Purdueenginerd

Went to King's Bierhaus a few weeks ago and was pretty disappointed. The food quality was never great (in my opinion), but felt distinctly like it had deteriorated.

I would reach out to Housing Contractors first, smaller architectural firms, and structural engineering firms. My opinion is the light-gage framing has some obvious advantages over wood framing in this part of the country but that takes convincing architects who've had same standard details for 20+ years. My own home battles with termites and water infiltration in my own home has made me want to design my next home with light-gage metal studs and structural steel, even if it is more expensive.

According to the permit posting, the new building is 2850 sq feet. -- This is what that would look like on the block.... so... yeah. Very Suburban development looks to be coming here.

I had the drawings for this building from a long ago project. Drawings for the original building were really nice for a 1 story building... was looking forward to see who would renovate it. Would have loved to work on it. They gave two options on the drawings for pre-cast or cast-in-place on those columns and I'm unsure which was built.

Pity.. Rather close to the other Chick-filet, but blah... hate that were probably going to get a low-density drive-thru.

Texas Tower was demolished to make way for 609 Main. That building started demo in 2013 and was I believe 22 stories or so... I think it was built in the 40s. In the 1944 Aerial photos of Houston, Texas Tower is the only highrise on the block bound by Texas, Main, Fanning, and Capitol. ing wa

Your starting point is to do an open records request for any drawings on the property. City of Houston has commercial permit drawings from 1974 to now, with some gaps borne from storms/hurricanes etc that took out plans before they were digitized. Looking at historical satellite photos. (see image below) the building first appears in 1953. It looks like there are no major expansion until the 1990s... though some of hte images are hard to discern. For residential, I think the records only go back until the early 1990s... so you might have luck there, especially if the architect of record in the 90's renovation provided demo-plans. The 2nd path, is to find out if the architect was somewhat prominent in the area. Sometimes his or her records are archived with archivists. City of houston has a few, universities, libraries, etc --- I will say thats not super common for a middle-class tier home from the 1950's. You can use the Houston Chronicle archives via the public library to see if you can find if the home had public bids from contractors just prior to its construction. You might be able to find the architect of record.... if youre lucky. 3rd path is for small buildings like that, you might be able to ascertain the rough layout with a site visit and documentation of where the roof framing sits relative to the foundation elements --- this can give you an idea where the original walls etc may have been. Especially if you see things consistent with 1950's era wood frame construction. I will say that single family homes in what would have been rural houston at time of construction --- are not easy to find original drawings for.

Okay, now theyre bracing the walls. with kickers every 15 feet or so... better than nothing I guess. So i guess theyre saving the walls so they can maintain the old setback rules. Similar to the old community bar in Midtown

The debates were also much more strict as to who gave them. Groups with public interest at heart and less financial incentive to be 'profitable'. There are numerous debates hosted by the League of Women Voters in the late 20th century which is a non-profit. the 2000 debates were hosted by "Commission on presidential debates", a subsidiary of League of Women Voters I believe. Around 2012, more for-profit debates started to arise in the primary campaigns and the absurdity of the debate increased. Infotainment ruled. All politicians lie and exaggerate, but I think we can agree that Trump brings it to a new level. The debates are bad-faith exercises for him that our press for 9 years has been unable to recognize or reconcile with. My personal opinion, at least since 2016 is that the debates have been pretty pointless for me.. An infotainment spectacle that reduces complex things to the lowest and simplest snip-bits. You can't possibly talk about tax policy or foreign affairs in 1 minute. Its taken me longer than 1 minute to type this paragraph. I enjoy the SNL Parodies of the debate more, with my personal favorite being the 2000 election Bush V Gore with Will Ferrell depicting Bush.

Wood framing, so long as its grown from agricultural forests is your most 'sustainable' product. But it also has poor longer term durability so there are trade offs involved in it. My next home is likely to be steel frame, which on the front end is more expensive both from a carbon standpoint and labor standpoint, but longer term will drive down the maintenance costs of the home as long as the building envelope is well detailed. A lot of architects in the residential market do not detail building envelope and do not hire a subconsultant for it which contributes to contractors contributing to problems on the structure shortly after construction. cool roofs are viable to control the heating/cooling costs of the building, but it would be better to design your roof for a solar array and have localized battery system. Increasing window thicknesses and R rating of the windows. Solar films on the windows increase reflectivity and lower energy costs. Sun shades over the window can also improve performance of the building if that can be incorporated into architectural design. The door between garage and house is often fire rated but should be well insulated as well, if the garage is an unconditioned space. Pay attention to the r-rating of that door. Increasing the stud wall thickness on the perimeter can allow you to get a better r-rating. Ive seen this in some buildings already. Using 2x6s instead of 2x4s allows you to put more insulation into the wall. Furthermore, putting a brick veneer with an air-gap could improve it even further. In the attic, insulate heavily over the joists to improve the r-rating. Provide radiant barriers in the attic. For single family homes, please hire a MEP engineer who actually designs the HVAC system... often times thats done poorly by the contractor in that market and you can get a poorly designed system thats inefficient. The duct work should migrate from the AHU into the building envelope/or conditioned space as soon as possible. running your duct work in the attic is a great way to lose a lot of energy in the system. Even better, if you can, put your air-handling unit inside the conditioned space. Install smart thermostats in the house. This is heavily user dependent but they can improve energy bills if the owner leaves the house on a regular basis. Evaluate heat pumps for the house (though I've yet to see this in Houston, would be curious if its viable here). Rain barrels are useful for the retention on the property and are beneficial for both water use purposes and flood control.

