gonzo1976

From KHOU.com:

Like many other businesses here, it is on a month-to-month lease.

Why is that?

On a side note, does it seem like attention is shifting from the Alabama Bookstop? It seems like that site has take a back seat to the River Oaks Shopping Center.

Was just curious as to who and how many people, keep up the night shift on the HAIF watch.

I do. I go to bed around 3 CST and wake up around 10 a.m.

What do you think would be the top 10 biggest preservation catastrophes in Houston history?

1. The Shamrock Hotel, 1987

THE WORST. It doesn't get any worse than that.

2. The (second) Jefferson Davis Hospital, 1999

Eh, I understand its value, but I'm not sure what use it would have served aside from being a hospital. What were the plans for it prior to demolition?

3. The Lamar Hotel block (including two movie palaces), 1986

I'd put this behind #1.

8. Houston Chronicle building renovations (one movie palace), 1970's (?)

Well, the Chronicle building actually engulfed this building. If you ever go inside, you'll see exactly where one building ends and the other begins. About 10 years ago, renovation work revealed some of the interior moldings of the older building.

What am I forgetting?

The Old City Auditorium (where Jones Hall is now)

Southern Pacific Depot

The Bowen Bus station (old City Hall)

My guess for Quality Hill is 1860s. By the early 20th century those houses were already considered quite old.

Beauchamp Springs was already being advertised as a suburb in the 1870s.

Yep!

Here's a list of some (not all!) of the 19th century neighborhoods/towns and the approximate dates they were founded along with their general locations using today's maps (Wards excluded).

1. Frost Town (1822): Race and Rains streets, near Elysian. On the south banks of Buffalo Bayou.

2. Harrisburg (1826): West of Brady Island, near Manchester and Broadway.

3. Beauchamp Springs (1838): On the south banks of White Oak Bayou, near Houston Avenue.

4. Castanie Addition (1848): Likely near Fourth Ward, east of Montrose and west of the Pierce Elevated.

5. Seneschal Addition (1848): Near Smith and Bell, downtown.

6. Quality Hill (1850s): North of Congress Avenue, east of Main Street.

7. W.R. Baker Addition (1856): A line going from Sawyer and Buffalo Bayou to near Quitman and I-45.

8. Northside Buffalo Bayou Additions Platted (1860s): Across Buffalo Bayou, east of North Main.

9. A.C. Allen Addition (1860): Broad area where Quitman crosses I-45.

10. Pless Addition (1861): Narrow strip of land east of South Jensen on the south banks of Buffalo Bayou.

11. Oak Lawn (1863): Canal and Lockwood.

12. Freedmens Town (circa 1865): Fourth Ward

13. Chapmanville (1866): Broad area near Liberty Road and Staples Street.

14. Engelke Addition (1866): Near Settegast Park.

15. Factory Addition (1867): East of Pless Addition

16. Fairgrounds Addition (1889): Near Main and Elgin.

17. Brunner (1890): West of Shepherd near Washington Avenue and Westcott.

18 Denver (1891): Denver Harbor, south of Englewood Yard, north of I-10.

19. Houston Heights (1892): The Heights!

20. Fairview (1893): Near Taft and Fairview.

21. Magnolia Park (1893): Harrisburg, Navigation, 75th area.

22. Settegast-Upham (1897): East of Fairview.

23. Chew Addition (1898): West of Denver Harbor.

24. Sam Houston Park (1899): Duh!

This information came from the book "Houston's Forgotten Heritage."

it was

Aw, bummer.

Hasn't the Old San Francisco Steakhouse been around for quite some time?

I know the petition is going well but what can we (or anybody) do take this thing further? Does anyone here have connections to a local TV station or The Chronicle?

The reporter who wrote the original Chronicle article chimed in yesterday to say she is working on a follow-up.

Don't forget the Quality Hill section of Houston. I'm away from my research materials right now, but I do believe that formed sometime in the late 19th century.

Signatories include famous socialists such as ... Brent Spiner

Wow. Data. That's just awesome!

Heh! I wonder if anyone's contacted Houstonians with ties to Hollywood: Shelley Duvall, Wes Anderson, the Quaid brothers and Patrick Swayze. Heck, maybe Jack Valenti might chime in on this.

I don't get it? Really? What is it that don't I get?

I see your point regarding property rights.

Maybe the current owners don't realize how much the RO and the Alabama Bookstop contribute to the *identity* of the community. Sure, developers could put up a similar theater that shows similar films in the same part of town. But losing the RO and the Bookstop would erase a little more of what connects a lot of us here to that location, which is, memories.

From that, it shapes our sense of community and our perception of what Houston is. No Barnes and Noble, vacant lot, or faded photograph can provide that.

The Bookstop seems to get pretty good business. The RO is usually busy on Friday and Saturday nights. I remember there was a line going all the way around Starbucks when "The Blair Witch Project" opened there.

I remember from the 1950's that two gas stations were at these locations, then a bank on the south side of West Gray and I can't remember what was on the north side until Starbuck's appeared.

