11/15/13 10:00am

The uncommon 62 (and a half!)-ft. width of this West University lot near the city’s park on Sunset Blvd. gives a 1992 contemporary home by the late Preston Bolton room to change up the typical front, flow, and footprint found in the plethora of Georgians built around that time in the neighborhood. Bolton’s custom design for the current owner stacks living space back from the street, on a 20-ft.-setback block, and features a well-established lattice espalier as well as distinct geometric gates and grill work a spider would be happy to call its handiwork, despite slightly shaggy landscaping creeping onto the front walkway:

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11/13/13 10:00am

A different style of furnishings and a new set of HDR-ish photos that focuses on the home’s outdoor areas show off another side of Rick Sundberg’s “Handmade House,” which has been up for sale since September for just shy of $1.6 million. Developer Carol Isaak Barden brought Sundberg to Houston to design a couple of high-end Boulevard Oaks-area homes in the late noughts. The listing for 1916 Banks St. credits the design to Sundberg’s longtime firm, then known as Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen. But Sundberg went out on his own while the home was under construction, and it’s now featured on the website of his new firm, Sundberg Kennedy Ly-Au Young Architects.

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11/06/13 11:00am

HAWTHORNE COMES TO PRAISE THE ASTRODOME, NOT TO BURY IT For an article slipped online only after election-day voting had already begun on the ill-fated $217 million bond issue that would have turned the Houston landmark into a convention center, L.A. Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne decides a few things need to be said about the Astrodome. Some highlights: “Forget Monticello or the Chrysler building: There may be no piece of architecture more quintessentially American than the Astrodome. Widely copied after it opened in 1965, it perfectly embodies postwar U.S. culture in its brash combination of Space Age glamour, broad-shouldered scale and total climate control. . . . [A]ll I had to do to understand the full appeal of the architecture was look up toward the center of the massive steel-framed roof, more than 200 feet above my head. Light filtered through its hundreds of panels fell serenely on the rest of the vast interior. Seen from that vantage point, the building has lost none of its tremendous aesthetic power. . . . Even if its attitude toward the environment now strikes us as deeply naive, the Astrodome deserves to be protected simply as a singular monument to the American confidence and Texas swagger of the 1960s. The stadium doesn’t so much symbolize as perfectly enclose a moment in time.” [L.A. Times] Photo: Candace Garcia

10/24/13 12:00pm

A modified 1959 mod home with tinted clerestory in Westbury has changed hands 5 times in 8 years — after decades with the same owner. Last week, the now-even-more-open-plan property appeared on the market once more, this time with a $425,000 asking price. It last sold in March 2013 for $348,000. Back in 2005, before all the flipping and renovations, it sold for $152,367. Other sales scored $129,000, $374,990, and $389,000. Somewhere in that chain of ownership came a big fan of glass-panel doors. They’re installed throughout the home, starting with the living room (above).

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08/22/13 3:15pm

It’s a square route through the entry of a modified 1960 Westbury mod, described in its listing on Tuesday as a giveaway prize from a bygone Parade of Homes. The interior plays up its remaining original elements, such as the tile mural found in the front-and-central entry (top) — which the listing claims was featured in the old Arts & Architecture magazine. Another exercise in symmetry comes from the 2 garages sandwiching the recessed front door (above).

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07/30/13 2:45pm

When showcased in the 1956 Parade of Homes, this Glenbrook Valley mod with desert-theme plantings (still in place) earned accolades for its forward-thinking children’s wing and U-shaped kitchen layout (intended as step-saving convenience for the chore-laden lady of the house). Those design details are among the features called out in the vintage promotional flyers included in the listing materials for the home, which popped up on the market earlier this month. The asking price today is $139,000, a few steps up from the $20,000 of its midcentury origins and the $52,250 it went for when it last sold, in 2008.

Since then, the compact-but-comfy home has had its internals updated; there’s new wiring, (underslab) plumbing, roofing, and appliances. Meanwhile, the carport (above right) has been wrapped in a snazzy new wooden-screen skin.

