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editor

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Posts posted by editor

  1. 13 hours ago, 004n063 said:

    I think it's pretty huge for first-time or infrequent transit users. It was the lowest-hanging fruit for METRO, but it was an important one to grab. Hope it applies to the reimagined bikeshare as well. 

    You are correct.  Every time there's a big event, I see tourists clustered around the awful Q-Card machines trying to figure out what to do.  The process is absurd.

    The key is for Metro to let people other than current Metro users know about the tap-to-pay phone integration.  On iPhone, you have to go into Settings to activate it.  I don't think infrequent transit users know that.

    • Like 1
  2. I'd avoid using heights from either Skyscraperpage or Emporis.  As @Montrose1100 noted, the information is partly or mostly crowdsourced, and therefore inconsistent in its reliability.  The same is true for Wikipedia, for the same reasons.

    Notably, even architecture firm web sites can sometimes be wrong.  This is because the web sites are often outsourced to marketing companies, or simply not updated regularly because architecture firms have more important things to do than update web sites.

    HAIF's sister sites used to use building permits whenever possible for building heights.  In cities like Chicago, building height changes of even a couple of feet require city approval, and the information is readily available online.  I don't know if Houston has anything similar.

    FAA records are usually good, but can be hard to find, and only cover the tallest structures.

    I consider The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat reliable.  When new buildings go up, sometimes it actually sends people onto the roof to measure them.  You can see a Houston list here.   The problem with CTBUH is that to get at all of the information, you have to be a member.

    For older buildings, historic fire insurance maps can be useful.  The Library of Congress has a number of them online.  Here's the ones available for Houston.

    For buildings on the National Registry of Historic Places, the heights are often listed in the nominating documents, which are usually online, especially if the nomination was in recent years.

    Federal government office building heights can sometimes be found in the documents of the General Services Administration.  The feds hold onto buildings for a long time, so they are often renovated, and that's one of the opportunities for documentation to be created.

    All of this information used to be on towrs.com, but I closed that a few years ago.  I would like to revive it some day, and I still own the domain, but I simply don't have the time to do it.

     

    • Thanks 1
  3. 18 hours ago, Houston19514 said:

    Fun pictures.  I'm guess they must have relocated since you visited them.

    Yeah. It looks like they moved a couple of blocks away to 30 West Monroe. 

    It's fitting, I guess. That's the former Inland Steel building, and something of a shrine for skyscraper architects. 
     

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inland_Steel_Building
     

    I've had more than one architect tell me they wished they could move there. 

  4. Designed by AS+GG.

    When I lived in Chicago, I was friendly with a lot of the big-name global architecture firms, and spent a bit of time in AS+GG's offices, so I dug up some pictures I took.

    Adrian Smith Gordon Gill office - Chicago, Illinois - October, 2011 - 032.jpg

    When you design buildings on the scale of AS+GG, building a regular scale model doesn't give you the detail needed to understand the building the way you need to, so you have to build them extra large.  Some of AS+GG's models are seven feet tall. 

    Here's its Burj Kahlifa model, which is what became the Burj Dubai:

    Adrian Smith Gordon Gill office - Chicago, Illinois - October, 2011 - 002.jpg

    I don't remember her name, but she's explaining the Jeddah Tower.

    Adrian Smith Gordon Gill office - Chicago, Illinois - October, 2011 - 008.jpg

     

    I believe these are all Jeddah Tower renderings on the wall.

    Adrian Smith Gordon Gill office - Chicago, Illinois - October, 2011 - 010.jpgAdrian Smith Gordon Gill office - Chicago, Illinois - October, 2011 - 011.jpgAdrian Smith Gordon Gill office - Chicago, Illinois - October, 2011 - 012.jpg

     

    I was into architecture models at the time, so I took a lot of pictures of the models around the office:

    Adrian Smith Gordon Gill office - Chicago, Illinois - October, 2011 - 020.jpg

    Adrian Smith Gordon Gill office - Chicago, Illinois - October, 2011 - 022.jpg

    Adrian Smith Gordon Gill office - Chicago, Illinois - October, 2011 - 023.jpg

    Adrian Smith Gordon Gill office - Chicago, Illinois - October, 2011 - 024.jpg

    Adrian Smith Gordon Gill office - Chicago, Illinois - October, 2011 - 025.jpg

     

    This is a bunch of options AS+GG came up with for one tower.  I don't remember which version got built.