I could be wrong, but I think the gas station was torn down and converted into a parking lot until the Starbucks was built from the ground up.

Let's preserve the original character of at least one neighborhood for our children.

I agree!

on another, somewhat unrelated note, i wonder what these were back then (starbucks/bank now):

Looks like a gas station maybe.

It has its own niche: movies for people who care more about the film than the seating.

Hear! Hear! I'm glad to have watched films at a theater like the River Oaks. There's no movie theater like it in Houston. I'd hate to see it join the ranks of the Metropolitan and the Lowes.

Let's not forget the Alabama Bookstop, too. The folks there have done a good job of retaining a lot of its movie theater aspects and incorporating it into the bookstore.

Losing both would kill a part of the city's identity.

Sonofabiscuit! I put up a little mention about it on my blog. I'd hate to see two landmarks like that go. I'll be happy to do whatever I can to help.

Milby Park gained some notoriety in 1953 when a woman walking to church was gang raped at the park.

Seventeen-year-old Rudy Ramos Esquivel was put on trial for the crime, which was a capital offense at the time. The case ended in a hung jury. A retrial resulted in a 99-year prison sentence.

The trial was big news back in the day. Teen rapist, churchgoing woman. It made big headlines in Houston.

I can't remember where I read it, but I think the woman ended up in an institution. As for little Rudy Esquivel? He was paroled --- only to end up back on Death Row for the 1978 murder of an undercover HPD officer. He was executed in 1986.

I knew a guy named Ron who managed it in some fashion or another. He ran that and a place call the Jubilee Hall (?) sometime in the late 1960s/early 1970s. ZZ Top used to play at the Liberty Hall back in the early days, too, from what I heard.

July 20, 2006, 5:04PM

Concerns put UH's satellite on back burner

Lawmakers and neighbor schools question need for northwest campus

By MATTHEW TRESAUGUE

Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

The proposed campus would provide upper-level and graduate courses on property now owned by Hewlett-Packard Corp., with a projected enrollment of more than 5,000 students by 2012.

This isn't such a bad deal. I would have more of a problem with it if UH planned to offer lower-level undergrad courses there.

For those working folks who want to take some night classes to earn a master's degree and not have to drive past downtown, this is good.

Whatever happened to 225 ending in Downtown.

My guess is that the Gulf Freeway put an end of that. It just wouldn't make much sense to have two highways going into downtown from the southeast. Anyone?

That would have been good for the East side commuters. Would it have demolished to many homes?

I would think so. Texas 225 (La Porte Road) went directly into Harrisburg and would have cut through Lawndale and maybe Mason Park. The Houston Country Club stood in the way, too.

I got the idea for this topic because of the responses in the "Astrodome" thread. Do you consider yourself a Houstonian before Texan, or is it just one in the same to you?

Heh! Well, when I lived in Houston I considered myself Houstonian before Texan. Now that I live out of state, I keep referring to myself as a Texan rather than a Houstonian. Not sure why because I haven't given it much thought!

Florida, South Carolina, Mississippi and Alabama love to build 30 story condos in the middle of their dunes, too.

There was an article in a South Carolina newspaper about how these condos are being built closer to the shore thanks to beach renourishment. Never mind the potential hurricane that will blow it all away.

But the nice thing about the beaches in the Southeast is that one can look out into the ocean and not see an offshore oil platorm or oil tanker. Now, I hear Congress wants to open the East Coast up to offshore drilling. Shame.

Pink Floyd on the Division Bell Tour at Rice Stadium. (I forget the year)

I was at that show! It was the spring of 1994.

I saw Paul McCartney's The New World Tour at the Astrodome in 1991.

I also saw No Doubt open for Tears for Fears at the Compaq Center. This was during the KRBE Holiday Ball or something like that.

If you watch one local newscast during the day, you've pretty much seen all the news you're going to get for the rest of the day. Jeez, if I miss the 11 a.m. newscast, I can catch one at noon, 12:30, 3 p.m, 4 p.m., 5 p.m., 6 p.m., 9 p.m. or 10 p.m.

There are some little treasures inside the building that I hope survived the renovation.

Cenikor used it as its headquarters in the early 1970s. Some newlyweds that lived there drew a tree on one of the walls to liven up their drab room.

I was told that some of the people living there refused to go into the basement because it appeared haunted. On the upper floors you could hear conversations even though no one was nearby. However, I think that may have been because of the way the building was designed, which made it easy for sound to travel down the hallways from one end of the building to the other. (That's what some people have surmised.)

Graffitti scrawled by patients can also be found in at least one room. A patient apparently etched his name on one of the walls back in the 1940s.

Ah well, at least one of the graves outside the building was sort of left intact!

Good work at making me homesick!

So my question is, if someone ever brought that back, what building would it be good on?? :-)

One that's tall enough to be viewed from all directions.

It would be pretty pointless to put it on a downtown building that's been dwarfed by other skyscrapers.