Fresh paint in shades of purple is but one of the updates to this 1929 East End bungalow with matching back-lot studio unit. Listed Friday at $115,000, the plummy property is on an otherwise toned-down, mixed-use street located a block north of Metro’s East End rail line on Harrisburg, near Milby St.
Behind the curbside growth gone wild, a far tidier contemporary home has been hiding (above) in plain view since 1998. The Upper Kirby property dropped its price April Fool’s Day to $745,000, down from an initial $770K when listed in mid-March. Facing west — and located across from older apartments and the back of a more recent mid-rise complex — this home on an end-cap lot not too far from Whole Foods Market saves its outdoor impact for the back side of the fenced lot (above) and uses the scene as its view from rooms within.
The only thing that’s really changed about 3400 Montrose, a tipster tells Swamplot, is the name of its owner: Global Paragon, which bought the former podium for Scott Gertner’s Skybar in 2011, went “belly up” this past November, the tipster says, and the vacant 10-story building’s now owned and managed by a 40-person LLC that’s looking for a buyer or a joint venture.
And that’s where these interior photos, from a short-on-info listing posted recently on Cushman & Wakefield’s website, come in:
Main Street and its rail line lie 6 floors below this lofty condo unit within a converted 1908 downtown office and retail property. The unit has a grilled-out balcony right across from the limestone frieze of the former-but-still-formidable Gulf Building, a 1929 skyscraper that’s now the J.P. Morgan Chase building. Architect Alfred C. Finn designed both buildings.
The furnishings and perennial planting changed between this home’s two most recent homeowners, but that’s about it for this back-on-the-market Woodson Place bungalow. The 1920 middle-of-the-block property was listed a week ago at $429,000, less than a year after (and $42K more than ) its April 2012 purchase.
DOWNTOWN LANDMARK LANCASTER HOTEL TO BE UPGRADED WITH ‘PRESTIGIOUS PLUMBING ACCOUTERMENTS’ 
The Joseph Finger designed Lancaster Hotel at 701 Texas that dates to 1926 will receive about $10 million in “aesthetic and technological upgrades” designed by Gensler, reports Nancy Sarnoff. She cites a hotel press release that claims the Lancaster will introduce Wi-Fi and “intuitive” keycards that you don’t have to insert into the door, as well as new interiors featuring “premier bedding and bathroom fixtures and fittings by WaterWorks, making The Lancaster the first and only Houston hotel to offer this prestigious brand of plumbing accouterments.” To kick up the Lancaster’s ambience a notch, the new decor will feature “men’s suiting fabrics.” The hotel will remain open during the renovations, which are expected to be completed by this summer. [Prime Property] Photo: The Lancaster
As brick and stucco construction of more recent vintage slowly transforms this Bellaire block near Condit Elementary School, an updated 1937 Cape Cod-style home — behind a winding front walkway and camera-ready white picket fence — continues to hold down its corner right across from a campus gate and a little on-street school parking. The throwback property listed Friday at $599,000 — as a renovate-or-rebuild address.
A no-fuss shed dormer and its smaller companion perched on the back roof help make this updated home one of the largest on its block in Hilltop Acres. That’s the name given to a hill-free neighborhood west of the West Belt just south of W. Little York; though the listing for the home names it Silver Meadows. Available since Friday, the home has an initial asking price of $119,900; its listing cites all sorts of updates, from paint and floors to kitchen fittings — and a little landscaping streetside. Perhaps of equal interest, however, are the not-updated features touted: EZ access to the tollway and an absence of deed restrictions.
A tile-and-paver prone property in Briargrove Park deploys its preferred flooring on pathways, courtyards, patios — and interior rooms. Located on a quarter-acre corner lot in the middle of the neighborhood (north of Briar Forest Dr. near the West Belt), the home hit the market this week with an initial asking price of $719,900.