    Adrian Smith Gordon Gill office - Chicago, Illinois - October, 2011 - 029.jpg

     

    And because creative people thrive in a creative environment, there's a piano in the lobby for lubricating the brain cells:

    Adrian Smith Gordon Gill office - Chicago, Illinois - October, 2011 - 001a.jpg

    The lobby also opens onto a private rooftop garden about 25 stories above the street.

     

    • Like 6
  5. 6 hours ago, thedistrict84 said:

    That’s against City ordinance and should be reported so it can be enforced. People who block sidewalks with their cars are the worst. 

    I've seen people reporting blocked sidewalks in the city's 311 app.  I'm sometimes tempted to do the same since more often than not, when I walk past the night club on McGowen and Travis during the day, it has trucks and sometimes construction equipment parked all over the sidewalk.

    But considering how quickly the city responds to 911 calls, I imagine by the time a 311 complaint about a blocked sidewalk was addressed, the offender would be long gone.

    • Like 1
  6. On 9/22/2023 at 11:10 PM, Highrise Tower said:

    I'm confused. Which St. Joseph's Hospital building is this? It's beautiful!

    Yeah, it's a bit confusing.

    The post card published in Houston Post Cards shows a very different building for the 1866-1894 Saint Joseph's Infirmary.  It also states that while two nuns died in the fire, that the blaze only partially burned the campus.  It wasn't destroyed, according to the book.

    It also shows the 1919 Saint Joseph's Infirmary, so I wonder if either your photo, or the one in the book, is actually where it operated from between 1894 and 1919.

    • Like 1
  7. On 9/24/2023 at 10:31 PM, texan said:

    The Wharves Board of Trustees will also be considering a CMAR contract at Tuesday's meeting for the fourth cruise terminal. There may be some drama here though as trustees have repeatedly delayed moving forward with the cruise terminal (and upgrades to an existing one) to chase a dream of additional cargo operations development despite cargo being on the decline in Galveston and tourism being on the rise (check the numbers in the agenda packet below and note Carnival's very recent plans to add another ship in Galveston).

    _09262023-482?packet=true

    Just this year Del Monte has announced its exit (this is where cruise terminal no. 4 will go) and now the port has negotiated an early contract termination with ADM with potential plans to demolish the grain facilities.

    https://www.galvnews.com/news/agri-giant-adm-agrees-to-cease-port-operations-terminate-lease/article_8ce271c3-7a9a-52ac-8763-6ddc9a407dca.html

    CMAR?

  8. On 9/25/2023 at 8:45 AM, wilcal said:

    The last time I asked METRO, the parking is going to be free. I just don't understand how METRO can justify spending tens of millions to provide free parking. 

    Considering there's a retail component, that seems like a good idea.

    People in Houston love free parking, and it will bring hundreds people past the stores each day.

     

    Slightly off topic, but I wish that more transit agencies America would take the development-funding business model seriously.  It's worked so successfully in so many other places from Singapore to Tokyo and elsewhere.

    If Metro has x acres of land for this project, build an apartment building on it, plus offices, and retail.  The money from the rents goes to fund Metro, and the buildings are a natural draw to bring people who live and work there to use the transit system.  Some of the largest real estate developments on the planet are owned by transit companies. 

    Bonus: That's less money the transit agency needs from tax payers.

    Who owns the World Trade Center in New York?  The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey — the same people who run the commuter trains and busses across the Hudson River.

    • Like 6
  9. 21 hours ago, Houston19514 said:

    That balance of course is what needs to be carefully considered.  It's easy to say, well, it won't add much to the cost, so it will be fine.  It's not a boogieman. It's a very real consequence of regulations and must be taken into account. As I said, every time another regulation is imposed, it adds a little bit more to the cost until one day, seemingly all of the sudden, few people can afford housing. 

    The same boogieman was raised when cities tried to mandate smoke detectors in apartment buildings.  They're only normal now because the insurance industry started raising rates on buildings that didn't have them.

    It's the whole "internalize the profit, externalize the cost/risk" play all over again.  

    If it costs a real estate developer an extra $10 to do something, is that cost passed on to the home buyer?  Absolutely.  If a real estate developer saves $10 doing something, is that savings passed on to the home buyer?  Absolutely not.  Let's not pretend that the real estate developers fighting this improvement are doing it out of the charity of their hearts.

