- 10611 Deerwood Rd. [HAR]
Sign up for the Newsletter
Tag: Walnut Bend
What’s happened to this storied Walnut Bend Mod by Robert Pine from the 1960 Houston Chronicle Parade of Homes since it last appeared on Swamplot in 2010? Well, it finally sold — for $120K — the following year. (In 2014, it traded hands again, for approximately $287K, without making an appearance on MLS.) Also, new windows were cut into the living room and master bathroom, adding openings to the once-blank stone-faced walls on the front facade. There’s also this brand new screened-in patio, inserted between the carport and the main house in back, like so:
Eyes on the Street
Was this stone-studded home in Walnut Bend one of the 30 or so properties featured in the 1960 Parade of Homes? The pebbly property’s price tag has stuck to $389K since its listing in January — with or without that pedigree. Located midblock on an interior street east of Wilcrest Dr., the domicile lands midway between Briar Forest Dr. and Westheimer Rd. The home’s exterior layers on the (mostly) non-original textures, particularly in the terracing of its courtyard entry . . .
Stone Aged
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WEST HOUSTON’S PLAN FOR SUBURBAN DOMINATION 
“Houston does not have a centralized downtown district. After Gerry Hines built the Galleria, the city fractured into numerous regional shopping centers and has remained decentralized since. Perhaps Houston functions better this way.
Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall and all the King’s men cannot put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
MetroNational and Midway Cos. are determined to reconstruct Houston with a new centralized downtown district in CityCentre. They envision Memorial Drive and Gessner as commercial 8-lane thoroughfares. They envision the corridor of residential neighborhoods between the Katy Freeeway and Memorial Drive as one big mega shopping center, an expansion of Memorial City that stretches on for miles. They envision deed restricted neighborhoods of Walnut Bend and Briargrove Park as office parks. Don’t believe me? Just go to the West Houston Association website and click on 2050 map. They are serious about remapping Houston. And what are they going to do with all the storm water run-off from these commercial buildings? They are going to channel it into Buffalo Bayou, of course. To do this they have to deforest the bayou and widen and deepen and concrete it. They are determined to do it. And where are they going to get the money to do this? Out of TIRZ 17 and MetroNational Bank.” [Memorial Resident, commenting on Comment of the Day: Houston’s Westward Tilt] Illustration: Lulu
- 10726 Burgoyne Rd. [HAR]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE MODS AND THE BANKERS 
“My fiance and I have wanted to purchase this home for over a year. We’ve heard the banks won’t approve financing due to the foundation problems; we’d love to restore it to [its] original glory, it needs a MCM loving family–maybe you’re an investor who’d like to help us out? We don’t want this house to get into the wrong hands, it’ll break our hearts.” [Jessica Define, commenting on Scouting Report on a Walnut Bend Mod]
Thinking long and hard about that unloved $160K 1960 Mod on Olympia Dr. in Walnut Bend featured here earlier this week? Real estate agent (and Swamplot advertiser) Robert Searcy has a few thoughts:
Due to the presence of pets, unfinished projects and other work needing to be done, (plus the absence of the mod furniture you see in the pictures), it all combines to make the home show less than ideal. Architecturally, however, it is one of the more dramatic in that price range and someone could pull it together. Mod houses are almost ALWAYS a project. This one is no exception. Most either need to be brought up or if they have a higher level of maintenance then they typically require “undoing.” That means going in and taking out inappropriate alterations done in the name of updating and putting back in more architecturally compatible finishes. This is often times a more difficult and more costly process than a straight up restoration. Especially if the seller wants more for the house initially because of their “updates,” which in reality are nothing more than bad choices that architecturally “dumb down” the house to look like every tract home in Katy.
This house needs work, but doesn’t really need the “undoing” factor. It is priced well and the location is not bad.
And he sends in part of the program for the 1960 Parade of Homes:
“What a weird, cool house” says the reader who wrote in to clue us in on this 1960 Parade of Homes “townhouse” in Walnut Bend built by Robert Pine. The owner, who claimed to have rescued it in 2007 from the previous owner’s planned second floor addition and “tons of Home Depot upgrades,” put it up for sale last summer, after chatting it up a bit to Midcentury Mod fans on HAIF.
The $199,000 asking price only lasted a few months. Since last September, it’s been available for $159,900. Why hasn’t it sold?
