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H-Town Man

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Everything posted by H-Town Man

  1. H-Town Man
    I didn't mean that an active citizenry would replace philanthropy - nothing really does - but that it would replace the need for patricians to make sure the city keeps its parks in good condition, its built environment looking orderly/decent, etc. Maintains itself.
  2. H-Town Man
    For my part, I don't think it needs to be masked all around (although a partially masked garage may look strange), I just wish it were off Main Street. Not an appropriate place for a garage.
  3. H-Town Man
    Which arguments remind you of garage mahal?
  4. H-Town Man
    But isn't Post Midtown Square only 4 or 5 stories? I think this is about the highest we could hope for as an average height per block across Midtown right now. If we get much taller buildings in there then it drives up land costs and makes it hard for anything but tall buildings to go in, leaving a bunch of empty blocks like south downtown. Also tends to kill the neighborhood vibe with big shadows, parking garages, and tons of cars entering and leaving. My ideal vision for Midtown would be something like Chicago's Northside (Clark, Lincoln, Wrigleyville, etc.), a sea of 5 story residential buildings with GFR on major avenues, generally brick in construction. Before anyone flames me, I realize that this is Houston, not Chicago, that we're a car-based city without a major mass transit system, that the 21st century will have 21st centure architecture and ideas, etc.
  5. H-Town Man
    GFR is great, but the way the building looks above it has an impact as well. Yes, they are apparently doing some surface treatment on the Main Street side, but it's still obviously a parking garage, and thus has a less desirable effect on the atmosphere than office would. Take for example the garage at 601 Travis, which has an excellent surface treatment, but nonetheless is a glum thing to look at for Rice Lofts residents. I'd be willing to bet that many residents across the street would pay at least one iota to look at an office building rather than a veneered parking garage. I don't understand what you're saying about balconies. The point is, if Main Street is the see-and-be-seen street, then designing a building that looks best top-to-bottom on that street and sticking the garage on Fannin seems like a better choice than doing half garage, half office on both. Many other buildings in Houston have chosen to push the parking garage out of view from the desirable street and do a full office or office/retail treatment from top to bottom.
  6. H-Town Man
    Right, the idea is that the office space would be on the Main Street side and the parking garage on the Fannin side. So the Fannin side would be compromised, similar to how Rusk Street will be compromised by the garage planned for Skanska's building, etc. This is based on the idea that Main is the street to see and be seen on, and that their apartments across the street would rather look across at offices than at parked cars. My guess as to why they didn't go this route is that they wanted all their office space up high, so that it would have better views. Hopefully Main will get to the point where a 2nd-4th floor office above it will be desirable for the views of the street.
  7. H-Town Man
    I wonder why they don't put the office space on the Main Street side and the parking garage on the Fannin Street side, instead of having the parking garage all over the place? Maybe the goal is for this to also serve as a retail parking garage that serves the surrounding area, in which case it makes some sense to maximize visibility. But it's still an eyesore to their apartments across the street.
  8. H-Town Man
    The initial building was impressive, but when a hospital looks that good, I start to wonder how much of what I'm paying is going to medical care and how much is going to sleek architecture and an overall corporate atmosphere at a supposedly non-profit facility. Not to keep bringing up Jesus, but he might have raised an eyebrow at the first design.
  9. H-Town Man
    Good point, and some of those shoes are hard to fill, but at some point as you become a real city you stop relying on benevolent oligarchs to "keep the house painted" and instead accomplish those things through an active and involved citizenry. Long gone are the days when a city like e.g. Boston looked to Mr. Coolidge or Ms. Garner to make sure the Public Garden was kept looking nice.
  10. H-Town Man
    This seems a bit defeatist, especially the last sentence, like there's not much we can do to broaden ourselves since we have the energy industry. In addition to Dallas's marketing abilities, I think there are a few other things benefitting them for corporate relocations: 1. More central location - companies that aren't from the South may tend to see Houston as a little more "down there" than Dallas, which is not so far into uncharted territory. Perhaps this disadvantage could be turned on its head if we convincingly market ourselves as a coastal/port city and hence more international, while Dallas is more in the sticks? Proximity to Gulf > Proximity to Oklahoma 2. Marginally better weather. Hotter but less humid. This is somewhat offset by Houston's greener and more attractive vegetation. But this greenness and its potential are in turn offset by... 3. Aesthetics. Dallas looks more orderly, less wild and untamed, for reasons that have been discussed in numerous other threads. There is a charm in this for Houston, the charm of a boomtown or some city in the southern hemisphere, but the people in companies relocating from the West Coast or the Midwest tend to appreciate this charm less than folks like Hunter S. Thompson or Larry McMurtry. Of all these #3 rankles me the most, since we should geographically be the more pretty city to look at, a potential "garden city" like New Orleans. Perhaps some day we will have enough civic courage to say, for example, "this street is a boulevard - there will be no gas stations or drive thru restaurants on this street," etc. Right now we enjoy the benefits of our predominance in the energy industry, but single-industry towns often have a rough fate.
