Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
Conquest of the East End continues! Here’s the latest battle plan:
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Tag: Demolitions
A number of readers have written in to report that Immanuel Lutheran Church has filed an application with the city to demolish its former sanctuary building on the corner of 15th St. and Cortlandt in the Heights. Since the 1932 brick building is in one of the Heights historic districts, demo applicants are required to request a certificate of appropriateness from the Houston Archeological and Historical Commission. The application will be voted on at the next HAHC meeting on October 22nd, but a denial from the HAHC won’t mean much: After waiting 90 days, the church can go ahead with the demo anyway.
Heights preservation ordnance Janice Evans-Davis, who’s sending out emails and posting on local bulletin boards about the property, toured it this morning:
Metro continues its East End clearance. Plus: your guide to assorted smashers around town. Addresses are here:
The end for Braes Heights’s Fire Station 37 and more — all in the day’s report:
More Wheeler fortune, a school demo, apartments, plus homes. It’s all in today’s list:
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
Fulton, no longer full. All the addresses and more, in our daily report:
And here’s today’s collection of landfill fodder, carefully catalogued for your consideration:
Bring on the takers-away! And this time, there’s plenty to take:
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE SAVOY HOTEL IMPLOSION YOU MISSED “I was across the street watching the tear down on and off for the 3rd day. They had a little trouble with the elevator shaft and the chimneys. Apparently the building was built pretty solid…2 foot thick brick walls. Yesterday they etched part of the bricks in the back and about half the building came down all at once by itself, rattling the ground and putting up a huge dust cloud. Part of the fire escape fell on the parking garage next door though.” [K. Brink, commenting on Emergency Demo: The Savoy Hotel’s Final Weekend Stay Downtown]
Here’s an idea. Just for today, let’s focus all our attention on a single building. Say, this one:
Meanwhile in Ranch Estates, architect Karen Lantz is deconstructing this 1950 Rancher, piece by piece. Her goal: building a new home on the site — but only after finding new homes for most of the materials that are already there.
This type of disassembly is almost unheard of in Houston, where relatively low local landfill tipping fees make crushing and dumping a much cheaper alternative. After 5 local demo companies turned down the work, Lantz decided to contract it all herself. She says she expects to be able to recover and donate 90 percent of the materials in the Banks St. home. Working with an appraiser, she’s been sending materials to the city’s new Reuse Warehouse, Habitat for Humanity of Northwest Harris County, the Houston Habitat Restore, Century Asphalt Materials, and Lone Star Disposal.
“The house going up will absolutely be going for LEED, hopefully the highest rating,” Lantz tells Swamplot. It’s intended for her and her husband. Lantz, the founding president of Houston Mod, says it’s been difficult to convince clients to commit time, energy, or funds toward this sort of attention to materials. Since she’s now preaching the benefits of building deconstruction, she sees this project as an opportunity to practice it.
How much will it cost to strip the place this way?
COMMENT OF THE DAY: ON THE CASE OF THE DEMO FIRES “Chron.com reports “Unoccupied home [in 5100 block of Wipprecht] burns in NE Houston.†Wonder if that was the demo.” [GoogleMaster, commenting on Daily Demolition Report: Wipprecht Gammage]
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
Everybody’s coming down with something. What have these places got?
