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Croberts

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Everything posted by Croberts

  1. I worked plays at the Houston Music Theater (theater in the round, Sharpstown) in the early 1970s, doing sets and lights. I believe it was an organization set up by Chris Wilson, but I do not remember the name of the theater,company We did childrens plays and there were also concerts, I remember a Moody Blues concert.
  2. Second empire was popularized in the US by the building of the Philadelphia city hall, on the citys central square. It became the model for the central square courthouse across the nation. We have several in Texas, such as Lampasas.They were called in the midwest General Grant courthouses, because they were popular in the building boom of the 1870s, and the Texas ones come in about the time the carpetbagger railroads arrive after the civilwar. Consequently, it was not a popular style, and I agree that Houston would have had very few, if any. perhaps some in San Antonio or Dallas or even Fort Worth. The style mainly shows up in courthouses, and most of them are mediocre examples of the style.
  3. In fact, one of the first cases tried under the fair housing act was on Arboles street in about 1969-1971. A realty company told a neighborhood group that if they did not pool their money and buy a house, a black family would close on it the next day. They purchased it and were subsequently sued for discriminatory housing practices.
  4. Here is the 1964 photo-with an enlargement of the end with the car. This was just north of Main and just west of Fondren. Nothing survived by the 1970s and there is no sign of it on google earth.You can see the shadow of the elevated trackway, the rail and posts that hold it up. The car straddles a steel beam on a concrete wall, with tire trackways on either side. I remember holding the beam and walking up the trackway till we were at the full height of the trackway.I remember driving down main and looking out the window at the trackway. It was very close to Main, sitting on a prairie.
  5. I used to have an album on here with these in it, but it seems gone now. Here is is from the 1964 image, which I posted on Facebook. The B+W image shows the whole thing, the yellow and brown is a zoomin of the monoral car. Note that this never was associated with the arrowhead park one, which hung under the rail ( I once thought the two were connected.) It straddled the rail, like the one at Disney world.
  6. I just saw the post about red elementary school...this must be the one I remember, 6 blocks away.
  7. I lived on Redstart street, east of Post Oak, 4700 block, I believe. I used to climb up on our swingset in the backyard to watch what we called the "friday noon whistle" which was a yellow-orange, rotating siren. I thought it was at a fire station, but I do not see the location today on google earth. I could see it rotating. This would have been 57-59.
  8. Today, while driving through Palm Beach Gardens in Palm Beach County, florida, I encounted a gingerbread house. Built in the early sixties to early seventies, this one had the same facade: faux board and batten siding on the upper portion of a first floor room with a wooden gable (rest of the house was brick). It had the faux diamond shaped windows. Makes me think an article in a trade magazine about making a ranch style distinctively different must have inspired both. I only saw one, but it was in the same kind of development where a builder would buy a lot on a street, and each house could have a different builder. I will look for more.
  9. An old way of copy writing street maps was to add short streets that do not exist. Usually these are dead ends, short extensions of existing streets, or short streets connecting two other streets. Sometimes they would be given fake names, sometimes not due to the short length.
  10. An old way of copy writing street maps was to add short streets that do not exist. Usually these are dead ends, short extensions of existing streets, or short streets connecting two other streets. Sometimes they would be given fake names, sometimes not due to the short length.
  11. So there were at least two monorails on S. Main. The Fondren road monorail, just west of Fondren and north of Main. The car road on top of the rail. This is clear on the 1964 aerial photograph. Then there was the Arrowhead Park monorail, which hung down from the rail. The two could never have connected, I was wrong about that. they were totally different systems, one part of "Space City" that never got implemented.
  12. So there may have been two futurist graphics designers that were influenced by what I call the future in ruins. And probably more. We climbed up the trackway from the ground, on the 1964 aerial photo discussed above, you can see the car parked at the east end at ground level. Then the trackway rises,you can see its shadow cast by the morning sun. It looks today and felt then like it was more than 20 feet high. We rode our bikes there, and I remember riding through the grass.It was in 64 or 65, and I was 11 or 12. And this was after years of passing the long dead end elevated trackway on the way to richmond, always asking my parent about it. I heard the story that some investor went broke trying to convince the city that this was a good idea. What I have learned since about monorails is that the can only carry small numbers of people relative to surface trackways, and yet any transit way will stimulate land use intensification, so they are not cost effective.
  13. The monorail that was just west of Fondren and just south of main had rubber tires, and rode on a central rail. The car sat on top of the rail, with wheels on either side. I remember climbing the long track, hanging precariously onto the I-Beam that was the central rail, There was a car parked at the far elevated end of the trackway, you can see it in that historical photo. The other Houston monorails hung down from the track, this one road on top.
  14. What I remember about them is they were ranchers with board and batten looking siding, and ornamental fake shutters that had jigsawed shapes like hearts in them. In westbury at the time, construction companies would by several lots, and apparently one builder made about half a block of these houses. Pull off the trim and they are the same as the other houses on the street. Everyone called them Gingerbread houses though, because of the extra work on the facade trim.
  15. While it was a Houston based chain, they were as far north as Texarkana. They seemed the main chain in the period 50s-70s. The one in Westbury had a hatch on the roof that was unlocked, and I remember people who worked there would leave the A frame ladder under the hatch, so that they could break in at night and steal beer and wine.
  16. I have started a gallery of historical maps and aerial photographs of Westbury. I will add to it when I get a chance. To see it, go to my page, click the gallery tab, the buttons at the top will let you zoom in, see comments (none except mine yet) and download.
  17. I started a gallery of maps and interpretations of Historic Westbury

