Frank Lloyd Wright's Lone Star Style: $3M Gets You This Pool-Hugging Usonian Upgrade
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All images via Sotheby's International Real Estate
Location: Houston, Texas
Price: $2,995,000
Price: $2,995,000
Like any good Frank Lloyd Wright project, the William L. Thaxton Home in Houston contains a few tales about the often intransigent architect. Originally a 1,800-square-foot Usonian model set in the distant suburb of Bunker Hill, the diamond-shaped home, complete with a parallelogram pool and triangular fixtures to keep right angles at bay, was commissioned in 1954 by a wealthy insurance exec. Thaxton paid the princely sum of $125,000 for the project, which included a $25,000 fee to the master architect (the equivalent of nearly $220,000 in today's dollars). That he also needed to convince Wright not to run the pool into the master bedroom, or, that in order to get air conditioning added to his home in often-humid Houston, he had to run ductwork through the floor after the fact, doesn't matter. He had an original Wright home, one of a handful in the Lone Star state. But as Houston spread out over East Texas, Thaxton's home was soon surrounded by development.
Let's Just Say This $13,500/Month Houston Rental Lacks a Cohesive Style
For our final bizarre and bizarrely expensive rental of Renters Week, we go back to where it all started, Houston, Texas, where a four-bedroom home is asking $13,500/month and it is...something. In a way, you could say there's something for everybody in this house, probably, although for every one design element that might appeal to you there are probably four or five that really, really don't. Our personal favorite is the giraffe-print column next to the toilet.
Police Raid Robert Durst's 14th-Floor Houston Condo
The Robinhood building in Houston. Photos via Highrise Finder
On Tuesday, seven police officers raided Robert Durst's Houston condo, the Robinhood, eventually departing the 14th-floor apartment with two cardboard boxes. The accused murderer and Manhattan real estate scion has lived in the Houston highrise for many years, so there are likely a few examples of his now-infamous block letter handwriting contained within. A neighbor told CNN that the 71-year-old Durst, who was charged with the murder of his friend Susan Berman on Monday, the day after the final segment of HBO's true crime documentary "The Jinx" aired, was "no quirkier than anyone else in the building."
Midcentury Meets Taxidermy in This Voguish Houston Home
Location: Houston, Texas
Price: $2,495,000
Maybe there's no objective reason why a wall of taxidermy should look strange beside a wall of glass. But it's still kind of trip to see such distinct spheres of taste intersecting, as in this renovated midcentury home in the upscale, west-of-Houston residential community of Hunters Creek Village, now offered for $2,495,000.
Price: $2,495,000
Maybe there's no objective reason why a wall of taxidermy should look strange beside a wall of glass. But it's still kind of trip to see such distinct spheres of taste intersecting, as in this renovated midcentury home in the upscale, west-of-Houston residential community of Hunters Creek Village, now offered for $2,495,000.
Remodeled 1950s Idyll in Suburban Houston Asks $2.9M
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Location: Houston, Texas
Price: $2,895,000
The Skinny: Designed in 1956, in the early days of the Tanglewood neighborhood of Houston, Texas, this five-bedroom home was recently remodeled with "amazing architectural elements from Chateau Dominigue," a local importer of antique European building materials. That's where the limestone tiles, stone mantels, and antique wood beams came from, which look pretty nice, and would look even better if the rest of the interior weren't so whitewashed. The .87-acre site is apparently one of the largest in this upscale subdivision, the implication being that there's "plenty of room to expand" on the 6,850 square feet already there. Bought last December for $2,795,000, this very picturesque suburban dwelling is back on the market after less than a year asking $2,895,000.
Price: $2,895,000
The Skinny: Designed in 1956, in the early days of the Tanglewood neighborhood of Houston, Texas, this five-bedroom home was recently remodeled with "amazing architectural elements from Chateau Dominigue," a local importer of antique European building materials. That's where the limestone tiles, stone mantels, and antique wood beams came from, which look pretty nice, and would look even better if the rest of the interior weren't so whitewashed. The .87-acre site is apparently one of the largest in this upscale subdivision, the implication being that there's "plenty of room to expand" on the 6,850 square feet already there. Bought last December for $2,795,000, this very picturesque suburban dwelling is back on the market after less than a year asking $2,895,000.
Was This Apartment Decorated By Hunger Games Villains?