  11. H-Town Man
    Well I'll be, so you just happened to know all about the Radetzki family? Small world. Would you happen to know what kind of family this was that they were here from Russia already in the mid 1800's? Also, were they Jewish? I googled the name and found a Jewish professor from Poland.
  12. H-Town Man
    I am aware of the Polish, Czech, and German settlements in Texas; my family comes from Polish and German Texas roots. What is unusual is that a Polish person should have, as I said, "such a high position" as this guy did. Most immigrants at that time were lower on the totem pole, and the big railroad managers were usually Anglo-Saxon or maybe a few Irish. Also, the bio mentions he was from New Orleans and his father from D.C., so not a Texan. How many Poles (or Russians) were in DC in the mid-1800's, when his father would have been born? Not many. Must have been an unusual family. I believe the Russian ending can be spelled with an i or y, since the actual letter is Cyrillic. Y is more common, true, but then the z instead of s before the k seems more Russian than Polish. I could be wrong.
  13. H-Town Man
    Interesting that a Polish (or Russian?) man had such a high position in the business world back then, especially in Texas. Great stories on here. I hope whoever owns this gives it protected landmark designation or it will go the way similar homes have gone.
  14. H-Town Man
    Great photos. Are they still removing junk from the Texas Tower?
  15. H-Town Man
    Dallas has historically been better at marketing itself than Houston. Peter Marzio attributed Houston's lag behind other cities in this area to our economy being mostly wholesale companies, which do not sell directly to consumers - hence, not many marketing firms in the area. Whereas Dallas is full of retail companies and has the apparel economy, the trade marts, etc. The result is that there's much more marketing talent in Dallas than in Houston, and more of a marketing mindset overall. Most companies that relocate to Texas or within Texas that aren't oil related (and hence could conceivably locate anywhere) seem to pick Dallas. Boeing considered Dallas before opting for Chicago. AT&T moved from San Antonio to Dallas, although they did have large existing offices there. Now Toyota. Even Exxon when it moved to Texas somehow passed over Houston and picked Irving, although most of their workforce is in Houston. They've built a better image around the country than we have, and it pays dividends.
  16. H-Town Man
    This building exceeds 6 Houston Center only by being less ambitious and not doing anything kitschy. When the most exciting part of a skyscraper is its first floor, it is not an exciting skyscraper.
  17. H-Town Man
    Well, I guess if none of those lawsuits happen, they all must have decided to turn the other cheek.
  18. H-Town Man
    If something isn't done between now and August, we might be stuck with this building for decades.
  19. H-Town Man
    Well, I definitely like the side view more than the rendering Triton posted. Like the articulation of floors - reminds me of mid-century modernism. I don't think the mural is provocative. What does it provoke, other than the recollection that Methodism is a Christian denomination?
  20. H-Town Man
    Great design, and kudos to the Methodists for not being scared to put up an image of Jesus and the inevitable ire it will draw.
  21. H-Town Man
    This seems to give average density across most of the metro area (they give a population of 4,944,000 for Houston's urbanized area). It's not as helpful if you want to compare the densities of the urban cores. Hence, LA and San Jose have higher densities than New York due to New York's sprawling suburbs, and Chicago is below many cities for the same reason.
  22. H-Town Man
    Or we can just deal with it. I lived in Budapest two years and there were homeless people all over the place. It wasn't a big deal, and they posed no barrier to urban neighborhoods that were much more lively and exciting than anything in Houston. If the type of residents we're trying to attract can't stand any panhandlers being around, they're not the residents we want. Let them go to the Greater River Oaks District. This is part of the difference between living in a real city and a controlled yuppie playground.
  23. H-Town Man
    Churches just seem to be magnets for those pesky poor people, and vice versa.
  24. H-Town Man
    You had me at GFR.
  25. H-Town Man
    Used to be one at southeast corner of I-45 and FM 1960. Not sure if it's still there.
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