  18. Just getting back to this forum, after many months absence. Yes, that is it,notice the car sits astride the rail, rather than hangs under. So this could not have been meant to connect to the arrowhead park one, as I supposed earlier. This is the only photo I have seen of it! When I was there, it was in the middle of what appeared to be an abandoned un-mowed prairie. I though it very strange, seeing the future in ruins. The guy that I went there with (5th grade, 1964) became a graphic artist, and some of his best works are images of Houston freeways in ruins, rusting, decayed and covered with vines. I have always wondered if this memory stuck with him as well.
  19. My urban geography class goes online next week for the first time.

    1. Croberts

      Croberts

      Using information I first learned about through HAIF, I expanded lectures, and spent a full week on Freedman's town, from its founding to its demise, including animated aerial photographs and satellite imagery of the changes, ending with the results of historic preservation efforts to save the brick streets.

    2. Croberts

      Croberts

      Through research and discussions on haif I was able to add historic maps, and a full weeks material and discussion on revitalization, historic preservation, low income housing and the forth ward.

  20. This is great stuff, you are documenting the most important architectural history of Houston. Do you have a sense of when he began building modern styles? The earliest date I saw was from the late 40s. Was he building modern houses at the same time or before the DeMenil house?
  21. (Tom Williams)Very well put. I had the same experience, and also it stimulated my interest in architecture. Now I teach an upper division college course on the American Cultural Landscape, with an emphasis on vernacular architecture, and it started with the contrast between tacky ranches (not the tasteful mods) and the european influence square. We have many new urbanist projects that attempt a similar thing here in south Florida, but none of them have the feel, the smell, the magic of that amazing collection of independent craftsmen and shops. I cant imagine how such a collection could have come together. And starting wednesday, I teach my first graduate historical preservation course, with field trips to St. Augustine, Savannah and Charleston, and local hoefully, some south florida building documentations for HABS and the national register. I shall start with a discussion of Westbury Square as a "new urbanist, pedestrian oriented development" and go through the decline to the present state. Someone should document the square for the Historic American Buildings Survey. Thats typically where historical tear downs end up as measured drawing and photographs and other details.
  22. I was told that the rose garden was there in the thirties. My grandfather had a wreck there. Folkore that I heard in the 1960s was that the fountains were put in at public expense but were actuall the cooling mechanism for the Warwick.
  23. When we went to see movies that were boring to children, I remember watching the red blinking SAGE department store sign on Hillcroft. I also remember it being nicer in the snack bar and enjoying the playground.
  24. Urban planning would control the mix. There would still be low income apartments in every neighborhood but not in the densities that undermine communities.
  25. Cargo Houston, which also sold fillmore and Avalon posters. I had forgotten about Gramaphonics
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