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Braes Heights: Retail Center At 3737-3949 Bellaire Blvd.


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Actually its called Braeswood Place and it's a very nice established community with many ranch style homes still standing. Although closer to the bayou there are some new homes with some more "interesting" architecture. I has a YMCA and Poe and Pershing schools right in the center of the nieghborhood so it is excellent for children.

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Generally nice neighborhood. You may want to also look south of Braeswood down to the South Loop. There are some nice neighborhoods there, but less so as you approach Main or Stella Link. Braes Heights has been very proactive in improving the area. At one point the YMCA was some terrible apartments that really hurt the neighborhood. Braes Heights has some nice mid-centuries. There's probably some teardown activity however.

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Actually, Twain Elementary School is located in Braeswood. Poe is in Boulevard Oaks.

Twain has been rebuilt and is now being landscaped. Pershing will be rebuilt too. The other zoning choice, Pin Oak Middle School, was built in 2002.

Braes Heights is zoned to Twain Elementary School, Pershing Middle School (with Pin Oak Middle School as an option), and Lamar High School.

Again - zoned schools:

* Twain Elementary School ( http://es.houstonisd.org/marktwaines/ or http://www.marktwainpto.org/)

* Pershing Middle School ( http://www.pershingms.org) or Pin Oak Middle School ( http://www.pinoak.us)

* Lamar High School ( http://hs.houstonisd.org/lamarhs/)

Profiles:

* http://dept.houstonisd.org/profiles/Twain_ES.pdf

* http://dept.houstonisd.org/profiles/Pershing_MS.pdf

* http://dept.houstonisd.org/profiles/PinOak_MS.pdf

* http://dept.houstonisd.org/profiles/Lamar_HS.pdf

Edited by VicMan
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  • 2 months later...

Been looking in the area and its crazy! The builders are buying everything and driving the prices up. I noticed that they are redoing all the streets and sewer lines, which is great. Don't know if it will fix the flooding but it definitely makes the neighborhood look nicer. Lots of new construction, most McMansions but a few contemporaries hidden here and there. There is a nice one on Gramercy right behind the Shell research campus. Looks like a mini West U but still very mixed income.

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braes heights is becoming depressing :(

i noticed alot of the sewer lines were replaced (upgraded?) near another tract where these larger, more expensive, stucco, box-like houses were built...is it just a coincidence, or do these people with five bathrooms actually produce more crap? :D

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  • 8 months later...

They finally finished Phase 1 of the storm sewer upgrade/street repave and it looks great! I can see how property values are going to go up with the new streets/curbs and new sidewalks. Has that fresh concrete look to it. Surprisingly, part of Phase 1 includes Knollwood, just south of Braes Bayou. I guess it was originally part of Braes Heights. The second Phase is on Academy. Don't know when that's going to start though. Supposedly going out to bid this year.

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  • 3 months later...
Bought some property in Braes Heights, actually in Ayshire. Hope to do something with it.

what type of house did you end up purchasing?

There is a nice one on Gramercy right behind the Shell research campus.

i *think* you were writing about the Houck house (streamline style).

if so, it's long gone, and the land has been subdivided and put up FSBO

Edited by sevfiv
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Tear down.

nice.

there were a few houses recently sold in ayrshire - i think on falkirk and drummond, maybe merrick, and prestwick that might get what they least deserve soon.

the prestwick home looked kinda neat - the demolition permit has already been issued, though :(

hr1905721-8.jpg

Edited by sevfiv
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  • 1 year later...

The new Braes Heights fire station is finally going up. And from the look of the steel frame, its very contemporary. I'm glad. We don't need another stupid spanish colonial piece of crap life fire station 1. Its on Stella Link just south of Bellaire across from Pershing. That corridor is really shaping up to be a nice neighborhood. Only a few run down businesses remain.

Nevermind, here is the rendering, its not as contemporary as I had imagined. Another fake red brick fire station. Looks like David Weekly designed it. Terrible.

station37architect.jpg

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The old station may be small and a little blah, but maybe the rendering will be like the site says: "The actual station may not appear exactly like this graphic."

Another fire station I like is #33 on Fannin at Braeswood - the one HFD sold/abandoned to build the new one a little ways down the road. Bleh.

I'll start a new topic on this one though:

http://www.houstonarchitecture.info/haif/i...showtopic=19495

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I would think that the design would blend with the Library, YMCA and the Alzheimer Day Care Center, as well as Pershing. Certainly, they wouldn't build something that stuck out like a sore thumb.

When HFD responded to a false fire alarm at my house one time, one fireman told me that this station was one of the few remaining 'neighborhood' fire stations.

Edited by rsb320
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Well it's sure nicer than the fire house it's replacing. What a dump. I knew firefighters that worked there and the old station 33 and they were a disgrace. Bum's living in downtown missions had better living conditions than those firefighters.

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Pershing is very contemporary. The Y is an abomination Spanish colonial, complete with red tile roof. The Mcgovern Library is a beautiful piece of architecture, with a butterfly roof, that pays homage to all the mid century modern houses that surrounds it.

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What did they mean by that?

I'm guessing he meant that many of the smaller stations consolidated to larger stations, serving larger areas and located on major thoroughfares. I'm curious when the new station is built and occupied, if it will have a larger area of protection.

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  • 2 weeks later...

When they say the neighborhood fire stations are disappearing they're referring to a trend in fire station placement and design. In the 1910s, '20s, and '30s it was common in cities to build bungalow fire stations that blended in with the neighborhood. Often the bays that held the engines and trucks looked just like slightly oversized garages. Austin was and is king of this design in Texas, and many of their fire stations are still bungalow style.

An example:

sta10.jpg

Houston didn't get into this style so heavily, but they did and do have a lot of stations built on standard-sized lots within neighborhoods, 37's (Braes Heights) being a perfect example.

Fire stations, like fire apparatus, have gotten much bigger in the last couple of decades and no longer fit on regular lots. Two major drivers are truck sizes and NFPA standards. The National Fire Protection Association standard on station construction now forbids back-in bays, requiring a drive allowing vehicles to pull through the station. NFPA standards now forbid poles so new two-storey stations have all but disappeared. Trucks are a lot bigger too; here are two Baytown engines, one from 1947 and one from 2008:

IMG_3863.JPG

Before the '40s trucks were even smaller, about the size of full-size pickups of today. Southside Place's Fire Truck Park has raped converted Southside's first fire engine into playground equipment, but you can still see the size difference. This is a 1936 Seagrave Suburbanite on a REO chassis:

firetruck.jpg

So a lot of these stations that were built up into the '50s could stand to be a lot smaller. Now they have to be so big that they can't fit on standard lots and the trucks are so heavy that many residential streets can't handle them. As a consequence they have to move out onto major thoroughfares in commercial areas. Thirty-seven's is a perfect example.

Edited by FIREhat
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