marmer

In cleaning out a bookshelf I found an old book from my college days: Houston Epicure from 1981. It was a collection of menus. Here are a few scans, if you'd like to see any others please let me know.

I know someone who lives/lived there. She's found another place but it won't be ready for another month at least so she's going to stay with her mother for a while. Lucky her that she can do that. I don't know that it is a serious financial issue for her but it is certainly an inconvenience.

And notice all the TINY windows, if you look at it. You can really see it on the side view on Live Search.

Here's a teaser. The one on the left is the one in the HAR listing.

Just got back from spending an afternoon and evening there. It was fairly crowded but parking was not a problem anywhere. We did drive on the cross streets and it was slow but OK. A lot of people just walk randomly through traffic as though they were in an indoor mall and didn't have to worry about cars. Although there were a lot of people it was always easy to move around.

We went in several stores and, in general, they are smaller and noticeably less fully stocked than their larger counterparts in Houston. We didn't go in every store but this is certainly true of the two big marquee anchors, Macy's and Barnes & Noble.

There was a lot of private security and Pearland PD around, in cars, one giant diesel Ford F-250 Super Duty (wonder what kinda mileage they were getting idling around in circles in that bad boy), on bikes, and a few three-wheel Segways. If you thought Segways couldn't get any dorkier-looking, you should see the three-wheel kind.

Getting in and out was absolutely effortless with the south exit to Kirby. Take that to CR 59 (right by the infamous ten-car-garage vacant gigantic houses), turn left, and there you go, you're at 288. Smile and wave as you zoom over the 288/518 intersection.

The place looks like the usual postmodern mishmash of colors and styles, maybe a little more modern than some. Not hard on the eyes, particularly, but just kinda there. I wondered aloud "Who would want to live in an apartment HERE at the mall?" (I know it's not a mall, but still) My thirteen-year-old daughter said immediately, "Girls." The giant coffee can signage at the north entry is kinda fugly, and seems to be implying a countrified hominess that is totally absent from anything else in the place.

One nice touch -- there were several live musicians performing, just on the sidewalk. Usually just a coupla guys with a keyboard or a guitar and maybe some sampled background tracks. Nothing too elaborate, but fun to hear. Unfortunately, there was also ubiquitous oldies-radio style background music from pole-mounted speakers, so there was plenty of racket. We can't be expected to walk around in public without ambient background music, can we?

The biggest disappointment, and this might be a deal-breaker for some, is the availability of food. Red Lobster is not even close to open, and many of the other advertised food places are either still not open or "training." Fish City and Red Robin both looked good to us, but they were training. BJs looked great, but with them being the only real dinner place open, the wait for a table was way too long. We ended up leaving and eating in Silverlake. We came back to nose around a little more, and went to Cinnabon, which was totally unprepared for the crowds and and had very long waits (and a reduced menu -- no Minibons!)

Anyway, it was kinda fun and aside from the food it seemed to be dealing with the crowds with no problem.

It seems to be real, though doesn't have much presence on the web. Nonetheless, the pastor, Mr. Charles Fake, has a blog and mentions Timbergrove Baptist frequently.

http://www.charlesfake.com/

I remember seeing the vacant slab and the Mel's BBQ sign when I would visit friends in the neighborhood in the early 80s. Story was that it had burned down.

Fred's Italian Corner is no farther by car (or bike) than some of the places we've been discussing, if it's quick 'n' cheap old-school Italian you're after.

Is your microwave or freezer broken?

Dude, I'll bet I've eaten more frozen dinners than you have! Even the worst restaurant food is better than most frozen dinners, IMHO. Besides, at a restaurant you don't have to wash dishes or clean up. (assuming you brought some money ) But I didn't mean to hijack, I only mentioned the Olive Garden as an example of a restaurant I like that gets bashed a lot. Sorta like Cafe Express.

Ewww. Cafe Express sells multiple configurations of overpriced, dry, flavorless chicken breasts. There's nothing "artsy" or "classsy" about that.

Whatever. I know some people don't like Cafe Express and I expected someone to say something. I have enjoyed every meal I've had there (mostly burgers, sandwiches, and salads, never a chicken breast.) Their condiment bar is spectacular and their _location and decor_ are classy and artsy, there in the basement/tunnel of the Beck Building. It's not cheap, but I have paid more for worse food, and nothing about MFAH is cheap except the free Thursdays.

