Ground-level view corridors were limited by extensive street closures early Sunday morning, which meant that the best views of the controlled demolition of the denuded Houston Club Building at 811 Rusk St. were to be had from inside neighboring office towers. The video above and its entertaining soundtrack was posted to YouTube by Culturemap yesterday (and have already inspired its first quasi-parody video), though it’s almost identical to the (longer) raw video feed posted by KHOU. Once cleanup is complete, Skanska will begin construction of the 35-story Capitol Tower on that site.
- RAW: Houston Club Implosion [KHOU]
- Sunday A.M. Implosion Clears Way for 750,000 SF Office Tower [Realty News Report]
- Previously on Swamplot: Pennzoil Place’s Sticky Damage Control Plan; Hulking Remains of Houston Club Building Downtown Will Get Dynamited Early Sunday Morning; The Clubbing of the Houston Club Building Begins; Houston Club Building Will Be Demolished, Say Auctioneers; Will Skanska Knock Down the Houston Club?
Video: Culturemap/KHOU
Wow. Wow. Wow.
I noticed the building in the foreground lost power as the Houston Club building fell. Oops.
I live about 4 blocks from here and it woke me up at 7am on Sunday!
Wow.
The building in the foreground that lost power is the Houston Club parking garage. It got hit by a fair amount of debris, including a big gash in the back of the top floor. It is expected to be demolished within a couple years to make room for the Capitol Tower, so I doubt they care too much about cosmetic damage, but they will have to fix the hole.
Why are they waiting a couple years to demolish the garage?
Are you sure they are demolishing the garage? They just built the exterior ramp seen to the right of it within the last year or so.
@Jeff: I thought it was discussed here but can’t seem to find anything. There’s apparently some sort of parking agreement that they could not break of out of. The temporary parking structure will remain until the new parking garage is available from what I recall.
That makes sense. All the renderings show a clean glass glass building, so it must be gone eventually. Thanks for the info!