FIREhat

On 8/18/2023 at 11:11 AM, hindesky said:

"The University of Houston plans to re-open Agnes Arnold Hall for the fall semester, which had been closed since March after two separate incidents of students who died by suicide last school year. The building will now have temporary fencing around its verandas, stairwells and walkways. The school said it plans to install more permanent, vertical cabling in the areas next year."

https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/houston/2023/08/17/459815/university-of-houstons-agnes-arnold-hall-to-re-open-with-temporary-fencing-after-student-deaths-last-school-year/

The only thing pleasant about that building was the breeze and feeling of openness. Rare for a pseudo brutalist midcentury bunker. Now they’ve made it look like a jail. 

Yes, it was bought by Methodist and closed about 2002 or so. During Hurricane Rita (2005) it was used as a shelter for Baytown Fire and Police. All the utilities were still on. There were some Red Cross relief offices in there briefly after the hurricane. After that left it just got worse and worse and became a target of URBEXers and less savory characters. They finally tore it down after it became a nuisance. 

can we treat this as a Hartman Bridge thread or should I start a separate one? It's quite a photogenic structure  

The museum shared this photo of their old building on Instagram. I read this was in the Zoo. Does anyone know where, exactly? I'd love to see more about this building. 
 

What LEED certification does the Chrysler Building hold?

I thought the one on Westheimer at Fountainview was the first in Houston. My first was the Meyerland location; I remember going there with my church group in probably 1995-96. 

If this building's long axis is perpendicular to Bellaire Boulevard and it is where Black Eyed Pea is now it could be legally very interesting. The restaurant is in the City of Houston whereas part of the prking lot behind it is in the City of Southside Place. These renderings seem to show the building straddling the city limits. 

A few years ago when Spec's was moving into the old LInens 'n' Things space they had to take out some foundation to add infrastructure for the kitchen. They found curbs underneath, like the shopping center was built over a street without removing the old pavement. Looking at the historic imagery in Google Earth you can see there was a street there but it looks grown over before the center was even built. It also shows the Weingarten's/Randall's was built as a standalone building.

Will the book ever be printed again? I'm awfully happy that I have a copy of it but feel like it should still be available.

Are you talking about the apartments at Stella Link and Grammercy or the ones a couple blocks west at Academy and Grammercy?

This is a very cool project. I know of a few in Baytown you could cover.

Houstorian has some old topo maps that you guys might find useful along these lines: http://houstorian.wordpress.com/old-houston-maps/

I like it. Light, airy, bright, clean, open, just like the new terminal entry. Hobby continues to open its lead on my personal list of favorite airports.

I just finished reading The Fault Does Not Lie With Your Set and was particularly intrigued by one of the stories in the section about the towers. In January of 1979 some bad winter weather moved in and iced over the elevator cable in the tower. (I didn't know any of these towers had elevators!) A guy was riding it up for maintenance when it started to slip so he put on the emergency brake and climbed out and the rest of the way up to the top. Two guys came to repair the elevator but were unable to do so and they also sought refuge at the top. So they had three workers stuck up on top of the tower and had to call in the Coast Guard with a helicopter to get them down.

I'm intrigued by this battle command center. I wonder if that will have something to do with controlling drones overseas, like they do in Tonopah, NV, or if it will be a NORAD component for airspace here.

Bravo! Thanks for sharing.

And here is this:

Another street that people get confused or talk about is Buffalo Speedway. Early legend says

that there was an automobile race track located somewhere south of where St. John’s School is

today on the corner of Westheimer and Buffalo Speedway. The old stock car race tracks that

were located at Arrowhead Park on OST, Playland Park on South Main, and Meyerland are no

longer there. But actually there was never a track on Buffalo Speedway. Mr. Thomas Anderson,

a great historian and a man who passed away here the other day, told me that the street earned its

name when the concrete was first laid there. It was about a mile long strip, and every boy with a

car came out there and decided to race down that street. Thus it picked up the name because it

was a straight street - it was known as Buffalo Speedway

From here (Page 3).

That's news to me then. I've looked at a whole lot of old maps of Houston and West U (I grew up in West U) and have never seen a University Street or any other name for Buffalo Speedway. All the maps show Buffalo Speedway having that name well before the timeframe you mention.

Here's one from Scott Mellott's Facebook page. He's a retired HFD fireman and unofficial department historian of sorts. He has some great pictures up on Facebook.

There's still a little of the track peeking out by Mark Twain Elementary in 1953. That may be HFD Station 37 under construction there in the V below the merging of the inner and outer tracks.

NASCAR may not have, but stock car racing dates to Prohibition. Stock cars still race on dirt tracks across the country, including in Harris County.

So I guess my point is that maybe the name doesn't have anything to do with that racetrack. Perhaps there was another farther north? Or maybe it has nothing to do with a race track at all.

Here Buffalo Speedway runs from Westpark to Bellaire Blvd. in 1920 and already had the name.

Buffalo Speedway appears to be either planned or at least a dirt road in 1914 (I don't see a key to know what the dashed paths mean).

This has been discussed here before, I think. If not here then I've definitely read about that track somewhere and, yes, it said that that's how Buffalo Speedway got its name. it was a stock car track.

I think Buffalo Speedway and Stella Link date to before the war though. I'll look at Historic Aerials and some old maps later.