COMMENT OF THE DAY: LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS “Humanity’s job is to cover over everything and rebuild every 100 years. That’s why we have archeologists.” [Bill Shirley, commenting on Comment of the Day: Must Have Lost Something in There Somewhere]
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Tag: Houston History
COMMENT OF THE DAY: MUST HAVE LOST SOMETHING IN THERE SOMEWHERE “It’s depressing to see that little house in the Bing aerial view, ready to be swallowed by a sea of parking lots, overpasses and beat-up Crown Victorias. All its neighbors are gone, the once residential area turned into a decaying urban Houston at its worst. I guess I’m nostalgic for a past I never lived in and wasn’t really all that great without today’s comforts, but oh well. Why didn’t the city ever just tear it down to build a more cohesive tarmac? When/who was the last inhabitant?” [Rodrigo, commenting on Ready To Be Hauled Away: Under the Freeway, in the Back of the Parking Lot]
How about another go of it? The auction of the 1872-vintage former home of Gottlieb Eisele, now a vacant and dilapidated former HPD office surrounded by parking lots and the Gulf Freeway, ended last night with no bids. But today it’s back on the block, with a brand-new item number and a new closing-gavel time of 8 pm tonight. For a minimum bid of $1,000, the opportunity to partially demolish, jack up, repair, move, restore, and then register this property can be yours.
Why isn’t there an address given in the auction listing for the “1872 Bungalow Cottage” near the former police headquarters at 61 Riesner the city is trying to get rid of? Because the streets it used to be on have all faded away. The home is tucked almost under the Gulf Freeway at the eastern edge of the surrounding city parking lot. Museum of Houston director (and GHPA staffer) Jim Parsons tells Swamplot the home is all that’s left of an old residential area at what used to be the eastern tip of the Sixth Ward. According to Parsons, the original address was 34 South, and later 22 Artesian Place. Now it isn’t visible from any street.
The final deadline for bids is 8 pm tonight.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: OF COURSE, RESTORING THE ACTUAL ASTROWORLD WOULD BE A LITTLE MORE INVOLVED “I went to see this Saturday night. It’s in fairly ragged shape, but with a little skill and time it could easily be restored. I think the skills that an avid model railroader possesses would be adequate to restore this. Many of the familiar Astroworld rides are depicted, although no rollercoasters (except for the Alpine Sleigh Ride, which just barely qualifies). All the big roller coasters came later. Among the excellent features in the 1:144 scale model were Judge Hofheinz’s personal on-site office as well as his personal train station!” [Robert Boyd, commenting on For Sale: Early Model AstroWorld]
FOR SALE: EARLY MODEL ASTROWORLD 
Sure, AstroWorld shut down 5 years ago tomorrow — and the site still lies vacant. But Ed Henderson, builder of the original model of the amusement park (shown at left with his creation 43 years ago), is looking for a buyer who’ll preserve and restore it. The recently recovered 8-ft.-by-10-ft. construction goes on display for 6 weeks beginning this Saturday night at Bill Davenport’s Optical Project gallery on 11th St. near the Heights. The model was originally displayed in September 1967 at Foley’s Department Store Downtown. “After the park’s opening, the model resided in [Judge Roy] Hofheinz’s private model room on the Astrodome’s 9th level. When Astroworld was being dismantled in 2006, the model was found in a warehouse, sawn into six irregular pieces and covered in dirt.” Davenport, who’s already spent a while cleaning up the model, tells Swamplot he can’t decide if the $3,000 asking price is “expensive for a big project in need of restoration or unbelievably cheap as a unique piece of Houston history, or both.” [Optical Project; previously on Swamplot] Photos: Bill Davenport
The president of a local real estate organization is hoping Swamplot readers can help her put together a slide show illustrating changes that have taken place over the years to the Washington Ave streetscape. How many of you have access to really old photos of Washington Ave? Well, you probably don’t have to go back too far to find images of a street that looked rather different than it does today. Send your old images — and please include captions and credit info — to the Swamplot tipline, and we’ll forward them to CCIM Houston/Gulf Coast‘s Ann-Marie Daleo, for inclusion in that organizations’ Washington Corridor Overview and Networking Event on November 4th. Daleo promises she’ll post the presentation online after the event, for anyone to download. And if any good before-and-after views come out of it we’ll post them here as well.
- Houston/Gulf Coast CCIM
- Washington Corridor coverage [Swamplot]
- Previously on Swamplot: Streamline Appeal: Knapp Chevrolet Is Not Going Away, GM Wants To Take Away Knapp
Photos: Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Houston Public Library (top) and GHPA (bottom)
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE ENDS OF AN ERA “Sorry to hear this, I used to shop for groceries there long ago when I lived at 4900 Caroline with a bunch of other Rice students. It was at this store that I purchased the raw ingredients for my legendary ‘Chicken Butts in Wine Sauce.’†[Reeseman, commenting on Daily Demolition Report: MiniMax Axe]
Using data from Houston’s planning department, University of Maryland grad student Chris Dorney has put together a series of diagrams showing which blockfaces in the Inner Loop have restricted lot sizes — and when they’ve done it. His maps start in 2002, when the predecessor to the city’s current Minimum Lot Size ordinance first went into effect. The ordinance allows residents of a single side of a single block to restrict homeowners in that block from subdividing lots below a certain size; its cousin, the Minimum Building Line ordinance, does the same for front setbacks. Dorney explains:
Each [diagram] shows the Inner Loop and indicates blockfaces with special minimum lot size restrictions already in place (red dots) and new for the given year (blue dots) (i.e. blue dots turn red the following year). There are clear spatial patterns to the adoption of these ordinances which it would be interesting to know more about. Perhaps most interesting to people from zoned cities is why every block has not decided to enact such restrictions…a zoning ordinance would likely cover every block uniformly.