Dont understand this roof demo procedure. Are they leveling the building or preserving elements of it? if their goal is to demo the roof while preserving the exterior walls, I'm unimpressed with their lack of bracing/shoring.

The building utilized hollow-core panels for the flooring system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow-core_slab Which im not particularly fond of... but it contributed to some of the waterproofing difficulties with that building. Basically water would travel very easily once it got in.

Heights fire station on 12th street is also a wedding venue. Got married there in 2016 :)

Sampling minimum for strength shall be in accordance with ASTM A172 and ACI 318: Samples for preparing strength test specimens of each concrete mixture placed each day shall be taken in accor- dance with (1) through (3): (1) At least once a day. (2) At least once for each 150 yd3 of concrete. (3) At least once for each 5000 ft2 of surface area for slabs or walls. (b) On a given project, if total volume of concrete is such that frequency of testing would provide fewer than five strength tests for a given concrete mixture, strength test specimens shall be made from at least five randomly selected batches or from each batch if fewer than five batches are used. (c) If the total quantity of a given concrete mixture is less than 50 yd3, strength tests are not required if evidence of satisfactory strength is submitted to and approved by the building official. A standard concrete truck has a volume of 10 cubic yards. A "sample" is generally 2 cylinders minimum. Generally higher tier contractors will take extra incase there are strength problems. So for example, the contractor may want 1 day breaks, 7 day breaks, and 28 day breaks plus backups, and then that about 10-12 cylinders. If the concrete pour triggers provision 2 or 3, then that value could potentially double, etc. The structural engineer can also specify in excess of that. For example, the 50 cubic yard provision I rarely allow, except for relatively small concrete repairs.

Not really haha, It'll have some localized benefits to the gravity members at that level. My speculation is they put it as a staging deck for materials, etc.

Building was still visible in 1966 aerial photography. You can see the outline of the building parapet in the shadow cast on the street.

Goree does a lot of car dealerships and retail. Surprised to see them get a tilt-wall warehouse building.

Since the building is demolished and I've changed firms, I'll disclose I worked on that structure back in 2016/2017. We were working on preliminary flood design for the structure and there was whole litany of challenges that basically made it unworkable. I dont have access to the original drawings anymore. One thing I enjoyed my site visits to that building because when you walked the outside, the windows faced the kittens (there was a vet office there at the time) enclosures on the south or west face (cant remember which) and I'd always play with the kittens.

This is interesting construction photo I've not seen before and thank you for sharing. Its intriguing to me that they let their steel sub effectively complete all their work while presumable pouring or laying out 2 intermediate floors, one in the middle of the building, one near the bottom. They also have the supplementary roof framing already installed. A bit of an eye opening and unusual construction sequencing. great find @Highrise Tower

Offtopic, but building engineers need to be better about consolidating, digitizing, and backing up their drawings. Surprised to see this set up for a large building under construction in 2024. Dont know how many renovation projects I've done over the years that require me to shuffle through torn/damaged, poorly organized hard copies in the basement of the building, I could create my own instagram account of bad organization tragedies of old drawings!

These retention systems seem to be gaining popularity here. First saw these in Florida and now see them quite a bit here now.

I drive by this everyday. My assumption is that the overlay-cladding was adhered/fastened to a stone or concreteoriginal architectural façade and it damaged it in the process. Im also wondering if there are two layers of finishes that were seeing. Do we have photos of this building before the facade relift (decades ago?)

Got a few more maps in the 20s and 30s Saints street @ westheimer was picked up by the 1934. The block you photographed @Highrise Tower was clearly there by 1934. Its not developed in the 1924 map, at least to be picked up by the mappers. Somewhat unusual, theres clearly buildings there in the 1934 but it wasnt very well documented by the insurance map company, perhaps insinuating it was a separate jurisdiction at the time. Now one thing to note, the 1925 map (File 8022) of the corner of Shephard and West Dallas is the first reference to river oaks and I can find on Houston Maps. It shoul dbe noted that there is a "colored" cemetery, today this is called College Memorial Park Cemetery. I'm reaching here but if there was African American settlement in River Oaks, this might be some evidence of that. however it was not uncommon for Jim-Crowe South cities to bury African Americans far from the city... so Im guessing at that point. To further ad to your point. A the corner of Newhouse and Gross, "Nazarene Baptist Church (colored)", Green Pond School (Colored"), Free Gospel Church("Colored". The area is surrounded by residential dwellings and lightly occupied. I dont think its a stretch for me to state this area was primarily an African American community, at least circa 1925 map.... tx85804215644198599313_map.pdf tx85804215644198599287_map.pdf tx85804215544182598022_map.pdf

The 1925 map is the first map I can find with River oaks included. tx85804215544182598021_map (1).pdf

For what its worth, 1890 map of Houston doesnt extend that far west. On map 32, it shows the area west of the plant as heavy wooded forest. The Washington heights area was called "Hollingsworth" There are no volumes west of there on the 1890 map.