Like the kookily dressed overlords of everyone's favorite bloodsport-focused, J-Law heavy young adult dystopia, the owners of this $2.75MHouston condo take their interiors severe, bloodless, and cold. Also worth noting: all the stuffed and mounted tributes.
A Makeover Nearly Destroyed This Frank Lloyd Wright Home
According to Zillow, "the money grabbers almost got this Frank Lloyd Wright house," after a supremely bad renovation job in the '80s—there were tacky new columns and decorative, roof-top pineapplesinvolved, apparently—"appalled modern architecture purists" and forced developers into talks of tearing the place down. Luckily, a fanboy of the revered starchitect finally swooped in in 1991 to save the Houston estate, restoring the place to its former glory, and even adding a larger kitchen, a wing of kids' bedrooms and a master suite. Now, the battle-weary but triumphant six-bedroom, 1,800-square-foot home is back on the market for $3.195M, offering FLW calling cards like stained concrete floors, concrete-block walls, and custom cabinetry, plus a sweet pool and patio. After all it has been through, everyone should really take a look:
Houston Megamanse With Gargantuan Indoor Pool Wants $19M
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Location: Houston, Texas
Price: $18,900,000
The Skinny: Leave it to an eccentric, high-living Italian baron—who also happened to be heir to the Texas-sized oil fortune of wildcatter extraordinaire Hugh Cullen—to dream up something as fantastically and wonderfully tasteless as this gargantuan mansion/natatorium in the River Oaks district of (where else?) Houston, Texas. The chewy nougat center of this black gold-fueled confection is the 12,000-square-foot mall food court with a swimming pool drilled into its marble floors, around which the rest of the house orbits, trapped in the kind of gravitational pull that only a dense concentration of pure awful can generate. What makes the home truly remarkable is its embodiment of the spirit of the man who built it, the Baron Enrico di Portanova.
Price: $18,900,000
The Skinny: Leave it to an eccentric, high-living Italian baron—who also happened to be heir to the Texas-sized oil fortune of wildcatter extraordinaire Hugh Cullen—to dream up something as fantastically and wonderfully tasteless as this gargantuan mansion/natatorium in the River Oaks district of (where else?) Houston, Texas. The chewy nougat center of this black gold-fueled confection is the 12,000-square-foot mall food court with a swimming pool drilled into its marble floors, around which the rest of the house orbits, trapped in the kind of gravitational pull that only a dense concentration of pure awful can generate. What makes the home truly remarkable is its embodiment of the spirit of the man who built it, the Baron Enrico di Portanova.
Inside a Miles Redd-Designed 'Technicolor Dream' Estate
Photo by Thomas Loof /Architectural Digest
So what happens, exactly, when you give designer Miles Redd the keys to your 17th-century French-style mansion and tell him to decorate exactly as he sees fit? For this "prominent Houston couple," at least, the end result is a "technicolor dream of high-spirited hues and whirlwind patterns," that work just as well for hosting lavish parties as they do for everyday life with a pair of four-year-old twins. Created in collaboration with local firm Eubanks Group Architects and featured in the August 2014 issue of Architectural Digest, Redd describes the lush, over-the-top home as "sort of a pastiche of all the great European residences I've looked at over a lifetime—especially English country houses and the hôtel particuliers of Paris," though with an eclectic, modern edge.
Houston Manse From Terms of Endearment Wants $3.5M
Aficionados of eighties cinema will surely recognize this stately Houston, Texas manse as the home of fictional former-astronaut Garrett Breedlove—played by one Jack Nicholson—in Terms of Endearment. Now, the real-life property is on the market for a cool$3.5M, looking largely the same as it did on screen, though with some tastefully remodeled interiors. Even before its brush with fame, the 6,600-square-foot, three-bedroom estate—called the Waldo Mansion—was quite the impressive place, built in 1885 by noted railroad tycoon J.P. Waldo. Mr. Waldo's original woodwork, ornate glass windows, and other "custom appointments" remain, paired with such swanky perks as 15-foot ceilings, massive bedrooms, and a stately entryway. Outside, there's a wrap-around porch, a nearby guest cottage, and a peaceful little koi pond courtyard—which appeared as a pool in the movie. By all means, do take a peek:
Architizer sees architecture ineverything. This time, it's the Exxon Mobile Campus under development in Houston, and it has some intriguing parallels to Le Corbusier's Ville Radiuese, a utopian master plan for Paris he first proposed in 1924. [Architizer]Is the World's First Domed Stadium Departing With a Whimper?
