THE ASTRODOME AND THE COLOSSEUM Ken Hoffman returns from Italy with a little perspective: “The Colosseum was originally called Amphitheatrum Flavium, and it was built by the powerful emperors Vespasian, Titus and Domitian. The Astrodome was originally called the Harris County Domed Stadium, and it was governed by former Houston Mayor and Harris County Judge Roy Hofheinz. He just thought he was an emperor. The Colosseum, after several expansions (mostly to honor a new emperor), had a seating capacity of about 65,000. It had 80 entrances and could completely fill and empty in less than five minutes. The Astrodome, after several expansions (mostly to stop Houston Oilers owner Bud Adams’ whining), had a seating capacity of 62,000 for football. It would take an hour to get out of the parking lot because of a lack of exits. Parking was cheaper in ancient times, too.” [Houston Chronicle; previously in Swamplot]
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Tag: Historic Preservation
COMMENT OF THE DAY: BUILDING GREEN SPACE “I think the State and Henderson historic properties are adjacent and both owned by Fenchurch Properties. Certificate of Appropriateness information at http://tinyurl.com/bhfzsj and http://tinyurl.com/al479p – in both applications, Fenchurch claimed it wants to turn the properties into green space. The Chairman of Fenchurch Properties is Thomas A. Reiser. Tom Reiser spent $1.2 million of his own money in a 2002 Texas House race against Chris Bell, and lost.” [ArlingtonSt, commenting on Daily Demolition Report: Making Demolition History]
Still waiting in the wings, the long-promoted but as-yet-unmade proposal to turn the long-vacant Astrodome into a giant indoor movie lot is almost ready for its closeup, says Christine Hall in the Houston Business Journal. Astrodome Studios co-executive directors Elise Hendrix and Cynthia Neely
along with a laundry list of supporters, including “Dazed and Confused†director/writer Richard Linklater, are one month away from presenting a proposal to Harris County that would put a major soundstage and movie production studio into the proclaimed “Eighth Wonder of the World.â€
“We would have absolutely everything a creative agency would need to film a movie,†Hendrix says. “With 140,000 square feet, you wouldn’t have any problem building a city in there if you needed to.â€
But what would an Astrodome movie studio look like, really? To help unimaginative county officials picture the transformation, Astrodome Studios has prepared the dramatic photo-illustration above, along with a series of similarly rich diagrams:
The last remaining building associated with Houston’s 1950s-era glam-magnet Shamrock Hotel is slated to be torn down, reports Cynthia Lescalleet in the West U. Examiner. The Shamrock’s former ballroom facility at 2151 W. Holcombe became the Edwin Hornberger Conference Center in 1996, nine years after the Shamrock itself was famously axed.
The Texas Medical Center has more building plans for the site:
TMC will build 250,000 square feet of office space in three floors to be added atop the Bell building, which also houses the existing parking garage, said TMC’s John Kajander. The added space is to support TMC institutions, he said.
The building housing the Hornberger’s foyer and ballroom “is nearing the end of its useful life,†he said, and will be taken down.
A little Hornberger history:
One more reason to get excited about the possibility of another Depression: It could save the Jim West Mansion in Clear Lake!
Two years ago, a real-estate company controlled by former Houston Rocket Hakeem Olajuwon bought the mansion with plans to subdivide its 41 acres for sale to developers. At one point, the mansion seemed about to be razed. At another, it seemed likely to become the centerpiece of a luxury complex for retirees.
But as of yet, no deal has solidified. And that’s where [Clear Lake schoolteacher Linda] Sansing finds a strange upside to talk of a new Depression: With credit tight, it seems unlikely that a for-profit developer will swoop in.
Great! But . . . will that make raising money for preservationists to buy the property any easier?
Linda Sansing’s nonprofit group, Preserved in Time, aims to raise $100,000 in earnest money, so it can make an offer on the mansion and some of its grounds. She figures that, ultimately, the group will need $11 million to buy the mansion and some of its land. Some of that money could come from opening the mansion to the pubic for rentals and tours. Some could come from grants. But she knows she has a long way to go.
- Preservationists hope to rescue West mansion [Houston Chronicle]
- How the West won [Houston Chronicle]
- Saving the Jim West Mansion [Houston Public Radio]
- Jim West Mansion Photo Story [Preserved in Time]
Video: Preserved in Time
A reader notes that a sign offering “13,000 sq feet of restaurant/retail for lease” is up at the Alabama Bookstop, and asks if plans for the location have been announced. Bookstop owner Barnes & Noble is building a new store on West Gray, on the former site of the River Oaks Shopping Center’s north curve.