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05/31/13 10:00am

When last we visited this home at the western edge of Memorial Bend, built in 1958 from a design by noted Houston architect Lars Bang, the trees were a smidge shorter and the open-plan interior perhaps a bit less tweaked. That was 5 years ago, for a listing that never found a buyer. Last fall, the midcentury-mod-gone-whatever property returned to the market at $565,000 — though within a couple of months the price had fallen to $499,000. (Price histories posted for the property indicate a couple contracts didn’t go through.) Earlier this month, however, the flat-topped specimen overlooking Rummel Creek and the Edith L. Moore Bird Sanctuary popped back up with a big bang of a price increase, to $679,000.

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05/24/13 1:15pm

The ‘bay’ at this multilevel 1990 property in Walden on Lake Conroe is a 2-story space with a modern, multi-pane frame of the water. Photos of the vista-boosting room — and its contemporary decor — dominate the early-in-May listing. The asking price, $925,000, apparently includes the furnishings.

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05/15/13 2:30pm

COMMENT OF THE DAY RUNNER-UP: Y’ALL COME BY NOW, Y’HEAR? “I am thankful for Ben’s research and for putting me in touch with Robert who had the right buyer for my Dad’s house. I have always loved this house and have great memories here. It’s where I learned to appreciate unique architecture. I now live in NYC. I will have an open house on June 1st 10a to 4p if anyone would like to stop by, say hello — see the ‘before’ and the Texas shaped hot-tub my dad made in the back before it probably goes. If you are allergic to dust, wear a mask. PS — the boat is gone. long story.” [laura kellner, commenting on The Century Built Home in Garden Oaks That Sold in About an Hour]

05/09/13 3:00pm

Here’s the third of 4 houses designed by not-so-famous Houston architect Allen R. Williams in the 1940s and fifties, dubbed “Century Built” homes. If the name was intended to indicate how long the concrete-block homes were all supposed to last, the record isn’t so stellar: The one off Campbell Rd. was torn down some time ago. But the others are doing fine: One in Idylwood was snatched up by an architect a few years ago, and another in Country Club Place has served as a showcase for the renovation work of its current owner, architect Ben Koush.

But this unrenovated Century Built home at 851 W. 43rd St., in the middle of Garden Oaks, didn’t last so long, either: Real estate agent Robert Searcy tells Swamplot he had it locked up in a contract very quickly earlier this week, after he made a few phone calls. Not to a builder — the sellers didn’t want the place to be torn down — but reportedly to a serial renovator interested in Midcentury modern design.

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03/20/13 11:40am

What’s a shed with barn doors doing in the yard of this modish house? Possibly standing in for a garage so detached that’s it’s flat-out gone. And so is half of the tall front hedge that once screened the walkway to this side-entry home on a cul-de-sac in Barkley Circle. The mid-month listing for this 1962 far-Meyerland-area property mentions that the garage was removed as a result of a fire. And that there’s still more to be removed: namely, the smell of smoke. (“Chemical cleaning is needed.”) The home is offered “as is” — for $185,000.

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12/13/12 1:22pm

After a good life with its original owners, this well-draped and well-preserved 1961 Mod in Meyerland hit the market earlier this week, asking $625,000. The exterior’s contrast of light brick and dark trim repeats inside, where warm-toned paneling pairs with glass, and mirrors expand the effect. The home’s curved driveway sweeps across the front yard, but the garage is farther down the side street, served by a driveway stub at the back lot line.

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11/20/12 11:28am

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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10/09/12 2:53pm

Here are the after and before on a 1959 once-flat-roofed mod in Meyerland, 3 doors down from an entrance to St. Nicholas School, a block north of the tall power lines that parallel Willowbend Blvd. A redo by Resto Homes made sure water wouldn’t pool on top anymore — and made a few more changes while at it. The redone 4-bedroom, 3-bath home, which now features oversized Craftsman-ic details and an encyclopedic home-furnishing set in its 2,500 sq. ft., made its MLS debut last Friday, at a stylish $687,493.

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