Jump to content

marmer

Full Member
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    1,467

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    2

 Content Type 

Everything posted by marmer

  1. marmer
    One thing I did a lot if in the 80s was go visit friends in other large cities. I went to Boston and New York and had a very serious job offer from an institution in LA. I was always very glad to get back to Houston. In terms of traffic, cost of living, commute, all that "grownup" stuff, I can promise you that Houston did not suck when compared to the larger East and West Coast cities.
  2. marmer
    GTO, I have agreed with every one of your posts. In fact, since I was a frequent Theatre District-goer then, I rather enjoyed how un-crowded downtown was. It made event parking and getting into the few Theatre District restaurants very easy. If you stayed with the crowds, it was perfectly safe. The only thing you didn't do is go out to dinner after a show and leave your car in the garage after most people left. I did it twice and had my car broken into both times. On the other hand, I wouldn't be too surprised to have that happen now. So why don't you post some things that you remember that were cool about the 80s?
  3. marmer
    Of course the buildings are all still there and still very cool, but driving down Louisiana Street to show off the new cool skyscrapers was one of my favorite things to do with out-of-town visitors in the 80s.
  4. marmer
    Again, yes. You had to be careful but pretty much everywhere I went felt perfectly safe. I was worried about break-ins in my Montrose duplex, but we never had one. I do remember the statistics about murder rates but that didn't seem to be what we worried about then.
  5. marmer
    Yes. Exactly. Houston was cheap, fun, and safe. Within reason, of course. And there were way more quirky clubs/bars/restaurants/shops than there are in today's over-developed mass market national brand sprawl.
  6. marmer
    I very nearly put One's A Meal in my list. I thought about House of Pies, but it's still here and mostly unchanged. Jamail's Grocery next to House of Pies would have been a good one, but I had only ten. By the way, I like your list. Rendezvous Houston was really cool, for one.
  7. marmer
    Lockmat, what I meant in #6 was very traditional works, costumes and staging, such as Madame Butterfly or Swan Lake. I remember seeing both of those at Miller. Since then, I think both HGO and Houston Ballet have dropped their Miller offerings due to budget cuts. The last few were very reduced in scale, with premieres of unfamiliar new works, projection-heavy staging, etc.
  8. marmer
    Some of these have been mentioned in other threads, but I've been waxing nostalgic lately. 10. The Astrodome 9. Astroworld 8. Neal's Ice Cream 7. Cactus Music, the big store 6. Full-scale opera and ballet performances at Miller Theatre. (and not ridiculously crowded) 5. Easy, cheap parking everywhere 4. World Toy and Gift 3. San Jacinto Inn 2. Gilley's 1. River Oaks Theatre repertory movies
  9. marmer
    That's the Cohen house on Moonlight, for anyone who comes late to this thread. It had its own thread in Houston Mod.
  10. marmer
  11. marmer
    Boy, the early '70s were hard on mansions, weren't they? Glennlee, Wayside, Shadyside, Domain Privee, the Meyer house... am I forgetting any? (Not counting of course the ravenous mansion teardown frenzy of the 1920s when downtown and the South End fell to developers and all the rich people moved to Southampton and Riverside and River Oaks...)
  12. marmer
    Most of the online biographies of Glenn McCarthy say that he and his wife moved to a modest house in a LaPorte suburb after they sold Glennlee. That material seems to come, usually, from _The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes_, by Bryan Burrough Here's a link to a Vanity Fair article by Burrough. The article incorrectly states that Faustine Lee McCarthy was the daughter of Thomas Lee (of Link-Lee mansion fame); actually, according to the Handbook of Texas online, her father was William Lee. Vanity Fair article About the street name: in the Village and Southgate areas, it is KELVIN. When Maroneal curves around to line up approximately on the same axis as Kelvin Street farther north, it is KELVING, going through the old McCarthy property. Check a map and you will see. I'll bet there is an interesting story there.
  13. marmer
    Gone by 1973, according to Historic Aerials. The woods were still there in 1973 and the property was developed by 1981.
  14. marmer
    Wasn't that the original University Savings building by Wenceslao Sarmiento, featured in the Houston Architectural Guide?
  15. marmer
    Looks like to me it's mostly just chronologically based. It it was built or substantially remodeled during The Golden Age of Asbestos
  16. marmer
    Thanks for the tip, Scott. Check this out: Magic City Modern blog
  17. marmer
    Magnolia Gardens: would that be this?
  18. marmer
    Of course. Just don't suggest that it be torn down.
  19. marmer
    I clearly remember Swift's meat products in the grocery store when I was a kid. (60s-70s)
  20. marmer
    You're welcome. Looks like it lost one of it's little gold spheres, maybe to Hurricane Ike?
  21. marmer
    See this thread: HAIF thread and this Swamplot article: Swamplot
  22. marmer
    I just called Brazos Bookstore and they don't have the Jenkins book yet. Houston Modsters, they're prolly gonna be calling you...
  23. marmer
    Wasn't there a "who's the architect?" thread about this house earlier? Is this the big square one with white columns all around?
  24. marmer
    It is well documented that the only Wright house in Houston is in Memorial, on Tall Oaks Road and not particularly visible from the road. The most charitable view I can take is that the author was referring to the modern-style houses and mentioned Wright as a layman's frame of reference. Interesting that he should have mentioned Chase. He was the first significant African-American architect in Houston and he did design a few great houses in Riverside, including his own. His body of work, however, was largely institutional and commercial. Additionally, I think there's one Staub, one Briscoe, and a coupla Bolton and Barnstone. When I think Riverside, I think Joseph Finger, Bailey Swenson, Lenard Gabert, Philip Willard, Lucian Hood, Mackie and Kamrath, et al.
  25. marmer
    Isn't that this? from BenH in the CAA tour thread?
×
×
  • Create New...