The Houston Astrodome took what could be its first halting stepstoward demolition Sunday night, as high-powered explosives reduced its three entrance towers to rubble, but the fate of the world's first domed indoor stadium is anything but clear. Hailed as the eighth wonder of the world when it was completed in 1965, years of disrepair and mounting code violations have since earned it an unpromising spoton the 2013 edition of the National Trust for Historic Preservation's list of America's most endangered places. In early November, voters in Houston turned down a $217M referendum to renovate the Astrodome, proposals for which included turning it into a mixed-use convention center and commercial space called "The New Dome Experience," and one pretty awesome plan to strip the thing down to its skeleton and install a public park at its center. In hindsight, the latter may have been a bit overly optimistic.
Texas Oilman's $14.5M Estate Has Three Pools, Tennis Court
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Location: Houston, Texas
Price: $14,500,000
The Skinny: Gene Van Dyke made his fortune as one of the country's last of an adventurous breed of oilmen known as wildcatters; for decades, the Houston-based Van Dyke Energy Company drilled exploratory oil and gas wells throughout the United States, Alaska, and Holland's North Sea, and at one point had 27M acres of exploration and drilling rights in Africa, or "more deepwater rights than Shell, ExxonMobil and BP combined," according to a 2001 Forbes piece. Van Dyke's 11,737-square-foot mansion, on the market for $14.5M, is filled with an interesting mix of wallpapers, upholstery, rugs, and other types of patterned decor that often seem to be at odds with one another. But it's the rest of the property's 2.8 acres that's the real eye-catcher, anyway, boasting three separate pools, one of which, apparently, "is thought to be one of the largest private pools in the U.S." There's also a full-size tennis court with lights and stands, as well as a party pavilion with a bar, a stage big enough for an orchestra, and an outdoor kitchen. And, for good measure, lion statues guarding every entrance.
Price: $14,500,000
The Skinny: Gene Van Dyke made his fortune as one of the country's last of an adventurous breed of oilmen known as wildcatters; for decades, the Houston-based Van Dyke Energy Company drilled exploratory oil and gas wells throughout the United States, Alaska, and Holland's North Sea, and at one point had 27M acres of exploration and drilling rights in Africa, or "more deepwater rights than Shell, ExxonMobil and BP combined," according to a 2001 Forbes piece. Van Dyke's 11,737-square-foot mansion, on the market for $14.5M, is filled with an interesting mix of wallpapers, upholstery, rugs, and other types of patterned decor that often seem to be at odds with one another. But it's the rest of the property's 2.8 acres that's the real eye-catcher, anyway, boasting three separate pools, one of which, apparently, "is thought to be one of the largest private pools in the U.S." There's also a full-size tennis court with lights and stands, as well as a party pavilion with a bar, a stage big enough for an orchestra, and an outdoor kitchen. And, for good measure, lion statues guarding every entrance.
Introducing 'Beer Can House,' Houston's Booziest Landmark
Photos via Yahoo! Homes
One day in the early '70s, after seeing other houses in the area clad in voguish aluminum siding, Houston resident John Milkovisch clamored down from the attic with a bulge of aluminum beer cans—50,000 aluminum beer cans, to be precise. Milkovisch—"a child of the Great Depression" as the AP identifies—saved everything, even the cans of Bud Light, Texas Pride, and Natural Ice that piled high as a result of he and his wife's afternoon, six-pack-a-day ablutions in the shade of their backyard. On this day, he began cutting open and laying flat each and every can, ultimately covering the entirety of his squat, single-family home in aluminum.
How to Hate a Hotel Stay...in 17 Hilarious PowerPoint Slides
Image via Hyperorg.com
To file their critique of Houston's DoubleTree Club Hotel, Seattle-based businessmen Tom Farmer and Shane Atchison evoked the most noxious, ruinous, and damn classy tool in their arsenal ... PowerPoint. Poised with infographics, charts, and no dearth of sarcasm, the pair cuts to the still-beating heart of DoubleTree's bleak customer service, all the while crafting a presentation that oozes with corporate irony. Without further ado, "Yours is a Very Bad Hotel":
NEED
to
KNOW
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