Tag: Houston Architects

Demolitions
01/04/13 3:00pm

Mayor Parker Announces the Death Sentence for Downtown Macy’s Building

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Downtown, Houston Architects, Houston History, Retail
21 Comments

Yesterday morning, Macy’s announced that it would be closing its store Downtown at 1110 Main this spring. But what’s going to happen to the building? Mayor Parker, who knows a thing or two about demolition, said yesterday afternoon that Kenneth Franzheim’s former Foley’s is coming down: “Macy’s is losing the lease, and the owner of that piece of property wants to build something else,” she told KUHF News. The owner in this case would be 1110 Main Partners, an entity connected to Hilcorp Ventures, whose president, Doug Kelly, told the Houston Chronicle yesterday that the company has “no specific plans to announce” about the site. Well, announcing plans is one thing:

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Apartments
11/20/12 11:28am

Kuhl-Linscomb Plans To Turn Googie Penguin Arms Apartments into Modern Home Goods Showroom

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Houston Architects, Houston Landmarks, Modern Design, Renovations, Retail, Upper Kirby
13 Comments

About a year after snatching up the Penguin Arms building at 2902 Revere St., Dan Linscomb and Pam Kuhl-Linscomb announce to the Chronicle‘s Lisa Gray their plans to incorporate Arthur Moss’s pedigreed 1950 Googie-style apartment building into the multi-building streetside campus of their Upper Kirby home-furnishings-and-knick-knacks empire: “In about a year, after a round of renovation and restoration, they plan to open the Penguin Arms as a showroom,” Gray writes. “Maybe, Dan says, they’ll reserve a little piece as an apartment, so they can literally live above the shop.”

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Homes for Sale
11/08/12 1:16pm

Going Deep With an Upper Kirby Contemporary

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Interiors, Upper Kirby
3 Comments

Some design elements here — including the thin-look St. Joe brick, tubular pediments, and Morse-code glazed-brick accents — look an awful lot like a couple of buildings at Rice University that César Pelli designed in the 1980s. But according to the agent, this home is the work of local architect Richard Fitzgerald — from 1992. It’s in Colquitt Court. The niche neighborhood within Upper Kirby is tucked north of Richmond Ave. just west of Greenbriar Dr.; this slice of it has has unusually deep lots by Inner Loop standards. (This property goes back more than 220 ft.) With the garage in front, the mid-sized home leaves plenty of backyard scenery — plus a somewhat secret garden.

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Comments
11/01/12 2:54pm

Comment of the Day: Yep, This Is an $8.5 Million River Oaks Teardown

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Demolitions, Quicklink, River Oaks
27 Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: YEP, THIS IS AN $8.5 MILLION RIVER OAKS TEARDOWN “This house will (sadly) be demolished. It was designed by Harvin Moore in 1940 for Mr. and Mrs. Sydnor Oden. The Odens had returned to Houston from living in Italy, and they wanted a house that reflected Italian architecture. I am thinking that a tear-down trend is on the rise.” [no history remains, commenting on Daily Demolition Report: Prologis Is Past Us] Photo of 3640 Willowick Rd.: HAR

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Demolitions
10/26/12 1:52pm

Last Course at Ruggles Grill on Westheimer

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Lower Westheimer, Montrose, Proposed Developments, Restaurants
8 Comments

Photographer Karen Dressel was on hand at lunchtime today to document the final few bites of the excavator demolishing the last of the 3 former Ruggles Grill buildings at 903 Westheimer, just east of Montrose. Two adjacent buildings, at 817 and 907 Westheimer, were torn down earlier this month; Cherry Demolition’s excavator worked up an appetite waiting on-site for the last demo permit to come through. That happened yesterday, and the meal began shortly after breakfast this morning:

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Construction Materials
10/15/12 1:26pm

90 Percent American in Ranch Estates

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Museum District, New Construction, Ranch Estates
16 Comments

For the home she’s building for her family on Banks St., on the former site of a carefully disassembled Ranch house in Ranch Estates, architect Karen Lantz tried to make sure every product was made in the United States. But the breaking point came with cabinet hardware, Mimi Swartz writes: “‘This one?’ Lantz said, picking up the pull on the left and turning it over for my inspection. ‘From Italy. Nine dollars.’ She picked up the one on her right. ‘This one?’ She paused. ‘China. Four dollars.’ The U.S.-made pull that was closest to what she wanted cost $72. She called company after company trying to do better. When she asked why the American pulls cost so much more than those made overseas, the answers ranged from ‘We make them here’ to ‘It’s a classic.’”

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Comments
09/24/12 2:26pm

The Plan To Move Rice University Closer to The Woodlands — or Trade It for the Galleria

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Galleria, Quicklink, Rice University
2 Comments

THE PLAN TO MOVE RICE UNIVERSITY CLOSER TO THE WOODLANDS — OR TRADE IT FOR THE GALLERIA It’s true, and was apparently taken reasonably seriously at the time. From the Rice Thresher in February 1973. [marmer, commenting on Headlines: Calculating Lower Westheimer’s Hip Factor; Westbury Gardens’ Walkable Kitsch]

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Houston Architects
08/31/12 3:53pm

An Updated Guidebook to Houston Buildings New and Through

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Houston Data, Quicklink
13 Comments

AN UPDATED GUIDEBOOK TO HOUSTON BUILDINGS NEW AND THROUGH The third edition of the Houston Architectural Guide won’t be available officially until October 8th, but the Houston AIA is now taking pre-orders through September at a discounted price (PDF). The latest version of the encyclopedic catalog and tour guide, updated by Stephen Fox, will include 340 new entries covering structures that have popped up in the last 13 years — plus a whole bunch more from the last edition, moved to the back-of-the-book “now demolished” section. [AIA Houston]