That 13,000 sq. ft. figure makes it clear the sign isn’t referring to a different space in the Alabama Theater Shopping Center. According to leasing info on the Weingarten website, that’s the approximate size of the Bookstop’s space.
- Alabama Shepherd Shopping Center [Weingarten]
- B. Dalton Booksellers – Bookstop/Alabama Theatre [Barnes & Noble]
Photo of Bookstop at Alabama Theater Shopping Center: Debra Jane Seltzer
TSU LOSES A LIGHT RAIL STATION Under pressure from Third Ward residents and elected officials who didn’t want rail on Wheeler, Metro has officially rerouted an eastern section of the University Line further north. From Main, the line had been planned to travel east on Wheeler, north on Ennis, then east on Alabama to Scott at U of H. The new route snakes north sooner: north on Hutchins from Wheeler, east on Cleburne, north on Dowling, then east on Alabama to Scott. [Houston Chronicle]
ALEXAN LOFTS ON THE MARKET Trammell Crow Residential and Morgan Stanley are ready to sell the 224-unit Alexan Lofts, the Second Ward apartments just northeast of Downtown on the site of the failed El Mercado del Sol. Multi-year historic tax credits on the property expire in September. [Globe St.]
On June 1st, Scott Tycer will be opening a new wholesale and retail location of his Kraftsmen Bakery in 10,000 long-vacant square feet of the old Oriental Textile Mill on 22nd St. and Lawrence in the Heights. Also opening in the space two months later: a 1,200-square-foot restaurant with a garden patio and bar area, designed by Ferenc Dreef.
Tycer, who was the chef at Aries and then Pic on Montrose, and who runs Gravitas on Taft (which Dreef also designed), will be cooking at the restaurant, which will be called Textile. Tycer described Textile to blogger Cleverley Stone:
We’re going to build out the dining room with textiles, lots of hanging fabrics and different tablecloths on each table. This will not be your typical white-tablecloth restaurant.
Tycer is right: White tablecloths would probably not be appropriate for the space. A history of the Heights written by Sister M. Agatha of the Incarnate Word Academy and published in 1956 describes the operations of the textile mill, which was originally built in 1892 as a mattress factory:
B. J. Platt for years was superintendent of the plant that turned out a product which looked like long rolls of carpeting and which was used for pressing cotton seed oil. The plant’s capacity was about 50 rolls a day, varying in price from $200 to $400 a roll.
The textile was woven from hair. Old residents of the Heights have handed down the story that in the beginning much of the hair was obtained from China when pigtails were being discarded. But certain it is that camel’s hair in time came to be the staple used in production.
- Old Heights textile mill perfect spot for bread wholesaler [Houston Chronicle]
- Scott Tycer Weaves Together Past, Present & Future with New Restaurant [Cleverley’s Blog]
- Chapter I: The Development of a Suburban Addition [The History of Houston Heights, 1891-1918]
- more details on textile [Tasty Bits]
Photo of Oriental Textile Mill: Tasty Bits
In case it hadn’t already become obvious from watching the construction, that uh . . . “stealth” four-level parking garage in back is the real game-changer for the River Oaks Shopping Center.
Clearly, what’s unfolding is a strategy even more ingenious than anyone could have imagined. With a new monster garage looming behind the next targeted would-be landmark, Weingarten will soon have people begging it to rip down more of the north side of the center and build something taller, just to screen those four stories of cars from West Gray. Meanwhile, focusing attention on the complaints of a few pesky neighbors in back is a classic outrage-bait move. Throw in a little hush money to make sure those protests aren’t too loud, but then make sure news of the offer gets leaked, so the decoy works. Send in the demo crews, redevelop, and repeat!
The site plan above comes from a Weingarten variance request that will go before the Planning Commission on Thursday. The city’s landscape ordinance apparently requires the new development to switch out some of those existing sickly-but-iconic palm trees for live oaks. Naturally, Weingarten wants to save the palms!
- Offer made for silence over River Oaks shopping center [River Oaks Examiner]
- Weingarten Realty Investors Letter to Brentwood Residents (PDF) [River Oaks Examiner]
- New River Oaks Shopping Center: a hazy deal? [Houstonist]
- How To Demolish Houston Landmarks [Swamplot]
River Oaks Shopping Center landscape plan: Heights Venture Architects, via Houston Planning Commission
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdPOOkjNzzw 400 330]
What the house sounds like.