I'm the same way about Olive Garden. I've never had a bad meal or bad service there.

YI just did a search of HPL's card catalog of 12 randomly chosen books from the Modern Library list of 100 Best Novels and HPL had all 12 of them... 100%. That rather strongly suggests that, rather than a "small portion" as you assumed, they have a huge portion, if not all of them. And so what if they are "scattered all around the branch libraries? That is the way library systems are supposed to work... make the books available to the largest number and widest variety of people.

Coming late to this discussion, I know. But I would be very surprised if 100% of both lists are not widely available at numerous branches throughout the system. Same with the Brazoria County Library System.

Cafe Express in the Beck Building of MFAH. Good, cheap, classy, artsy setting. (Note: there are other places which are better and places which are cheaper. There are places which are classier and places which are artsier.) But I REALLY enjoy Cafe Express when I'm at the MFAH and it's the only real choice if you're actually in the Museum District (as opposed to the Med Center) and have a "normal" definition of "walking distance."

There's a Mickey D's in the HMNS.

There's a Burger King on Holcombe at Main. (or at least there used to be...)

There's 13th Street on the Rice campus, which has little to recommend it unless you're on or near campus anyway. But they have cheap sandwiches and snacks, and the new Brochstein Pavilion (which serves only drinks and small pastries) is a very pleasant place.

Whether Kaplan started this discussion or not, my point is that as an adult who is no doubt in his 50s, it's long past time for him to get over the things that embarrassed him when he was a kid.

Earth to Kaplan: It was NO BIG DEAL.

I thought the thrust of the article was mostly that it was a historical footnote which seemed both quaint and surprisingly forgotten. And how normal it seemed at the time and how strange it seems today. The whole embarrassment about nudity issue is pretty much a given in junior high for almost everyone, it doesn't require swimming. I wonder how many junior high schools/middle schools even have a swimming pool. I've never seen one.

There were lots of mortifying things that happened to me in junior high. I don't know anyone who remembers that time fondly. Being well and truly over it and apparently being a functional adult doesn't mean that I can't remember plenty of that stuff even now. I don't see how DK is any different.

I suspect David Kaplan is the same guy who started this whole conversation a long time back. Countless kids who went to Houston schools in the 40s, 50s and early 60s had no problem with swimming in the nude at junior high school, and if they did have a problem with it they kept it to themselves, and they don't sit around whining about it now the way this guy Kaplan is doing.

I'm sorry he was embarrassed, but he needs to get over it. Good grief.

David Kaplan is a good guy. Very architecture-savvy, and IIRC, the owner of a small and contextually appropriate new house in the East End. I don't know about him starting the discussion but I'll bet he was aware of it. I am frequently amused by how often it happens that stuff discussed on HAIF turns up later in the Chron.

What's the story on this? It's going up on the formerly beautiful green lawn between Temple Emanu El and Oak Shadows on Sunset Boulevard across from Rice. Today I noticed a sign giving just the web address: thirtysunset.com

At that site it says only "Five residences starting at $2 million" with a form to fill in for information.

What's going on here? I thought a few years ago the Community Association blocked Emanu El from building a parking lot here. With the new parking garage (ugly) just down Sunset, and the Ashby highrise fight, how did this get through?

And why can't I find anything about it on the Net?

I There is also an old rectangle house, maybe brick, sitting way back off the road, on acreage, on the west side of the road, going south. Might be a business now, rundown, or torn down. Anyone recall anything like that? I'm trying to stay on topic, but it's not working!

Would that have been Mykawa School?

http://www.houstonarchitecture.info/haif/i...showtopic=15939

Heh. Just saw this in "Selling Steakburgers," a memoir by Robert Cronin, who was the president of Steak n Shake from 1971 to 1981:

Customers who had become a part of the great Texas migration in the late sixties and early seventies urged us to move into the Lone Star state. We responded with five stores in Houston in '76--5745 Westheimer, 2227 N. Gessner, 3730 Kirby, 811 S. Gessner, and 5322 FM 1960.

A few pages later, Cronin writes:

Quote

It was not long after we finished opening the Houston stores that we saw the handwriting on the wall. We simply were not big enough, nor strong enough, to carry the cashflow in the red without it having a negative effect on the company's earnings.

Almost always in other cemeteries, usually with some kind of official notice and religious ceremony. According to George Wolf, the Harris County Cemetery at the Poor Farm was moved to the present County Cemetery site south of Highway 90 in 1937, and the remains reinterred in a common grave because there were no grave markers.