    The people who benefit from curb cuts every six feet isn't the people who live in the neighborhood.  It's the people building and selling the homes, who don't have to live with the consequences.  

    • Like 1
  10. 10 hours ago, steve1363 said:

    he HSA is claiming that the NFL will not consider Houston again for another Super Bowl until something is done about the Astrodome.   I find this hard to believe and so does Commissioner Adrian Garcia.  I don't usually agree with him on much but in this case I think he is right to call BS on this assertion. 

    I'm with you.  If it's not in writing, it didn't happen.

     

    • Like 1
  11. On 9/15/2023 at 7:47 PM, Highrise Tower said:

    wow! I never knew there was an original Grand Central Station Depot designed by George Dickey.  I only knew of the Southern Pacific Lines Grand Central Station Depot that was designed by Wyatt C. Hedrick.

    I definitely like the original design more!

    This photo/drawing is dated 1890.

    89tnSnJ.jpg

    According to Houston Post Cards, that's the second of three train stations at that location.

    The first, pictured in the book, is more modest, though it had a massive train shed.  The book states that one you posted was built for $80,000.  That was torn down in the 1930's and replaced with what I think was the best design — Art deco, and very much like the 1940's Air Terminal.  That one was torn down in the 1960's to make way for the Post Office, which is now Post Houston.

    • Like 1
  12. On 9/18/2023 at 4:54 AM, IntheKnowHouston said:

    I'm not sure which neighborhood or area the properties are located. The parcels are near the Midtown border but outside of the Montrose border.

    I used to live a couple of blocks from this location, and we considered it Midtown.  The owners of the property marketed it that way, too.

    To us, Genesee Street was the Montrose/Midtown border.  But a lot of the neighborhood borders have gotten fuzzy in the last couple of decades.

    • Like 2
  13. On 9/21/2023 at 6:28 PM, Houston19514 said:

    I get the downside of streets full of driveways (although the negative impact on pedestrians could be at least party ameliorated by enforcing the law that bans blocking sidewalks). Just recognize that every additional regulation such as this adds to housing costs.

    The problem is that the "adds to housing costs" boogieman is brought up every time any new regulation is proposed, no matter how minor the cost.

    How much would this add to the cost of a house?  50¢?  A dollar?  Ten dollars?  Nobody ever says.

    Is the cost added to a single house more or less than the benefit delivered to the general public?

    • Like 1
    • Thanks 1
  14. On 9/22/2023 at 6:59 PM, Highrise Tower said:

    Found an elusive baseball diamond field on Fannin Street across from South Main Street from the 1920s/1930s. Very cool.  Never knew about this! The first diamond field in the Texas Medical Center? Besides the Rice field across the street of course.

    Anyone know what this field was called? Cool history here!

    First spotted this field on the Houston Gargoyle Magazine map dated May 1, 1932, with the map called Houston's Cradle of Culture & Environs.

    Might be this:

    67693F13-4E7D-4A05-84B0-831B88BBF649_1_105_c.jpg

    • Like 4
  15. BCC113A2-8512-4FAA-8CBA-14BFA5FEAA0D_1_105_c.jpg

     

    9B985AEF-9234-4247-9D4B-AD4EC48FD570_1_105_c.jpg

     

    LEGACY
    by Bimbo Adenugba

    Houston is always looking to improve, for today and tomorrow.

    "Legacy" is a mural that focuses on the essential task before us in providing a sustainable planet to future generations. This mural was inspired by the 17 sustainable development goals (SD's) adopted by the United Nations, designed to provide a blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet now and into the future. Hear the United Nations Global Compact (UNG) tell you more about the SDG'S, in the app "Behind The Wall".

    This mural, created by artist Bimbo Adenugba and curated by Street Art for Mankind (SAM), pays tribute to the legacy of native Americans in our region, featuring the daughter of a local indigenous tribe. The fireflies and roses symbolize hope and nature, the scale symbolizes justice, and the apple and glass symbolize access to food and clean water for all.

    The piece is part of the Big Art. Bigger Change. project produced in October 2022 in Downtown Houston. It was made possible thanks to the drive and generous support of the Houston Downtown Management District and TotalEnergies. Special thanks to Harris County for offering their wall.

    • Like 2
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