- Beer Can House [YouTube]
- Roads Less Traveled: Beer Can House a taste of Houston [San Antonio Express-News]
- Ever been to The Beer Can House? [Orange Show Center]
This massive 20,000-sq.-ft. home featured on New York Architect Alexander Gorlin‘s website is under construction at 2950 Lazy Lane in River Oaks. The Museum of Fine Arts’ Bayou Bend Collection is next door.
Gorlin’s client is the youngest member of the Forbes 400 list of the Richest Americans (he’s number 317): 34-year-old former Enron trader John Arnold, who now runs secretive Centaurus Energy, a small but extraordinarily successful hedge fund company that trades energy commodities.
Four years ago, Arnold bought a recently renovated 1926 home in the French Norman manorial style in the Homewoods subdivision of River Oaks. The home, which had sat on the market for close to three years, was designed by Houston architect Birdsall Briscoe in collaboration with John Staub, who also built the Bayou Bend estate for the children of former Texas governor James Hogg next door. Briscoe’s creation was dubbed “Dogwoods” by Hogg’s son Michael, who lived there for many years with his wife.
A year after purchasing Dogwoods — currently valued by HCAD at $4.9 million — Arnold angered River Oaks preservationists by tearing it down.
After the jump, more illustrations of the house John Arnold will be trading into, plus a few photos of the one he didn’t leave behind.
It’s a little old bungalow on a small lot . . . but it’s clean and green inside! The sellers of this 2-bedroom, 1 1/2-bath, 960-sq.-ft. home say they’re trying to get this Sixth Ward home LEED certified:
The 1920 facade has been preserved, but when you open the door, its all about 21st century. The hm has been renovated using non toxic materials, low VOC paint & sustainable design materials.
A neighbor who watched the work reports the house was sold to the current owners as a teardown:
It was a nasty, dirty, filthy, funky house with a garage in the front yard. They tore the garage off the front, moved the house around on the lot a tad, and have done an outstanding renovation.
Plus: the neighbors are very very quiet, says our correspondent. The house is next to Glenwood Cemetery.
Read on for more pics, from before and after!
Wielding a copy of Stephen Fox’s Houston Architectural Guide, transit buff Christof Spieler writes in to report that the vacant and graffiti-laden Hoa Binh Center in Midtown — targeted by Camden Property Trust for a new apartment complex — has an important story behind it. He quotes from Fox’s writeup of the shopping center, which was built in 1923:
What distinguishes this building is that it was the prototype of the 20th century American suburban shopping center: it introduced the concept of off-street parking, toward which the grocery store itself was oriented.
Spieler adds:
In other words, Camden may be about to tear down the world’s first strip mall. Now that’s a historic building.
And it’s certainly worth at least a nice plaque somewhere on those new apartments going up on the site!
But before all you preservationist types get up in arms about the impending demolition of the mother of all strip malls, keep in mind that an equally important part of this structure’s history and legacy will almost certainly be preserved, cherished, and celebrated. Sure, the building will probably end up in a pile of rubble off Loop 610. But all those historic off-street parking spaces? They’ll be moved into a nice new garage at the Camden Travis, where residents of the new apartments and their guests will be able to enjoy them for generations to come.
After the jump: Spieler spills more Hoa Binh history!
An organization called Save the Bungalows sends out a press release today bemoaning the demolition of the house at 647 Arlington St. in the Heights — which was mentioned in our February 1st demolition report, and whose final moments are documented in this photo, included with the release. The press release appears genuinely exciting. It features a tantalizing headline:
“Orgy of Irrational Destruction*” Continues: Home Tour House is Latest Victim
and some interesting details on the house:
A home that was featured on the 1997 Houston Heights Home Tour has been demolished.
Neighbors and friends expressed shock and outrage over the latest piece of authentic history to fall to ignorance. The sturdy house at 647 Arlington was built in 1910 by Frank J. and Nina Daly. The property remained in the Daly family until it was sold to Jack Spivey in 1980. The home’s interior was carefully renovated and updated and a garage was added to the rear. Spivey sold the house in November of 2007.
Pam August of August Landscape Design, came to know the house when Jack Spivey hired her to design his yard. She then volunteered to be the head docent for the house on the Heights Home Tour. “It is just a terrible shame that a house so beautifully restored, a house that was on the tour as an example of wonderful restoration, has been tossed in a dumpster.” August said.
After the jump: About that orgy.