Here's a newspaper clipping about it.

Wow, I remember that one, too! It was surrounded by stucco walls and all you could see from the road was the neon sign and the tops of palm trees planted inside the walls.

Even as a child, I had rather peculiar tastes - couldn't wait to grow up, put on an evening gown and go there and to the fabled Balinese Room. Goodness knows where my ideas came from - my parents certainly didn't go for night clubs or gambling...

The Hollywood Dinner Club. The first big Maceo brothers enterprise. It was opened in 1925 and closed in 1939 after a narcotics bust. It boasted gaming tables and fine dining and featured nationally known performers and celebrities. There's an apocryphal story that a Dinner Club bandleader, desperate because of an absent trumpet player, gave a chance to a young kid from Beaumont named Harry James. Later it was used as a storage area for furniture and old gaming equipment from the Balinese Room.

The Hollywood Dinner Club building stood vacant (except for storage) from 1939 until it was destroyed by a fire in 1959. Here are a couple of pictures from the Rosenberg Library, reprinted in Frank Chalfant's book "Galveston: Island of Chance"

HDC in its heyday:

HDC, vacant and neglected in 1957 before the 1959 fire

Poor farms and poor houses were run by counties as an early form of social welfare program. There's quite a lot of general info about them on the web. Most were gone by the twenties, as they were pretty horrible places, apparently.

There was a Harris County poor farm; a little searching has revealed:

It was where Southside Place was later developed.

http://www.ci.southside-place.tx.us/Screen...amp;menusubid=0

The road out to it was called "County Poor Farm Road" or "Poor Farm Road." We now know it as Bissonnet, named after a WWI soldier.

There was apparently a "potters field" type of pauper cemetery there, but the graves were relocated when the property was developed.

That's all I can find quickly.

Brochsteins (1947) at 11530 Main Street has one big pylon in front.

Took a while to find it, but here's the Bob Bailey aerial of Domain Privee:

Here's the text from the 1995 Bailey calendar photo:

On a two-lane gravel road in a remote area off the southern end of Main Street, about fourteen miles from downtown, this elegant colonial mansion was one of the fanciest gambling casinos in America. It was Jakie Freedman's "Domain Privee." Only a select few were permitted past the gate guards. Thirty to forty made a capacity gambling crowd. But these were the very wealthy. Chips began at $5.00. Domain Privee flourished through World War II. However, in the early 1950's steps were taken to enforce Texas' gambling laws. Under this threat, Freedman closed Domain Privee and moved to a town in Nevada, where gambling is legal. The grandiose resort hotel and casino that he ran in Las Vegas, The Sands, became world famous.

and here's the direct link at UT's Center for American History:

Center for American History

I had a good friend, now unfortunately deceased, who was a lifelong Houstonian and a professional musician for more than sixty years. He lived to an advanced age and he loved to tell stories about the people he played with and the things he'd seen. Once I gave him some Bob Bailey calendars and you would have thought I had given him a million dollars. We went through them and he recognized something about every picture! Anyway, one of the pictures was the aerial shot of Domain Privee. He played there many times and had very fond memories of Mr. Freedman and Domain Privee. Apparently it was beautifully appointed inside and Mr. Freedman was an unusually generous employer. Among Houstonians of his generation (now fast disappearing) Freedman was apparently very well loved and respected.

Old Hwy 90 is the New I-10. I don't think it was ever part Old Main St. ?

No, at the time of Domain Privee, Hwy 90 was the current Main Street, not Old Main. OST is Alternate 90. See the 1935 map:

http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/arc/maps/images/map0436.jpg

Basketball must have been really different back then. What were the sticks for?

They were used by the beaters. Cf. Quidditch. It was a much rougher game in those days. Note how none of the girls are showing any teeth in the photo.

http://www.luxuryrealestate.com/797438

Hugh Roy Cullen House -Tyne Court in Tynewood

Really? Cullen died in 1957. Did he decide to move from his Staub-designed villa on River Oaks just before he died?

Correct. It was Jakie Friedman's "Domain Privee." Search this site using those terms and you will find several posts about it. It was very classy and exclusive, and was well loved by Houston's movers and shakers. After it closed down in the 50s due to more stringent enforcement of gambling laws (this was about the time of Galveston's Balinese Room's demise, too), Mr. Friedman moved to Las Vegas and created the Sands Hotel.