Beginning to build some momentum for another great year of destruction.
Sign up for the Newsletter
Tag: Demolitions
A reader passes on the rumor that the retail buildings along the west side of Mid Lane north of Westheimer, from Capone’s Bar and Oven (above) up to but not including Crapitto’s Cucina, are under contract to a developer — with a closing scheduled for this month. Purported plans for the properties: demolition and the construction of a highrise, with new retail spaces at the bottom. No rush, though, apparently: “They can’t do anything for 16 months because of the leases.”
Photo: Swamplot inbox
A couple of dance numbers today. Just watch these entertainers rip up the stage:
Yesterday a few technical glitches got in the way of Swamplot’s plans to post videos showing the last moments of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center’s Houston Main Building, the iconic 18-story limestone-clad building at 1100 Holcombe Blvd. once known as the Prudential Tower, which was demolished over the weekend. But they’re here now. Enjoy!
Jarringly, the official video below tacks an animated version of M.D. Anderson’s “Making Cancer History” tagline onto the end of the well-documented urban rupture — allowing us to imagine that this violent implosion is merely the urban expression of the institution’s core cancer-eradicating mission. Cancer be gone! in 10 . . . 9 . . .
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
No dynamite here — just good old fashioned honest destruction:
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHAT PEOPLE DO IN HOUSTON “The reason that the 4th Ward shotguns were ‘shit,’ in my view, is that the marketplace decreed them as such. If they were valuable and well-liked, people would’ve bid up the price and competed to live in them. If the building materials were so fantastic, then there would’ve been an active salvage market on the parts. To my knowledge, that did not occur. Sure, what replaced these homes will have a shorter physical shelf life…but as demonstrated by the demolition of these sturdy homes, the economic shelf life is the deciding factor. As I stated previously, ‘People did what people do, and they did it in that location; that’s all!’ By building townhomes destined to become shit, people are doing what people do, and they’re doing it in that location; that’s all. Thereby, history is made…and I don’t care.” [TheNiche, commenting on Comment of the Day: Ballad of the Fourth Ward]
There are no good accessible viewing areas for this weekend’s scheduled implosion of the Houston Main Building at 1100 Holcombe, the folks at M.D. Anderson insist. (That space they’re squeezing media reps into to watch the big bang? Too small.) But why get up so early on a Sunday morning just to catch a few lungfuls of white powder anyway? Instead, you can watch the festive destruction of the iconic former Prudential Building live on the web from this link. The dynamite is scheduled to go off January 8th at 7:52 am (unless, of course, one of those Life Flight helicopters is coming in). And there’ll be higher-res video available later.
- Previously on Swamplot: M.D. Anderson: Prudential Building Demo Site Will Sit Vacant for Years, Med Center Prudential Tower Skeleton Will Survive Through End of Year, M.D. Anderson Tower Will Go Out with a Bang, Kill It in One Big Boom, Or Piece by Piece?, M.D. Anderson’s Quiet Preservation Effort: Peter Hurd’s Prudential Mural Has Left the Building, Sure Looks Like Demolition This Time: M.D. Anderson Begins Taking Down the Prudential Tower, Will M.D. Anderson’s Contractor Bungle the Largest Fresco Rescue Ever?, The Prudential Tower’s Grand Entrance, Before Its Not-so-Grand Exit, Update: M.D. Anderson Not Demolishing Former Prudential Tower Yet, Just Hacking Away at It a Bit, Report: M.D. Anderson Begins Demolishing Med Center Icon
Photo: Candace Garcia
Another reason for checking Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Reports on a regular basis: You might find your home listed on it. Two years ago today, the city’s neighborhood protection department took out demo permits on the houses at 1315 and 1317 Shepherd Dr. at the southeastern tip of Cottage Grove, listing them as dangerous buildings; they showed up on Swamplot the next day. But in a lawsuit filed this week, Bellaire Bead Shop owner Katie Koenig claims she was never informed about the impending demolition of her 2 houses, where she stored her bead inventory. Koenig says she only discovered the houses had been torn down when she tried to visit them sometime around January 8th, 2010; she also claims she was injured on the property after tripping over fencepost stumps left after city crews came back later and partially removed a 6-ft. privacy fence she had had built surrounding the houses.
Time to shoot a little pool.
A tipster on the scene reports that the demolition of Sherman Elementary School at 1909 McKee St. in Northside Village is just about complete: “They'[d] been demolishing it piece by piece (windows, interior, bricks, etc) for the last month, but [in late December] started leveling the rest of the gutted structure and the homes around it.” Going up in place of the school, which sat vacant for about a year: A new 86,000-sq.-ft. Sherman Elementary, which when it opens will take students now attending the ready-to-close Crawford Elementary School on Jensen Dr. about a mile southeast.
Bringing out the pooper scooper again.
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday city offices were open.
Nothing changes on New Years Day — at least nothing permitted. Stragglers from last year are here:
