Courtlandt Manor: Townhomes At 411 Lovett Blvd.

[Dakota79]

This one really surprises me. It was such a handsome house. I guess the land values trump again. Could've been a cool restaurant or something.

From Swamplot:

http://swamplot.com/new-owners-tearing-down-first-houston-home-ever-to-have-central-air-conditioning-putting-in-most-recent-homes-ever-to-have-central-air-conditioning/2014-02-28/#comment-1263122

[H-Town Man]

That something as barbaric as this can happen shows that our preservation laws aren't strong enough. We need a landmark ordinance that can preserve buildings without owner consent. It's nice to think that you can trust people to save beautiful buildings that make the whole city better, but you just can't.

 

[infinite_jim]

It was fake British architecture when it was built and it'll be fake British architecture in the roll off.

[H-Town Man]

It was fake British architecture when it was built and it'll be fake British architecture in the roll off.

Actually it's just architecture, with British influences. And the British architecture has classical influences. Pretty much all architecture has influences from some earlier style.

[Ross]

That something as barbaric as this can happen shows that our preservation laws aren't strong enough. We need a landmark ordinance that can preserve buildings without owner consent. It's nice to think that you can trust people to save beautiful buildings that make the whole city better, but you just can't.

 

Why would anyone ever think it's OK to tell a property owner that the rest of society has more right to that property than the owner? That's just vile.

[HoustonMidtown]

That something as barbaric as this can happen shows that our preservation laws aren't strong enough. We need a landmark ordinance that can preserve buildings without owner consent. It's nice to think that you can trust people to save beautiful buildings that make the whole city better, but you just can't.

 

 

I guess you should have bought it.....otherwise, why should you (or an ordinance) have a say in what an owner can or can't do to their property

[infinite_jim]

:cough: Courtland Pl. :cough:

[Texasota]

Property Rights above all! Don't let The Man tell you what you can do with your property!

 

I run a combination brothel/childcare center/ meth lab in an abandoned gas station I just purchased, and I'll be damned if I let them gub'ment folks tell me I can't.

 

[luciaphile]

Actually it's just architecture, with British influences. And the British architecture has classical influences. Pretty much all architecture has influences from some earlier style.

 

I found that post perplexing, too.

But I would be happy to hear, from an architecture maven, a précis of the notion of "real" versus "fake." Does a building have to be located very precisely in space and time to qualify as real?

 

My first encounter with the idea of real was the story of the Velveteen Rabbit, and I guess I'm still struggling with it.

Was he not real because he was not yet loved? As an unlovable child I found that troubling; it seemed a very tenuous basis for existence.

Was he still less real because he was made of velveteen rather than costlier velvet? (I would probably have been wearing polyester, so I had to work that out about the velvet.)

Or was he not real because he was a secondary image of something else? How many true originals are there?

Or was it because the model was a living rabbit?

 

Are houses made of wood fakes of the trees we came down from? Are houses made of rock fakes of caves?

 

And "rights": what is their reality? Do they precede the idea of property, like a physical constant? When they are violated at the point of a gun, are they still real in theory? But what was the use of them then, if they break down so easily?

If they are just a useful mutually-agreed-upon fiction, to what do they owe their existence? Do they spring from culture, in fact a particular culture? If the latter, is it possible that threats to the culture might threaten these magical property rights, or any "rights"?

[H-Town Man]

Why would anyone ever think it's OK to tell a property owner that the rest of society has more right to that property than the owner? That's just vile.

 

 

I guess you should have bought it.....otherwise, why should you (or an ordinance) have a say in what an owner can or can't do to their property

 

This discussion has been had plenty of times on here. The fact is we have established in this country that such laws are constitutional, and if people are still backward enough to tear houses like this down, I say full steam ahead.

[trymahjong]

This one really surprises me. It was such a handsome house. I guess the land values trump again. Could've been a cool restaurant or something.

"Or something"

Maybe shares could have been sold for shared ownership and multiple people could have lived there private bedrooms but shared living, kitchen , laundry. Is that viable? Is that an alternative to demolition and same ole same ole townhomes? Are there developers for that sort of concept?

I hate to see a useable building torn down.

[Texasota]

That might be difficult considering the cost of the land. Of course, it's a double lot, so they could have subdivided and put up high-density townhouses or apartments without tearing down this house.

[samagon]

This discussion has been had plenty of times on here. The fact is we have established in this country that such laws are constitutional, and if people are still backward enough to tear houses like this down, I say full steam ahead.

 

I typically find more fault in the seller for not putting some form or protection on the house prior to sale.

 

They didn't do it because they were as greedy as the developer and wanted to maximize their profits.

 

The developer may be a heartless B because he just sees the dollars and cents, not the hearts and wants of the neighbors who thought of the house as a nice structure.

 

The seller is more of a heartless B, typically they know exactly what the house means to their neighbors, but they just suppress that and start counting the dollars and cents.

[Montrose1100]

It's a cute house but just because it was the first to be air-conned doesn't merit saving it. 

[Subdude]

It was fake British architecture when it was built and it'll be fake British architecture in the roll off.

 

I'm not seeing British influence here at all.  More like Southern Colonial Revival - very typical for the period.  I love the sleeping porch.  Anyway very elegant.  I'll be sorry to see it go.  

 

 

 

And "rights": what is their reality? Do they precede the idea of property, like a physical constant?

 

 

 

 why should you (or an ordinance) have a say in what an owner can or can't do to their property

 

There is the idea of natural rights like life, liberty and the pursuit etc. that we might presume to pre-exist in a moral sense and which we all share.  However, I don't think "property rights" are considered to fall within that category. Property and other legal rights are defined and extended by the legal system; they don't have any independent free-floating pre-existence.  In other words, property rights are what the law says they are - no more and no less - and it is very rare that property rights are unconstrained to the point where it is a given that owners can do whatever they wish with real property.  I always find it odd when people conjure up "rights" that don't exist in law.

 

 

[infinite_jim]

This is the problem with historical preservation. There's simply no consensus about equal architectural standards across times and styles to establish much greater good for the community. You like "southern plantations", I like shipping containers and Brutalism. To me, this is a typical example of southern neo-georgian and with Courtland Place in such close proximity AND urban town-homes across the street it was a good candidate for boundary-edge architecture. To me, we should not preserve anything younger than 100 years unless it was a public bldg that was meant to last. And some things are built to last and other things are to raise the new generation in. The standards are determined by the precision in scale of the drawings exacted to the finishes. A hundred year bldg is exacted to the 1/64" precision; a fifty year bldg to 1/32", etc.

 

I say live and let live on this one; 10 to 15 family units will be getting a new home in the heart of Montrose. I guess that means nothing to people who want to be able to drive around the city and gawk at houses like they are museum pieces. 

[luciaphile]

The swamplot posting, though it may be mistaken, indicates the house was built in 1906.

 

I grew up in a part of Houston where every building dated from the same couple of decades. Upon moving to another city, the novelty factor of older buildings (most often in tandem with very old trees) immediately coverted me into an avid pedestrian. 

I wouldn't be overly concerned about the judgment an architectural historian would render on a given house. To leave anything of significance to academics to decide is pretty much a category mistake.

 

Relics are everywhere treasured; I do think the word "historical" does more harm than good, as it invites pedantic attack. "This is a fine example of old Houston" is of course sufficient justification for the desire (no worries, it's completely toothless!) to see this house saved.

But, to engage for a moment: the "let's not preserve anything because really, we have no history, because George Washington didn't sleep here" argument I've seen on swamplot is more interesting than it deserves to be; it confusingly seems to presuppose that we will have no history going forward, either, or that we are outside of the stream of humanity.

As if, what has happened in southeast Texas the last hundred years has not been felt all around the globe. Or that history only happened east of the Mississippi or is memorialized in Longfellow poems, and somber, sweetly pretty battlefields.

The idea that preservation, in a city of hundreds of square miles, is the enemy of affordable housing is risible, but not unexpected. I have noticed that in Austin, affordability is being cynically trotted out to justify all manner of unpopular wholesale changes; and manifests also in an effort to strip owners of protected houses of the tax break they receive in token return for the expense of maintaining an older structure. {I think the affordability trope is "Austin, you're wearing a sheet!" updated for the twenty-teens. Time was, whenever any sort of environmental initiative came up, the Chamber of Commerce folks would egg on the Eastside activists to decry it (insert any random thing, like water-quality) as racist. In fact, they won the day to some extent, successfully coupling ridiculous, unrelated things. They managed to routinely suggest that blacks and Hispanics never swim at Barton Springs, or enjoy parkland or clean water, or care about endangered species -- without themselves being accused of racism.  Quite the magic trick. The enviros, their minds blown by this confusing turn in the dialogue, tended to submit. It echoes still, in the new expanded single-member-district city council that will kill the goose and forcefeed it identity politics from now on.}  

 

Just know that, where I live, if the home survived as late as 1985 (a big if), then it would likely have received historic protection; if not, and the owner (typically, this role is played by a newbie real estate investor in town) hoped to get away with razing it, he would be well aware that he was gambling that the community would not be paying attention.

We'd still get the $400,000 townhouses - they would be built next door.
The house would remain, probably as a law office, as lawyers seem to like those classical proportions.

The process would be perfectly "predictable" for all concerned, and most of all, whether at the time or in restrospect, not really a big deal.

 

And when the Lovett house is torn down: well. something that's been done tens of thousands of times in Texas towns (though, usually, what you got instead was a fast-food restaurant, soon defunct, on the main street) cannot at this point be described as a big deal, either. But be candid, Houston chooses that path as a marketing tool -  "We're freewheeling!": for no other reason. It may be canny, though it's almost certainly unneeded. Houston's really not that fragile.

 

[H-Town Man]

I'm not seeing British influence here at all. More like Southern Colonial Revival - very typical for the period. I love the sleeping porch. Anyway very elegant. I'll be sorry to see it go.

There is the idea of natural rights like life, liberty and the pursuit etc. that we might presume to pre-exist in a moral sense and which we all share. However, I don't think "property rights" are considered to fall within that category. Property and other legal rights are defined and extended by the legal system; they don't have any independent free-floating pre-existence. In other words, property rights are what the law says they are - no more and no less - and it is very rare that property rights are unconstrained to the point where it is a given that owners can do whatever they wish with real property. I always find it odd when people conjure up "rights" that don't exist in law.

Well, there is a British-American tradition wherein property rights are fundamental to civil society; John Locke is the most famous exponent of it, and it has been important in staving off oppression in ways that people in continental Europe and elsewhere did not enjoy. Jefferson's "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" originated from Locke's "life, liberty, and the right to own property."

That being said, property rights have seldom been seen as absolute, and historic preservation laws have a long history within this tradition.

[H-Town Man]

This is the problem with historical preservation. There's simply no consensus about equal architectural standards across times and styles to establish much greater good for the community. You like "southern plantations", I like shipping containers and Brutalism. To me, this is a typical example of southern neo-georgian and with Courtland Place in such close proximity AND urban town-homes across the street it was a good candidate for boundary-edge architecture. To me, we should not preserve anything younger than 100 years unless it was a public bldg that was meant to last. And some things are built to last and other things are to raise the new generation in. The standards are determined by the precision in scale of the drawings exacted to the finishes. A hundred year bldg is exacted to the 1/64" precision; a fifty year bldg to 1/32", etc.

I say live and let live on this one; 10 to 15 family units will be getting a new home in the heart of Montrose. I guess that means nothing to people who want to be able to drive around the city and gawk at houses like they are museum pieces.

No absolute consensus, but there is broad and overlapping consensus. For example, in New York City, people who cherish the Seagram building probably don't love Grand Central Station and vice versa, but both groups can agree that the other building is valuable to those who value it, and thus support each other in preserving both.

[trymahjong]

No absolute consensus, but there is broad and overlapping consensus. For example, in New York City, people who cherish the Seagram building probably don't love Grand Central Station and vice versa, but both groups can agree that the other building is valuable to those who value it, and thus support each other in preserving both.

 

geeeeeeeeeeeee this may be the consensus  I was looking for-- overlapping

 

I admit, I don't always understand why some buildings are cherished others reviled.

 

 But I understand, why I cherish this building-- I walk by it almost daily, it "sets" well within the neighborhood. It was kept up and looked nice during all seasons. I won't be able to see many buildings like this. I show it off to visitors. It's part of a Historical walking tour. Many people living in this neighborhood value this building-- I guess I can let go of it in this location-- if the building could be saved-- build the townhomes on the valuable property  sure-- but can't the building be saved somehow.

 

[trymahjong]

In this mornings Chronicle.

http://www.chron.com/opinion/outlook/article/Pappas-Seale-Houston-s-iconic-structures-deserve-5300068.php

As someone living in this area, I can testify how very difficult it is to get Historic Designation---for a myriad of reasons.So perhaps giving some sort of financial incentive to developers to "think outside the box" and preserve the structure but also add on into it with their townhomes etc. Might be a more palable solution?

I've seen something sort of similar in England, where the old "Manor is reconfigured for apartments and the townhomes attached and the outside architecture is similar so it all looks like a "village". It would be nice if this could happen.

[rsb320]

This most recently housed and IT firm.  The only thing that remains now is the elevator shaft.  So sad to see this one go.

[rsb320]

The elevator shaft is gone today.

[trymahjong]

KPFT is suppose to be interviewing David Bush with Preservation Houston concerning this --

[HoustonMidtown]

KPFT is suppose to be interviewing David Bush with Preservation Houston concerning this --

These are the town homes being built here...

 

Courtlandt Manor

 

http://swamplot.com/announcing-the-14-townhomes-ready-to-replace-the-recently-renovated-lovett-blvd-mansion-ripped-down-in-march/2014-06-23/

 

[HoustonMidtown]

These are the town homes being built here...

 

Courtlandt Manor

 

http://swamplot.com/announcing-the-14-townhomes-ready-to-replace-the-recently-renovated-lovett-blvd-mansion-ripped-down-in-march/2014-06-23/

 

courtlandt-manor-rendering.jpg

 

Development website:

 

http://trulium4.us

[houblu]

http://houston.culturemap.com/news/real-estate/07-08-14-new-english-manor-inspired-townhouses-replace-historic-demolished-houston-mansion/

[NenaE]

If it has to go the townhouse way... then I wish the developers would have considered the original house design in their new plans. The old home could have been incorporated, to respect the original architect's vision. The grounds are beautiful... too bad that couldn't be considered, as well. 

 

 

 

 

[hindesky]

Couldn't find this topic, merge it if needed.

 

 

 

[LarryDierker]

I was curious about this. thanks.

 

 

old thread discussing it.

http://www.houstonarchitecture.com/haif/topic/29830-411-lovett-blvd-being-torn-down/