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Comments
08/30/12 1:41pm

Comment of the Day: The Houston Design Sweepstakes

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Demolitions, Houston Architects, Houston Landmarks, Quicklink
No Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE HOUSTON DESIGN SWEEPSTAKES “MacKie and Kamrath seem to be winning the award for most demolished landmark buildings in the last 18 months. . . .” [Matt, commenting on M.D. Anderson Planning To Extract Dental Branch from Med Center]

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Demolitions
08/29/12 1:00pm

M.D. Anderson Planning To Extract Dental Branch from Med Center

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Historic Preservation, Houston Architects, Texas Medical Center
10 Comments

The 1955 building Houston architects MacKie and Kamrath designed (along with several later additions) for the University of Texas Dental Branch will be removed from its home at the corner of MD Anderson Blvd. and Moursund in the Med Center, according to the Texas Historical Commission. The UT School of Dentistry abandoned the 5-story, granite-faced building earlier this year for a new 300,000-sq.-ft. facility in the new UT Health Science Center Research Park south of the Med Center proper (and OST) at 7500 Cambridge St. UT’s M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, which owns the Med Center site, hasn’t yet announced a schedule for the demolition.

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Churches
08/23/12 2:02pm

New Fourth Ward Park of the Open Church

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Fourth Ward, Houston Architects, New Construction, Parks
41 Comments

Friday is the official groundbreaking ceremony for the Fourth Ward’s new Bethel Church Park — though an eagle-eyed Swamplot reader noted workers from contractor JE Dunn getting a jump on things at the site of the former Bethel Missionary Baptist Church at Andrews St. and Crosby earlier this month. The Freedman’s Town church in the shadows of Downtown, portions of which date from 1923, was largely destroyed by fire in January 2005 after several years of sitting vacant. Its shored-up walls have stood mostly undisturbed since then.

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Braeburn Valley
08/22/12 10:16am

Results of a Braeburn Valley Redwood Revival

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Homes for Sale, Houston Architects, Interiors, Renovations
23 Comments

Last fall, the restoration-minded owner of this stretched-out 1956 Mod by architect Lucian Hood in Braeburn Valley told Swamplot he was fixing to sell his property. Now, having finished reviving the redwood exterior from beneath the paint that covered it up and sprucing up the brick and ledge stone walls, Jason Jones reports his 5-year project is ready for its closeup, just listed, and now asking $365,000. The home is located on a big corner lot across from Braeburn Country Club greens — and next to Maison DeVille, a Mansard-roofed apartment complex from 1962, later converted to condos.

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Art
07/17/12 5:03pm

Preserving Houston’s Ben Milam Hotel in 13 Backpacks

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Downtown, Historic Preservation, Houston History
1 Comment

The latest creation of Julia Gabriel, Houston’s favorite doomed-building-backpack artist, focuses on the long-vacant Ben Milam Hotel at the corner of Crawford and Texas downtown, left alone as a long-foul-ball target outside Minute Maid Park since — well, at least since the days of Enron Field. Before then, Gabriel notes, it was Houston’s first-ever fully air-conditioned hotel, the first in the city to have a TeeVee in every room, and the first to feature a rooftop swimming pool.

The artist’s rendition of a now-vanished Westheimer duplex-turned-antique store (featured on Swamplot last month) required just a single bag with straps. But to capture the ghostly spirit of the Ben Milam at 1717 Texas Ave., she needed 13 separate packs, bags, totes, and purses. Pinned to a wall, they follow the contours of a photo Gabriel snapped of the structure’s north face back in March (at top). Attached to the backs of you and your dozen-closest friends, though, who could figure out that secret history? Here’s a video of Gabriel foreshadowing the inevitable demolition of architect Joseph Finger’s 1928 creation, by showing how her own assemblage comes apart, bag by bag:

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Apartments
07/02/12 1:10pm

Apartments Replacing Park Memorial Condos in Rice Military: More than Triple the Density

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Houston Architects, Proposed Developments, Redevelopment, Rice Military
36 Comments

Plans for the 5- and 6-story complex Wallace Garcia Wilson Architects has designed for the new owners of Park Memorial at 5292 Memorial Dr. show that the former grounds of the park-like 108-unit Rice Military condo complex (pictured in better days above) will soon be home to 372 new apartment units. The new project by JLB Partners, currently out to bid, will fit buildings surrounding 2 courtyards, a narrow 7-level garage, and a detention pond onto the 4.85-acre site at the corner of Memorial Dr. and Detering. That’s the plan at the top. And below are a couple of elevations, in different scales, of the west and east sides:

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Buying and Selling
06/19/12 2:24pm

Strip Center at the Corner of Westheimer and Montrose: Sold

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Commercial Real Estate, Houston Architects, Houston Landmarks, Lower Westheimer, Montrose, Strip Centers
20 Comments

The half-empty strip center left over from a series of unfortunate redos of City Hall architect Joseph Finger’s 1937 Tower Community Center (which once served as an art-deco companion piece to the former Tower Theater across the street) is now under contract to a new owner, along with the entire 2.86-acre block at the southwest corner of Westheimer and Montrose. That’s the word from a posting on the property’s listing site noted by Going Up! City, but the listing brokers at HFF aren’t providing any additional information.

Unless someone wants to spill the beans on the purchaser’s identity or any plans for the current home of Half Price Books, Spec’s, Papa John’s, and 3-6-9 China Bistro (along with the standalone Jack-in-the-Box at Montrose and Lovett) before then, you’ll have to wait until the seller issues a press release — which will happen sometime next week, a source tells Swamplot — for additional details. The property went on the market in early March.

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