And here they are:
BATTLEFIELD RECOVERY A group of Texas history buffs called the Friends of the San Jacinto Battleground has spent $625K to buy 19 mostly overgrown acres near the San Jacinto Monument — 8 of them under water — from the estate of noted car collector and attorney John O’Quinn. The group intends to restore the tidal marsh, place historical markers, and add 1830s-approprate foliage such as cypress and pine to the property on Battleground Rd. just southwest of the Lynchburg Ferry, on the south bank of Buffalo Bayou. The goal: a landscape that evokes the good ol’ days of the Texas Revolution, long before the local ground started sinking. More detailed plans for the redevelopment are still under discussion, but the organization hopes to raise $325K for the project and wants to begin improvements in time for the 175th anniversary of the Texian assault in 2011. A few decades after it was crossed by battling Mexican and Texian armies, the land held a Confederate armory, barracks and shipyard. More recently, other potential bidders for the property were interested in using it for an industrial complex or a school for energy and maritime workers. [Houston Chronicle; project details]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: SPENDING AN ETERNITY BEHIND MARY’S LOUNGE “. . . there is a garden in the back which holds the ashes of men who passed in the early AIDS epidemic. I am shocked no one in the Houston Community has brought this to anyone’s attention. . . .” [j, commenting on Swamplot Street Sleuths: Gotta Fight for Your Right]
An organization that won guardianship of Olivewood Cemetery about a year and a half ago is trying to raise funds to hire an archeological firm to recover and rebury the longtime residents of up to 5 graves — before they’re washed away into White Oak Bayou. The cemetery sits on the boundary line between the First and Sixth Wards, hidden behind Grocers Supply and Party Boy on Studewood, just south of I-10.
Recently, the erosion appears to have picked up, leaving the potential for dozens of graves to wash away. In addition to the ravine system, the cemetery’s woes stem from runoff from nearby Grocers Supply and a downward, south-to-north slope that ferries water through the cemetery. [Community Archaeology Research Institute associate director Robert] Marcom said one goal is to channel water to nearby White Oak Bayou without having to go through the ravine system.
Olivewood became Houston’s first incorporated African-American cemetery in 1875. The grounds are a bit tough to get to, and many of the remaining headstones in the long-neglected property are nestled deep in lush beds of vegetation, reportedly including plenty of poison oak and poison ivy. Descendants of Olivewood regularly organizes cleanups of the 8-acre cemetery, but only the front quarter has been tamed so far.
Like apple pie, July 4th, and auditing the Federal Reserve, Olivewood appears to be one of those rare causes that attracts the involvement of both major political parties. Here’s our evidence:
Well, whaddya know? Graphic designer Chris Nguyen’s tiny Marshall St. apartment (featured on Swamplot just last week) ended up as the grand U.S. prize winner in Apartment Therapy’s Small, Cool 2010 design contest. No fluke: Nguyen was, uh . . . thinking small from the get-go. Intrigued by the design website’s annual competition and the idea of living in a tiny space, Nguyen began his search for an apartment in Houston last July:
I really wanted this to be about a different way of living and not about compromises, so it was important that all my furniture remained real-sized. I carefully selected what I thought I needed and put away in storage extraneous collections and junk that we all end up hoarding over the years. . . .
I think the bedroom in the house I was living in last was the same size as this entire studio. It was a big room in a big house that was filled with an incredibly increasing amount of big things. That’s how we do it in Texas, right? All the while, I always held an admiration for smartly designed small spaces more commonly found in highly urban dense metropolises or cool under appreciated neighborhoods. Houston is not the first of those things, so I looked for something purposefully small in the latter.
And he found . . . ?
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHEN HOUSTON WAS RIGGED “The Astrodome is ~1 mile north of the old Pierce Junction Oil Field. Most of the area is industrial, but there are homes along the perimeter of the field where Glenn McCarthy, who later built the Shamrock Hotel, made his first millions. Here’s a link to a 1956 TIME magazine article about the field and issues regarding growth of Houston versus industrial development. If anyone reads the article, I believe the dump it refers to is now a golf course. There are methane candy canes all around it. This is to say nothing of the Humble area. If anyone can find any old aerial photos of Humble online, let me know. I’ve seen them in the past and would like to do an overlay of current use versus prior use.” [J Wilson, commenting on House Shopping in the Chemical Discount Zones: Finding Houston’s Less-Toxic Neighborhoods]
For many years until her passing this January, this Woodway penthouse was the home of Ann Sakowitz, known locally as a patron of the arts and matriarch of the last link of a once-famous retail chain. Under the leadership of her son, Robert, the Sakowitz department stores drowned in debt in the late eighties. But Ann Sakowitz gained national attention in the early nineties as the poised but distraught mother on the witness stand, taking her son’s side in a nationally publicized courtroom feud with the family of her own daughter, sparkling international socialite Lynn Wyatt.
Ah, but can’t we put all that rancor behind us now? Let’s just enjoy the wine, the views, and the early . . . uh, tusk’n interior:
