Restoration has been swift at this concrete-block home in Garden Oaks that sold quickly in June 2013 — for $225,000. When the property reappeared on the market as a new listing late last week, the asking price was up to $475,000. Houston architect Allen R. Williams Jr. designed the solidly built home back in the day, the year of which was either 1950 or 1942, depending on which records apply. This year’s updates, by serial renovator Will Martin, hew close to the home’s mod origins. The original listing didn’t feature many interior photos, but the home’s latest appearance makes up for that:
“Needs lots of TLC,” says one of the captions of one of the few photos of this 1934 house, designed and built by the C.C. Bell Construction Company just southeast of the Glenbrook Park Golf Course here in Meadowbrook. But the caption and the rest of the photos in the listing suggest only what the house might need in the near future, failing to mention much about its past: The 3-bedroom, 2.5-bath Spanish Mediterranean is described in Stephen Fox’s most recent edition of the AIA guide as one of the “original Coral Gables-inspired bungalows” built in this neighborhood by Bell after a trip to Florida in the ’20s. Want this piece of — er, history? 
