University]
Sure, “immersive landscapes” — where visitors are supposed to feel like they’re just hanging out with the chimps and rhinos and giraffes in the wild — are the latest craze in zoo design. But what’s really the most innovative aspect of the new 13-acre African Forest the Houston Zoo is planning for its southernmost quadrant, at the intersection of North MacGregor and Golf Course Dr. in Hermann Park?
The project
. . . will feature closed-circuit TV connections with area hospitals, allowing patients to view animal keeper presentations or simply to watch animals in their near-natural habitats.
[Houston Zoo President Deborah] Cannon said the programs first will be made available to children’s hospitals, then expanded. Ultimately, they may be made available to local schools, she said.
At last, an effort to capture some of that technological synergy swirling around the Houston Zoo-Med Center nexus! Best of all is the Chronicle‘s own map identifying the project’s location, which is a gift to the city all by itself:
Hunting down information about the abandoned Modern Fire Station at the corner of Fannin and South Braeswood just south of the Med Center, Houston building arch-ivist Lauren Meyers stumbles upon dangling plans for a new development on the huge vacant lot behind it, which was once home to an apartment complex.
The city sold the [fire station] to an entity named Texas SFI Partnership 33 in February of 2007. Texas SFI Partnership 24 owns the Lanesborough Apartments that are to the west of the fire station at 1819 S. Braeswood Blvd. Lanesborough’s parent company is The Richdale Group, and Richdale is a part of Slosburg Co. A representative of Lanesborough via Slosburg informed us that the property, including the large tract of land to the south, is slated to become a large mixed-use development with a medical emphasis.
There is no timeline for the project and it is still in the design phase. An existing sign on the large empty tract advertises a “Better Lifestyle” with Lanesborough apartments and richdale.com, but there is no other information about the future development on it.
What about that cool 1950 fire station?
RICE-BAYLOR MERGER: YUP A joint statement just out from the presidents of Rice University and the Baylor College of Medicine: “We are pleased to announce that the governing boards of Rice and BCM this week approved the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that lays out a broad framework for formal negotiations about a possible merger of our two institutions. While no decision on a merger has yet been made and many issues remain to be resolved, our boards have concluded that a closer affiliation has abundant potential benefits for both institutions, as well as for our home city of Houston.†[Swamplot inbox]
Here’s a construction-cam view from this morning showing progress on Baylor College of Medicine’s fancy new Clinic and Hospital on Old Spanish Trail, a stretch south of the main Medical Center campus — and, apparently, too big of a stretch for the financially strained institution. The Chronicle is reporting that BCM has decided to finish building the hospital exterior, but that it’s not gonna build out the building’s innards at all. For a while. Until it gets the money.
Or something changes. The medical school decided to build its own facility after breaking off an association with Methodist Hospital in 2004. A later bad hook-up, with St. Luke’s, ended in 2007. When BCM began serious conversations with Rice University about a merger last year, the new hospital was considered a major obstacle to a deal: Rice didn’t want it. If BCM becomes a part of Rice (which at this point appears quite likely), the hospital will have to be jettisoned somehow.
In an e-mail to faculty, [Baylor interim president William T.] Butler said the temporary suspension buys time to acquire additional capital through philanthropy, federal funds and other sources, gives the markets a chance to settle and provides an opportunity to consider project partners.
Sources said that by not building out the interior, it’s also possible the hospital shell would be more attractive to a buyer wanting to tailor the facility to its own desired specifications.
But in his e-mail to faculty, Butler dismissed such speculation: “Taking this pause will allow us to ultimately fulfill the plan to build the hospital,†he wrote. “The board has made it clear it is committed to this project.â€
The time-travel vehicle known as the Buon Appetito Restaurant — housed in an old duplex on Holcombe just west of the Medical Center — has been put up for sale.
What could you do with this place?
“Move out the tables and chairs,” reads the mock-Sicilian listing, “and is ready for your signle fam. residence.”
Or . . . take over the restaurant and run it yourself:
This is also an excellent opportunity for someone to step in and start running this already successful business. The owner has been there for 32 years and is retiring. Everything is included in the sale.
- 2231 Holcombe Blvd. [HAR]
